Patriots' Forum … to Study demographic threat to India's secular identity and civilizational ethos.

कांग्रेस का असली चेहरा

2011-07-11T22:15:00.000-07:00

जरा इनके बयानों का विरोधाभास देखिये....

हजारों सिखों का कत्लेआम – एक गलती
कश्मीर में हिन्दुओं का नरसंहार – एक राजनैतिक समस्या

गुजरात में कुछ हजार लोगों द्वारा मुसलमानों की हत्या – एक विध्वंस
बंगाल में गरीब प्रदर्शनकारियों पर गोलीबारी – गलतफ़हमी

गुजरात में “परजानिया” पर प्रतिबन्ध – साम्प्रदायिक
“दा विंची कोड” और “जो बोले सो निहाल” पर प्रतिबन्ध – धर्मनिरपेक्षता

कारगिल हमला – भाजपा सरकार की भूल
चीन का 1962 का हमला – नेहरू को एक धोखा

जातिगत आधार पर स्कूल-कालेजों में आरक्षण – सेक्यूलर
अल्पसंख्यक संस्थाओं में भी आरक्षण की भाजपा की मांग – साम्प्रदायिक

सोहराबुद्दीन की फ़र्जी मुठभेड़ – भाजपा का सांप्रदायिक चेहरा
ख्वाजा यूनुस का महाराष्ट्र में फ़र्जी मुठभेड़ – पुलिसिया अत्याचार

गोधरा के बाद के गुजरात दंगे - मोदी का शर्मनाक कांड
मेरठ, मलियाना, मुम्बई, मालेगाँव आदि-आदि-आदि दंगे - एक प्रशासनिक विफ़लता

हिन्दुओं और हिन्दुत्व के बारे बातें करना – सांप्रदायिक
इस्लाम और मुसलमानों के बारे में बातें करना – सेक्यूलर

संसद पर हमला – भाजपा सरकार की कमजोरी
अफ़जल गुरु को सुप्रीम कोर्ट के आदेश के बावजूद फ़ाँसी न देना – मानवीयता

भाजपा के इस्लाम के बारे में सवाल – सांप्रदायिकता
कांग्रेस के “राम” के बारे में सवाल – नौकरशाही की गलती

यदि कांग्रेस लोकसभा चुनाव जीती – सोनिया को जनता ने स्वीकारा
मोदी गुजरात में चुनाव जीते – फ़ासिस्टों की जीत

सोनिया मोदी को कहती हैं “मौत का सौदागर” – सेक्यूलरिज्म को बढ़ावा
जब मोदी अफ़जल गुरु के बारे में बोले – मुस्लिम विरोधी

280 लाख करोड़ का सवाल है ...

2011-02-02T03:19:00.000-08:00

भारतीय गरीब है लेकिन भारत देश कभी गरीब नहीं रहा", ये कहना है स्विस बैंक केडाइरेक्टर का. स्विस बैंक के डाइरेक्टर ने यह भी कहा है कि भारत का लगभग 280लाख करोड़ रुपये (280 ,00 ,000 ,000 ,000) उनके स्विस बैंक में जमा है.

ये रकम इतनी है कि भारत का आने वाले 30 सालों का बजट बिना टैक्स के बनाया जा सकता है. या यूँ कहें कि 60 करोड़ रोजगार के अवसर दिए जा सकते है. या यूँ भी कह सकते हैकि भारत के किसी भी गाँव से दिल्ली तक 4 लेन रोड बनाया जा सकता है. ऐसा भी कह सकते है कि 500 से ज्यादा सामाजिक प्रोजेक्ट पूर्ण किये जा सकते है. ये रकमइतनी ज्यादा है कि अगर हर भारतीय को 2000 रुपये हर महीने भी दिए जाये तो 60साल तक ख़त्म ना हो. यानी भारत को किसी वर्ल्ड बैंक से लोन लेने कि कोई जरुरतनहीं है. जरा सोचिये ...

हमारे भ्रष्ट राजनेताओं और नोकरशाहों ने कैसे देश को लूटा है और ये लूट का सिलसिला अभी तक 2010 तक जारी है. इस सिलसिले को अब रोकनाबहुत ज्यादा जरूरी हो गया है. अंग्रेजो ने हमारे भारत पर करीब 200 सालो तक राज करके करीब 1 लाख करोड रुपये लूटे. मगर आजादी के केवल 64 सालों में हमारे भ्रस्टाचार ने 280 लाख करोड़ लूटा है. एक तरफ 200 साल में 1 लाख करोड़ है और दूसरी तरफ केवल 64सालों में 280 लाख करोड़ है. यानि हर साल लगभग 4.37 लाख करोड़, या हर महीनेकरीब 36 हजार करोड़ भारतीय मुद्रा स्विस बैंक में इन भ्रष्ट लोगों द्वारा जमाकरवाई गई है.

भारत को किसी वर्ल्ड बैंक के लोन की कोई दरकार नहीं है. सोचो कि कितना पैसा हमारे भ्रष्ट राजनेताओं और उच्च अधिकारीयों ने ब्लाक करके रखा हुआहै. हमे भ्रस्ट राजनेताओं और भ्रष्ट अधिकारीयों के खिलाफ जाने का पूर्ण अधिकारहै.हाल ही में हुवे घोटालों का आप सभी को पता ही है - CWG घोटाला, २ जीस्पेक्ट्रुम घोटाला , आदर्श होउसिंग घोटाला ... और ना जाने कौन कौन से घोटालेअभी उजागर होने वाले है ........

आप लोग जोक्स फॉरवर्ड करते ही हो. इसे भी इतनाफॉरवर्ड करो की पूरा भारत इसे पढ़े ... और एक आन्दोलन बन जाये ...

सदियोँ की ठन्डी बुझी राख सुगबुगा उठी,

मिट्टी सोने का ताज् पहन इठलाती है।

दो राह, समयके रथ का घर्घर नाद सुनो,

सिँहासन खाली करो की जनता आती है।

जनता?

Who owns the media in India ?

2011-02-02T03:03:00.000-08:00

Let us see the ownership of different media agencies.

NDTV: A very popular TV news media is funded by Gospels of Charity in Spain Supports Communism. Recently it has developed a soft corner towards Pakistan because Pakistan President has allowed only this channel to be aired in Pakistan . Indian CEO Prannoy Roy is co-brother of Prakash Karat, General Secretary of the Communist party of India . His wife and Brinda Karat are sisters.IndiaToday:Which used to be the only national weekly which supported BJP is now bought by NDTV!! Since then the tone has changed drastically and turned into Hindu bashing.CNN-IBN:This is 100 percent funded by Southern Baptist Church with its branches in all over the world with HQ in US.. The Church annually allocates $800 million for promotion of its channel. Its Indian head is Rajdeep Sardesai and his wife Sagarika Ghosh.Times group list:Times Of India, Mid-Day, Nav-Bharth Times, Stardust, Femina, Vijay Times, Vijaya Karnataka, Times now (24- hour news channel) and many more...

Times Group is owned by Bennet & Coleman. 'World Christian Council' does 80 percent of the Funding, and an Englishman and an Italian equally share balance 20 percent. The Italian Robertio Mindo is a close relative of Sonia Gandhi.

Star TV: It is run by an Australian, who is supported by St. Peters Pontifical Church Melbourne.
HindustanTimes:Owned by Birla Group, but hands have changed since Shobana Bhartiya took over. Presently it is working in Collaboration with Times Group.

The Hindu: English daily, started over 125 years has been recently taken over by Joshua Society, Berne , Switzerland .. N. Ram's wife is a Swiss national.

Indian Express: Divided into two groups. The Indian Express and new Indian Express (southern edition) ACTS Christian Ministries have major stake in the Indian Express and latter is still with the Indian counterpart.

Eeenadu: Still to date controlled by an Indian named Ramoji Rao. Ramoji Rao is connected with film industry and owns a huge studio in Andhra Pradesh.

Andhra Jyothi: The Muslim party of Hyderabad known as MIM along with a Congress Minister has purchased this Telugu daily very recently.

The Statesman: It is controlled by Communist Party of India.

Kairali TV:I t is controlled by Communist party of India (Marxist)

Mathrubhoomi: Leaders of Muslim League and Communist leaders have major investment.
Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle:Is owned by a Saudi Arabian Company with its chief Editor M.J. Akbar.

Gujarat riots which took place in 2002 where Hindus were burnt alive, Rajdeep Sardesai and Bharkha Dutt working for NDTV at that time got around 5 Million Dollars from Saudi Arabia to cover only Muslim victims, which they did very faithfully...

Not a single Hindu family was interviewed or shown on TV whose near and dear ones had been burnt alive in Godra.

It is reported Tarun Tejpal of Tehelka.com regularly gets blank cheques from Arab countries to target BJP and Hindus only, it is said.

The ownership explains the control of media in India by foreigners. The result is obvious.

PONDER OVER THIS. NOW YOU KNOW WHY EVERY ONE IS AGAINST TRUTH, HOW VERY SAD.

Bitter Truth !!!!! If you cross the border......

2010-12-15T21:26:00.000-08:00

Bitter Truth !!!!!!!

If you cross the " The North Korean " border illegally, you get ..... 12 years hard labour in an isolated prison .....
If you cross the " Iranian " border illegally, you get ..... detained indefinitely .....
If you cross the " Afghan " border illegally, you get ..... shot .....
If you cross the " Saudi Arabian " border illegally, you get ..... jailed ..... I
f you cross the " Chinese " border illegally, you get ..... kidnapped and may be never heard of - again .....
If you cross the " Venezuelan " border illegally, you get ..... branded as a spy and your fate sealed .....
If you cross the " Cuban " border illegally, you get ..... thrown into a political prison to rot .....
If you cross the " British " border illegally, you get ..... arrested, prosecuted, sent to prison and be deported after serving your sentence .....

Now ..... if you were to cross the " Indian " border illegally, you get .....

1. A ration card
2. A passport ( even more than one - if you please ! )
3. A driver's licence
4. A voter identity card
5. Credit cards 6. A Haj subsidy
7. Job reservation
8. Special privileges for minorities
9. Government housing on subsidized rent
10. Loan to buy a house
11. Free education
12. Free health care
13. A lobbyist in New Delhi , with a bunch of media morons and a bigger bunch of human rights activists promoting your " cause "
14. The right to talk about secularism, which you have not heard about in your own country !

15. And of-course ..... voting rights to elect corrupt politicians who will promote your community for their selfish interest in securing your votes !!!
16. And right to fight election for MLA or MP

Hats off ..... to the .....

A. Corrupt and communal Indian politicians

B. The inefficient and corrupt Indian police force

C. The silly pseudo-secularists in India , who promote traitors staying here

D. The amazingly lenient Indian courts and legal system.That's why people like Afzal Guru are still alive, same will happen with Kasab.

E. WE self centered Indian citizens, who are not bothered about the dangers to our own country.

F. The illogically brainless human-rights activists, who think that terrorists deserve to be dealt with by archaic laws meant for an era, when human beings were human beings

CASTE-BASED CENSUS - A CONSPIRACY TO DESTROY HINDU SOCIETY

2010-06-17T08:03:00.000-07:00

About six crore of devotees from more than 140 countries speaking 56 languages visited Haridwar and took a dip in the holy Ganga during the period of the Kumbha Mela which concluded recently. They have all one and only identity - they are Hindus - children of Mother Bharat and those who adore this Holy Land as the land of their forefathers, the land of their hoary spiritual culture and heritage, the land of their salvation. When this ocean of humanity immersed itself into the surging waves of River Ganga, rubbing shoulders to each other, none of them did ask the question what was the caste of the one standing next to him or her in the cool waters of Mother Ganga, the Ganga maiya for all of them. When millions congregated in the dining halls spread out on the river bank by hundreds of religious and spiritual organizations to provide food for the pilgrims from far and wide, none in the gathering asked the question who was sitting next to him and partaking the food so lovingly served by their own Hindu brethren.

A few months earlier, there was a congregation of three million mothers lighting ovens in front of the Attukal Bhagavati temple near Tiruvanandapuram, to offer ‘Pongala’ - sweet rice pudding prepared with milk and jaggery - to the Divine Mother. All the roads surrounding the temple town were blocked to enable the mothers to set up their ovens to prepare the Prasad for the Mother of all. The Guinness Book of Records called it the greatest congregation of women in the world. The mothers who stood in line to prepare the food for the Mother did not care to know to which caste the women standing next to them belonged. For all of them, She was the Only Mother and all were Her children.

Millions throng from all parts of the country and abroad to the renowned temples in India, whether Rameshwaram, Tirupati, or Kollur in the South or Kashi, Kedarnath, Badrinath or Vaishnodevi in the North. In last March, about 1 lakh devotees had Darshan of Tirupati Balaji on a single day. The pilgrims stand in long cues for hours together to have Darshan of their beloved Deity or to share the Prasad in the temple dining halls. None bothers about the caste of others standing or sitting by their side. In the schools, colleges, universities, market places, theatres and cinema halls, in the hotels and restaurants, in trains and buses, millions of people sit side by side, but no one has ever asked the caste of another sitting by his side. In crowded cities and towns, in flats and residential colonies, people of all castes and creeds live together. Then where is caste?

Caste has never existed in the remote past nor does it exist today. The Vedas nowhere speak about caste system. Manu emphatically declares, "Janmanaa jaayate shoodrah, samskaarena dwijah" - that all human beings are born as Shudras - unrefined - and by samskaara - refinement, one becomes a dwijah - twice born, i.e., one among the Brahmanas, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas. The classification of the four Varnas are not based on birth. Krishna says very clearly in the Srimad Bhagavad Gita - "Chaaturvarnyam mayaa srishtham, guna karma vibhaagashah" - "I have created the four Varnas on the basis of quality and temparament". Vedavyasa was born in the womb of a fisherwoman, but he became the Guru of all Gurus and compiler of the Vedas by virtue of his inclination and actions. Satyakaama Jabaali was son of a woman who was serving many masters and therefore he did not know his father. But he became a Upanishadic seer. Narada was a son of a servant maid. Ravana, though born as the son of a Brahmana, descended to the level of Rakshasa whereas his brother Vibhishana is adored as an Alwar saint—a saint of the Vaishnava order.

The classification of the four Varnas mentioned in the Purusha Sookta, as rightly pointed out by Sri Guruji Golwalkar in the "Bunch of Thoughts", speaks about the Raashthra Purusha. The men in whom wisdom is predominant and who are inclined to spiritual life are the spokespersons of the Jnaanabhoomi, Karmabhoomi, Mokshabhoomi Bharat. Vasishtha, Viswamitra, Gautama and other rishis of highest enlightenment guided kings and emperors like Dasaratha and Janaka. Men in whom the emotion, prowess - strength of the shoulder--, patriotism and the qualities of a warrior are predominant, become the protectors of the nation and society. Men in whom entrepreneurial skill is predominant become Vaishyas or traders. The common run, whose interest and inclination to do casual work and eke out a living are Shudras. All the four Varnas are various limbs of the Rashtra Purusha. "Janmanaa jaayate shoodrah, samskaarena dwijah" - all men are born as Shudras - unrefined - and by samskaara - refinement, one becomes a dwijah - twice born, i.e., one among the Brahmanas, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas. The classification of the four Varnas is not based on birth. Krishna says very clearly in the Srimad Bhagavad Gita - "Chaaturvarnyam mayaa srishtham, guna karma vibhaagashah" - "I have created the four Varnas on the basis of quality and temperament".

Veda Vyasa was the son of Sage Parasara and born in the womb of a fisherwoman, but he became the Guru of all Gurus and compiler of the Vedas by virtue of his inclination and actions. Satyakama Jabali was son of a woman who was serving many masters and therefore he could not know who his father was. His guru Haridrumata Gautama accepted him as a Brahmana because he spoke truth, and speaking truth was the noblest quality of Brahmana, and he became a great Upanishadic seer. Narada was the son of a servant maid. Ravana, though born as the son of a Brahmana, descended to the level of Rakshasa whereas his brother Vibhishana rose to become adored as an Alwar saint - a saint of the Vaishnava order. There were anuloma and pratiloma marriages among the Hindus, one of the higher Varna marrying a girl from the lower Varna and vice versa, respectively. The classification of the four Varnas mentioned in the Purusha Sookta, as rightly pointed out by Sri Guruji Golwalkar in the "Bunch of Thoughts", speaks about the Raashthra Purusha. The men in whom wisdom is predominant and who are inclined to spiritual life are the spokespersons of the Jnaanabhoomi, Karmabhoomi, Mokshabhoomi Bharat. Vasishtha, Viswamitra, Gautama and other rishis of highest enlightenment guided kings and emperors like Dasaratha and Janaka. Men in whom the emotion, prowess - strength of the shoulder--, patriotism and the qualities of a warrior are predominant, become the protectors of the nation and society. Men in whom entrepreneurial skill is predominant become Vaishyas or traders. The common run, whose interest and inclination are to do casual work and eke out a living are Shudras. All the four Varnas are various limbs of the Rashtra Purusha.

Nowhere it is said that one cannot move from one Varna to another. Karna, who was considered as a charioteer’s son and was not accepted as Kshatriya, was appointed as King of Angadesha and elevated to the position of Kshatriya by Duryodhana. Vishwamitra, who was a Rajarishi, was elevated to the position of Brahma Rishi and was accepted by Vasishtha. Veetahavya, who was also a Kshatriya, became a Brahmana. Valmiki, a hunter and dacoit by profession turned into the highest Brahmana of the land who gave us the Ramayana. Parasurama and Dronacharya, though Brahmanas by birth, wielded weapons and chose to serve as Kshatriyas.

This classification on the basis of Varna gave strength to the Hindu society in most ancient times. When many civilizations and societies all over the world which arose in the later days crumbled because of their conflict with outside forces, Bharat withstood the invasions by Shakas, Hunas and Greeks and even absorbed many of them into the mainstream of Hindu race. However, the rigidity of the Varna distinctions which later came to be called as casteism arose when society advanced with many professional groups coming into existence and intermarriages created many new castes and sub-castes. In the historical period, reform movements like Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism cleansed the Hindu society of the disintegrating caste system and movements like those of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the Maharashtriyan saints like Ramdas, Tukaram and Eknath, the saints of South India like the Alwars and Nayanmars, Sri Ramanuja, Saint Ramalinga and Sree Narayana Guru fought against the distinction between castes as higher and lower. Swami Vivekananda, the greatest reformer and patriot monk of modern India, points out: “We believe in Indian caste as one of the greatest social institutions that the Lord gave to man. We also believe that though the unavoidable defects, foreign persecutions, and above all, the monumental ignorance and pride of many brahmanas who do not deserve the name, have thwarted in many ways, the legitimate fructification of the most glorious Indian institution, it has already worked wonders for the land of Bharat and is destined to lead Indian humanity to its goal.” During India’s freedom struggle, many great Indian leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Lokamanya Tilak and Veer Savarkar strove to break the barriers between different castes and integrate the entire Hindu society. Mahakavi Bharati, the poet-patriot of the South sang: “Jaatikal etume illayadi paappaa, kulat taazchi uyarchi sollal paapam” - “There are no castes, it is sin to speak of higher and lower births.”

Swami Harshananda rightly points out: “There is no gainsaying the fact that during the last 150 years, there has been a true decline of the true spirit behind the caste system. It has been much more pronounced during the 50 years after our political independence.” The British colonialists made the best use of the caste distinctions among the Hindus to divide and disintegrate the nation to keep the country as a part of their empire and the Christian evangelists converted the poor and downtrodden Hindus into their religion to perpetuate the white man’s rule over this nation. Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, who founded of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in 1925, had a deep foresight and he realized that unless and until the entire Hindu society from Kashmir to Kanyakumari stood as one man, wiping out all distinctions based on caste, colour and language, Bharatavarsha could not rise up once again as Hindu Nation and he launched the movement to integrate the entire Hindu society under one banner and with a fiery ideal of adoration of Motherland and elevating Mother Bharat once again as the Loka Guru. In 1934, a winter camp of the Sangh took place in Sevagram at Wardha. One thousand five hundred Swayamsevaks participated in the camp which took place in an open ground near the Ashram where Gandhiji was staying. Seeing the disciplined manner in which the programme of activities of the Sangh were conducted, Gandhiji expressed his desire to visit the camp. As soon as the information reached the Sanghchalak, Sri Appaji Joshi, through Mahadeva Desai, Gandhiji was invited to the camp. On 25th December 1934, in the early morning, Gandhiji visited the camp and spent one and half hours with the Swayamsevaks. He was deeply impressed by their character, discipline and above all the unity which crossed all the barriers of caste and creed. He visited the camp hospital and the dining hall and when he found that the Swayamsevaks did not even care to know each other's caste and lived like members of one family, he expressed his desire to meet the person who had built up this organization. Next morning, when Dr. Hedgewar visited the camp to participate in the concluding function of the camp, the information was conveyed to him and he accordingly called on Gandhiji in the night. Gandhiji spent an hour with Dr. Hedgewar discussing about the Sangh work. Gandhiji was amazed to find that what he was striving to do though his incessant propaganda, i.e., removing the blot of untouchability, was already achieved by Dr. Hedgewar through his Sangh Shakas.

After the attainment of Independence, it was expected that the distinctions in the name of caste will be totally wiped out, but the Europeanized politicians who came to power after the British left the shores of this land found a duck that lays the golden eggs in the caste system and realized that as long as they perpetuate the caste distinctions among the Hindus, it will be easy to create vote banks which will help them keep themselves in power perpetually. Therefore they have divided the parliamentary and assembly constituencies in such a way that one or the other caste is predominant there and by appeasing the caste leaders, they could create vote banks. Reservations in jobs, admission to educational institutions and even electing the peoples’ representatives on the basis of caste were found to be easy means to catch votes to remain in power. Today, even those who got converted to Christianity and Islam from Hinduism, apparently protesting against casteism in Hindu society, want to claim the rights given to Scheduled Castes and Tribes among the Hindus. It is those who want to deliberately keep the Hindu society divided for their nefarious political purposes that go on raising the charge that casteism is part of Hinduism.

The cunning politician today wants to perpetuate the disintegration and disunity among the Hindus by promoting census on the basis of castes. The foreign Christian missionary and evangelical organizations, who have a hold on the Government of India through a Christian leader of foreign origin controlling the ruling party, find an opportunity to fix their targets for large scale conversion through the caste based census which will disintegrate the Hindus. The so called secular politicians of the country who have betrayed the Hindu society for the sake of power and have always been anti-Hindu, find this caste-based census as an opportunity to keep the Hindus ever divided so that no Hindu nationalist party would ever come to power. "The counting of castes in the ongoing census will weaken the efforts of social harmony and Rashtriya Ekatmata (national integration) being pushed by various organizations and people in the country. It will also ruin the dream of creating a casteless society as was emancipated by many great personalities like Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar and others. The RSS has been working since beginning for the unity of the whole Hindu society irrespective of castes," said RSS Sarkaryavah Shri Bhaiyaji Joshi, while talking to the media persons at the RSS headquarters in Nagpur, recently. Why is this caste-based census directed against the Hindus only? Among the Christians, there are so many castes like Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans and Syrians. Among the Muslims, there are Pathans, Labbais, Shias, Sunnis and Ahamadiyas. Will the caste-based senses take the head-count of all these groups? Caste-based census is a conspiracy of anti-Hindu politicians, Christian evangelists and Muslim fundamentalists to destroy Hinduism.

Patriotic Indian citizens, irrespective of caste, creed or linguistic differences, should oppose this caste-based census tooth and nail. In countries where Hindus are settled in large numbers, the caste distinctions are almost non-existent. Even in India, only in some remote village areas, these distinctions are prevalent, that too because of ignorance and because of the patronage of politicians who want to create vote banks in the name of caste. The Sindhis, who are the descendants of the Vedic Rishis who built up the Hindu civilization on the banks of River Sindh, do not have any caste distinctions among them. The day casteism will be totally wiped out of India is not far. Why harp upon it again and again? Let us make positive efforts to remove the blot of Casteism that has crept into Hindu society as a virus infecting the whole body. The Rishis addressed the whole of humanity as "Amritasya putraah” - Children of Immortality and called the whole world as one family, "Vasudaiva kutumbhakam". They proclaimed a 'Maanava Dharma' - Religion of Man - that is 'Vishwa Dharma' - Religion of the World - which is the 'Sanaatan Dharma' - the Eternal Religion. They have entrusted to the children of Mother Bharat and their descendants the task of spreading in the entire world man-making and universal values of life. Let us fulfil the hopes and aspirations of our forefathers. We could achieve this mission only when we do away with all distinctions in the name of caste. Let us declare ourselves as Hindus first and Hindus last and refuse to identify ourselves with any caste when the officials come to take the census. Let us boldly declare that we have no castes and WE ARE HINDUS, WE ARE BHARATIYAS.

Vishwa Dharma ki Jai! Bharatamata ki Jai! Vande Mataram!

Sadhu Prof. V. Rangarajan
Founder Trustee
Sri Bharatamata Gurukula Ashram &
Yogi Ramsuratkumar Indoligical Research Centre
Sri Bharatamata Mandir, Srinivasanagar, Krishna Raja Puram,
Bangalore 560 036
(Phone: 080-25610935, Cell: 09448275935,
E-mail: sadhu.rangarajan@gmail.com)

A Global Fault Line: The retreat of Muslim Moderates.

2009-11-18T06:26:00.000-08:00

By Lewis M. Simons NEWSWEEK
Published Nov 7, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Nov 16, 2009

When young Barack Hussein Obama lived with his American mother and Indonesian stepfather in Jakarta nearly 40 years ago, the Muslims of Southeast Asia were renowned for their moderation. Women may have covered their hair with a light scarf, but almost none veiled their faces. It was the rare Muslim man who grew a beard, and many drank with non-Muslim friends.

Today, as Obama prepares to meet with Southeast Asia's leaders in Singapore, all that, and more, is shifting. Moderation is suspect, as many of the region's quarter billion Muslims—more than in the Middle East—turn to the birthplace of Islam to reaffirm their religious identity. Though still a distinct minority, fundamentalists are demanding—and obtaining—a greater role for Sharia, or religious law, in family life and in the life of the nation.

In recent travel, I found signs of the drift throughout the region's five major Islamic centers: Indonesia, Malaysia, the southern -Phil- ippines, southern Thailand, and Singapore. Nowhere was it more jarring than Bulukumba, on the orchid-shaped Indonesian island of Sulawesi. With 350,000 people, mostly farmers whose holdings are shrinking as the population booms, Bulukumba is one of the poorest places on the island, and religious rule has supplanted the secular. In 2006 radical clergy, backed by sympathetic local politicians, military, and police officers, imposed Sharia over constitutional law. Today, Bulukumba is just one of more than two dozen such towns in the archipelago. Women are required to wear the jilbab, or headscarf. Wage earners are required to contribute 2.5 percent of their income as zakat, or alms. Children by the age of 7 must prove reading proficiency of the Quran in Arabic to qualify for elementary school. So must couples seeking approval to marry, and civil serv-ants applying for promotion.

Similar changes are happening in Malaysia. When I met with Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, I related this little story: in 1970, during a dinner party, my wife found herself dancing a quadrille with his father, then–prime minister Tun Abdul Razak, and I with his mother. A cloud crossed Najib's face. He peered directly at me over his wire-rim glasses and said nothing. Such behavior, we both understood, would be out of the question in today's Malaysia, now a proudly Islamic fundamentalist state.

Along the border, Muslims and Buddhists in southern Thailand are slaughtering each other. Since 2004, some 3,500 have been killed. The government in Bangkok says the Muslim fighters are common criminals. But in the city of Hat Yai, Monsour Salleh, a counselor to the militant Muslim Youth Association of Thailand, praised them as religious warriors. "The young generation of Muslims believes in jihad," he said. "They are good boys, dignified and committed, who study the Quran. They learn that if they fight to right injustice, they will be rewarded in heaven."

In the small southern Philippines town of Pikit, on the terror-torn island of Basilan, a Roman Catholic priest told me that fundamentalist attitudes were hardening among the Moros, as Muslims in the area are known. "It's an identity crisis," said Father Bert Layson, who is openly sympathetic to the Moros. "And it's been infinitely heightened through globalism by the international Islamic revival. This is leading the Moros back to their old belief that they must live in an Islamic environment in order to truly practice Islam." An estimated 120,000 Muslims and Christians have killed each other in the southern Philippines since 1970.

Singaporeans—obedient, relentlessly middle-class, and overwhelmingly ethnic Chinese—were stunned when, in 2001, the government narrowly averted a sophisticated attack planned by homegrown members of the Jemaah Islamiah terror organization. As on any taut ship, Singapore's captain remains obsessed over a future threat. "We're sitting on a global fault line," Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told me.

Now, on Obama's first trip to Southeast Asia as president, the region's leaders are pressing him to reengage with a part of the world the U.S. has largely ignored. He would be wise to accede. For even as fundamentalism advances among them, the Muslims of Southeast Asia want Americans—in sandals and sneakers, not combat boots—to return and work with them as Peace Corps volunteers, teachers, agriculturalists, and entrepreneurs. This may be the best chance the United States will have to launch a "preemptive peace," a chance to set things right with Muslims everywhere.

Simons, a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist, is coauthor with U.S. Sen. Christopher Bond of The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace With Islam.

HUBRIS OF DARUL ULOOM :Frightening Contours of a State Within State

2009-11-18T06:16:00.000-08:00

By: Ram Kumar Ohri, IPS (Retd)

Darul Uloom has done it again. By issuing a Fatwa, loaded with fundamentalist frenzy, the seminary has reiterated its earlier stand that singing of the national song, Vande Matram, by Muslims is ‘haram’. Obviously the Deoband Ulema have openly expressed utter contempt for the majesty of India’s Constitution and delivered a body blow to the ideal of national integration. The timing of the ‘fatwa’ has surprised everyone, especially when the stand of the Ulema had been known now for several years. Apparently the provocation for spewing hatred against singing of ‘Vande Matram’ by Muslims, once again, was the visit of the Union Home Minister to Deoband and the presence of renowned Hindu Yoga Guru, Swami Ramdev, at the massive conclave of Muslim clerics. No wonder the air is thick once again with acrid smoke rising out of the communal cauldron lit by the Deoband clergy. The facile reasoning of the Ulema against singing of Vande Matram is that the national song means bowing before Mother India, and bowing before anyone except Allah militates against the tenets of Islam. Though the fanatic Ulema, Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e Hind and members of the Muslim Personal Law Board loudly proclaim that Muslim cannot bow before anyone except Allah, they conveniently forget that in the not too distant past, during Muslim rule, all Muslims, including the highest of the Ulema, had no hesitation in bowing before Muslim rulers like Akbar, Shahjahan and Aurangzeb and several cruel kings. And there is no dearth of Muslims in India who readily bow before their fathers and mothers. What could then be the motive of re- issuing the fatwa against Vande Matram? Well, the intention was to emphasise the separate identity of Muslims and keeping them away from the national mainstream.

Another fatwa issued by the Ulema of Darul Uloom was against acts of terrorism and suicide bombing being committed across the globe by Muslims. The ulema declared that these were against the basic tenets of Islam. But it came with a rider in the form of a caveat that concept of jihad is a constructive phenomenon - whatever that might mean.

Interestingly the website of Darul Uloom defines ‘terrorism’ as the “struggle of resistance of the weak for securing their legitimate rights against suppression.” Could there be a more brazen attempt to defend the jihadi terror stalking the civil society worldwide? Reiteration of Deoband’s earlier fatwa against Vande Matram issued in 2006 and the so-called fatwa against terrorism and suicide bombing are only one part of the sordid story. Darul Uloom issued another 23 fatwas out of which seven are listed below as examples of Deoband’s separatist agenda -

1. Muslims should not use ‘namaste’ as greetings and must always say ‘salam’ ;
2. Muslims should refrain from watching television and listen to radio music ;
3. Muslims should refuse to get inoculated for Aids or Polio ;
4. Muslims should oppose the proposed Women’s Reservation Bill ;
5. Girls who are ten years old and above must be educated only in madarasas ;
6. Muslims must always emphasise their religious identity; and
7. The Madarasa Board proposed by the government was unacceptable and will be opposed by the community.

These ‘fatwas’ unequivocally emphasise the separatist mindset being promoted among Muslims by the clerics of Deoband. Apparently, the Union Home Minister, P.C. Chidambram, and Baba Ramdev appear to be unaware of the communal agenda of Darul Uloom and the fact that it has played a major role in spawning terrorism both in India and Pakistan by incessantly preaching and promoting the fundamentalist version of Islam, i.e., the Wahabi Islam. Not only this, the Deoband Ulema have been openly preaching the use of violence to spread Islam, the so-called religion of peace. As candidly pointed out in an article by Arif Mohammed Khan, a former Union Minister, the syllabus of Darul Uloom states : “When the Muslims enter the enemy’s country and besiege the cities or strongholds of the infidels, it is necessary to invite them to embrace the faith, because Ibn Abbas relates of the Prophet that he never destroyed any without previously inviting them to embrace the faith. If therefore they embrace the faith, it is unnecessary to war with them, because that which was the design of the war is then obtained without war.1 The syllabus further elaborates that the Prophet has said that ‘we are directed to make war upon men only until such time as they shall confess, “There is no God, but one God”.2

Thus while comfortably enconsed in India and shouting from housetops that they are totally loyal to the country, the Deoband ulema have been openly preaching jihad against the infidels (read kaffir Hindus). Could there be any worse instance of doublespeak? For a while let us try to analyse and understand the implications of what Darul Uloom has been preaching, say in the context of the dastardly attack by Pakistan sponsored fidayeens on 26 /11 for murderous mayhem across Mumbai.

According to Darul Uloom’s interpretation of scriptural war against infidels what those ten fidayeens after entering Mumbai should have done was to serve a notice on the Hindus to embrace Islam, as commanded by the Prophet. And if the kaffirs did not agree to embrace Islam, the fidayeens would have been fully justified in killing them. That is what the syllabus of Deoband seminary appears to teach to Muslim students, and in the process revealing the true face of Darul Uloom !

The activities of Darul Uloom not only militate against national integration, but its teachings are totally anti-national. By telling Muslims not to use ‘namaste’ for the purpose of greeting each other, and aggressively opposing the national policy of eradication of Polio and Aids, the ulema are working overtime to create a separatist Muslim state within the Indian state. Time has to come for the government as well as the Indian people to confront them and tell them either to behave or to shut down their shop of separatism and fanaticism.

In our secularitis infected polity no one expected P. C. Chidambram to say good bye to the policy of minority appeasement. But Swami Ramdev ought to have known better. He should have realized long ago that there is a total disconnect between the ideals enshrined in the Indian Constitution and the preaching of violence by Darul Uloom. Nothing could be more distressing than the ugly spectacle of dhimmitude which Swami Ramdev presented while trying to appease the jihad preaching ulema of Deoband. Hellbent on insulting Swami Ramdev, after passing the controversial fatwa against Vande Matram on November 3, 2009, they decreed on November 7, 2009, that Muslims must not attend Swami Ramdev’s health camps because of the singing of Vande Matram.

It is a shame that even after being insulted repeatedly, many self-styled Hindu seers refuse to learn even elementary lessons in self respect. Barely four days after the Deoband conclave, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, another 5-star high flyer Hindu guru, rushed to Darul Uloom and tried to appease the fundamentalist clerics by pleading that the word ‘vande’ in the national song, Vande Matram, does not mean worship of Mother India. That marked a new low in abject appeasement by Sri Sri who seems to have acquired not an iota of Hindu pride even after reading Gita and other sacred sciptures !.

Interestingly the syllabus of Darul Uloom also constitutes the bedrock of Islamic teaching in tens of thousands of madrasas affiliated to Deoband spread out across the length and breadth of India and Pakistan. The truth is that Darul Uloom has been responsible for fanning the prairie fire of global jihad. A further confirmation about the fundamentalist role of Deoband seminary came from Sohail Abbas, a leading Pakistan-based psychologist, whose published study revealed that out of 517 jihadis arrested in Afghanistan and lodged in Pakistani jails the overwhelming majority belonged to Deoband school of thought.3 The ideology being preached by Darul Uloom is playing havoc with the security of Indian nation and our secular ideal.

Before concluding, it would be in order to warn our peace-preaching 5-star seers like Swami Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to take sometime off their busy schedule (read money-making business activity) to study the concept of jihad and understand what propels the ulemas, living in India, to openly preach war against the so-called ‘kaffirs’. For all practical purposes, these clerics appear to be part of the global Islamic design to establish a ‘seamless caliphate’ from Indonesia to the Balkans after overrunning India which is the only non-Muslim country in South Asia, and a bulwark of democracy and secularism in this part of the world.

And a word of caution to our 5-star lifestyle seers and gurus, merrily wearing dyed hair and beards to look younger than their age. It is time they watched their step, lest the future generations wrote their names in the book of Infamous Hindus who let down their besieged community in hour of crisis. A warning has already been administered by some sadhus of Ayodhya to Baba Ramdev for his failure to oppose the fatwa against Vande Matram. They minced no words when they proclaimed that Swami Ramdev has become a businessman. Mahant Narayan Giri went a step further and asked Swami Ramdev to seek forgiveness for not protesting at Deoband and thereby hurting the sentiments of crores of Indians.
**********

1. Arif Mohammed Khan, ‘Sending A Wrong Message’, Times of India, New Delhi,
September 30, 2008, p. 20 ;
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Copyright @ Ram Kumar Ohri

A devious attempt to equate Gita with Quran by blatant recourse to taqiyah

2009-10-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

By: Ram Ohri, IPS (Retd)

“I am with you: give Firmness to the Believers
I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers.”

Quran 8.12
. . . . . . . .

Recently a very clumsy attempt was made to downgrade the Gita during an interactive discourse organized by Times of India on a quixotic topic, ‘Jihad in the Gita and the Quran’. The title of the debate implied that the doctrine of jihad has been preached both in the Gita and the Quran - something totally false and highly offensive to Hindu ethos. The participants were Maulana Wahiduddin and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, while the well known columnist, Narayani Ganesh, acted as moderator.

First things first. The scriptural soul of Hinduism, the Gita, does not preach, nor even remotely mentions., anything comparable to the Islamic doctrine of jihad which is a permanent holy war against all non-Muslims, as ordained in Islamic scriptures. It is difficult, nay impossible, to fathom the intent of Times of India group to select such a wonky theme suggesting that jihad has been sanctioned in Hindu scriptures, too !. There is no moral equivalence between what Gita preaches and what Quran ordains. The choice of the subject of the discourse shows total mental bankruptcy because it tries to equate the two incomparable scriptures. Apparently the leading lights of Times of India group as well as Narayani Ganesh have neither read the Gita, nor Quran. Otherwise they would not have ventured to wade into the minefield of jihad which has tormented innumerable civilisations and countless countries for centuries and taken toll of crores of innocent lives. The attempt to underline some kind of spiritual equivalence between the Gita and the Quran is nothing short of an affront to sacred Hindu beliefs, nay to the Gita, itself.

It is a pity that Sri Sri could not see through the clever game being played by the sham-secularist newspaper to bring down Gita to the level of jihadi orthopraxy, enshrined in the Quran. Nor could he rebut the inane profanity hidden in the theme. The Gita does not command Hindus to kill all non-Hindus, or for that matter, not even atheists. Sri Krishna advised a wavering Arjuna at Kurukshetra to wage war in the cause of righteousness and justice, and nothing more. Even after explaining the import of ‘dharma’ and righteousness, Sri Krishna left the final choice about taking up arms to Arjuna, saying that it was for him to make the correct decision, in according to ‘dharma’.

On the other hand, Jihad is not, repeat not, merely a struggle with one’s self, as claimed by Maulana Wahiduddin. It is Islam’s holy war against ‘kaffirs” (in Indian context read Hindus) as ordained in the Quran Importance of jihad has been highlighted by M.J. Akbar, in his tome, The Shade of Swords, where in the Introduction itself he has reiterated that “jihad is the signature tune of Islamic history”1. Elaborating the Islamic doctrine he says that though the Prophet did say that the ‘greater’ jihad (i.e., jihad-e-akbar) was the struggle to cleanse the impurity within, it was the lesser jihad (i.e., jihad-e-asghar) which had “powered the armies of Islam and made them all conquering”.2 For Muslims, M.J. Akbar, continues, jihad is not merely a question of cleansing the inner spirit; it is also a call for holy war regularly heard since the beginning of Islam. He has drawn pointed attention to the saying by the Prophet himself that “Paradise comes under the shade of swords”3. A similar message was conveyed to his jihadi hordes by Osama bin Laden during an interview on CNN news channel on May 10, 1997, when he proclaimed that the acme of this religion (i.e., Islam) was jihad. M.J. Akbar’s exposition of jihad is a clear rebuttal of the falsehood being preached by Maulana Wahiduddin and several others to hoodwink the gullible Hindus.

The claim of Maulana that jihad has nothing to do with the concept of holy war against infidels is again comprehensively rebutted by the well known exposition of jihad by Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid (a former Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia) in his commentary titled, ‘Jihad in the Quran and Sunnah’. The learned scholar, an acknowledged authority on Islam, emphasizes that Allah has ordained that Al-jihad (i.e., the holy fighting in Allah’s cause) should be carried out by the following three means :

( i ) with the heart (i.e., intentions or feelings) ;
(ii) with the hand (ie., with weapons, etc.) ; and
(iii) with the tongue (i.e., by speeches and preachings, in the cause of Allah).

Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid further elaborates that Allah will reward all those who participate in jihad with lofty dwellings in the Garden of Paradise.3 He clearly states that jihad, or fighting in the cause of Allah, is superior to non-obligatory prayers, fasting, Zakat, Umra and even Haj. As explained in Sahi Muslim No. 4696, Abu Huraira, an important companion of the Messenger of Allah, had emphasized that the Prophet had declared that a Muslim who died, but did not fight in the way of Allah, nor did express any desire or determination for jihad died the death of a hypocrite.4 A similar message for waging a holy war against infidels is contained in Verse 74 of Surah Nisi which says that whosoever fights in the way of Allah, be he slain or victorious, on him we shall bestow a vast reward. Logically a taqiyah practicing cleric like Maulana Wahiduddin should have been confronted with Verse 8.12 and Verse 74 which openly preach jihad through terrorizing the so-called infidels. But unfortunately Sri Sri failed to do so perhaps because of his lack of knowledge about the Quran and the doctrine of jihad. The conceptual framework of jihad has been lucidly enunciated in Surah Anfal, namely the eighth Sura (i.e., chapter 8) and 9th Surah titled ‘Taubah’ of the Quran, although this holy war has been enjoined on the faithful in many other chapters also. In fact, there are more than 200 verses in the Quran exhorting the Muslims to wage a holy war against the infidels.

More importantly the doctrine of jihad has at least four major components, e.g., forcible conversion of the so-called ‘kaffirs’ on pain of death, the scriptural sanction for ‘slaughter in the land’ in verse 8.67 after defeating the kaffirs and recourse to ghanima which means plunder and seizure of the property of the vanquished kaffirs, including carrying away of their women and children. A typical example of the ‘slaughter in the land’ was the beheading of nearly Jews, chained and menacled, under supervision of Prophet Muhammad, in the public square of Medina in the year 627 A.D., after the Battle of Ditch. Another example is from Indian history when after Muhammad bin Qasim’s victory over Raja Dahir of Sind, when Hajjaj reminded bin Qasim of the Prophet’s commandment :”Give no quarter to infidels but cut their throats. Then know that this is the command of the great God. You shall not be too ready to grant protection, because it will prolong your work”.5 The fourth important component of jihad is the imposition of ‘jiziya’ or poll tax on the so-called ‘dhimmies’, i.e., non-Muslims living under protection of the Muslim rulers. Originally meant for only Christians and Jews (the people of the Book) later on it was extended to ‘kaffir’ Hindus also. Otherwise the Quranic punishment for ‘kaffirs’ is death and destruction.

The scriptural sanction for enjoying the spoils of war, including carrying away of women and children of the vanquished ‘kaffirs’ is accorded in verse 8.69 of Surah Anfal which says “Eat ye the spoils of war. They are lawful and pure”. Thus the Quran proclaims that there is nothing improper about plunder and enjoying the spoils of war; it is a mujahid’s prerogative. The only condition imposed is that ‘holy’ one-fifth of the spoils of war (including the captive women) must be sent to the Prophet, and after him, to the Caliph as his share of the war booty. The command about treatment to be meted out to the plundered womenfolk is contained in verse 4.24 which asserts : “ All married women are forbidden (to you) save those (captives) whom your right hand possesses.”6 Obviously, they are to be used as concubines, as indeed they have been throughout history..

Interestingly, Islam has a doctrine of using deception and telling lies to further the cause of Islam. It is called “Taqiyah”, or recourse to deception, which is duly sanctioned in Verse 16.106, which approves that under certain circumstances and Muslim can tell a lie (in the cause of Islam) for which no action will lie against him. ‘Taqiyah’ is also approved in many more Verses , namely 16.106, 3.28, 2.225 and 66.2. Explaining the utility of taqiyah Sahi Bukhari recounts the assassination of a poet, Ka’b bin al-Ashraf under orders of the Prophet.7 The men who volunteered to murder Ka’b used deception to gain the poet’s trust by pretending that they had turned against Prophet Muhammad in order to draw the victim out of his fortress and then killed him. Sahi Bukhari 84:64-65 categorically affirms that Hazrat Ali had confirmed that lying is permissible in order to deceive the enemy.8 . No wonder Maulana Wahiduddin and many others like him keep on confounding gullible Hindus, even Hindu seers, through their lectures laced with taqiyah. Sadly the wayward discourse clearly highlighted that Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has not read the Quran at all. More importantly the discourse further showed his astonishing inability to comprehend what Sri Krishna had preached at Kurukshetra which was in no way comparable to the doctrine of jihad enunciated in the Quran. He failed to point out that Gita preaches the concept of righteousness while doing one’s ‘karmic’ duty, above everything else. But Gita does not sanction the senseless killings of the kind which are ordained in innumerable verses of the Quran. Nor does Gita sanction plunder after victory, nor the carrying away of the hapless women and children of those vanquished in war and sharing them as ‘war booty’.

Perhaps due to his inadequate knowledge of the Quran and the Hadith, or sheer timidity, Sri Sri could not rebut the bogus contention of Maulana Wahiduddin that jihad means nothing more than trying to control one’s desires and that some Muslims presently engaged in “violent activities which they claim to be jihad” should be ignored because “these people belong to non-governmental organizations”. How is it that all these non-State actors like Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, Jasih-e-Muhammad, Taliban, Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami, Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, etc., responsible for killing thousands of innocents, are a speciality of Islamic States like Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Palestine, etc ? What is most important is that all these non-state actors are the creation of various Islamic governments who invariably support them in their nefarious activities.

Before closing this rejoinder it must be pointed out that the notorious July 2008 e-mail circulated by Indian Mujahideen had quoted verbatim three Ayats of Quran (in Arabic along with English translation) exhorting the faithful to kill the infidels. After pouring enormous ridicule on Hindu Gods and Goddesses, they had commanded the Hindus to convert to Islam failing which they shall be slaughtered as surely as their forbears had been by Muhammad bin Qasi, Mahmud Ghazanvi and Muhammad Ghauri in the past. And within four months Lashkar-e-Tayyeba’s ten fidayeens carried out the notorious Mumbai Massacre of 26 /11 in which nearly 180 innocents were slaughtered, a ghastly event about which a threat had been duly administered by Indian Mujahideen. That shows the ugly face of the Islamic doctrine of jihad. It is a shame that the preaching of righteous war by Sri Krishna at Kurukshetra is sought to be equated by Times of India group and Narayani Ganesh with what Indian Mujahideen had vowed to do the killings and which hey actually did, in accordance with the Quranic verses.

A much greater shame, however, is the gullibility of Hindu preachers like Sri Sri to acuisece in the falsehood being propagated to equate the Gita, both morally and spiritually, with the Quran. My humble advice to Sri Sri and other Hindu seers is that either they should read in great detail the Quran and the Hadith along with two authentic commentaries, Sahi Bukhari and Sahi Muslim, or they should scruplously refrain from participating in such weird discourses often organized by the sham-secularist groups and individuals to denigrate Hindu ethos and morally equate “adharma” with ‘dharma”.

*************
1. M. J. Akbar, The Shade of Swords, p. xvi
2. Ibid.
3. Jihad in Quran and Sunnah, published by Maktaba Dar-us-Salam, Riyadh.
4. Suhas Majumdar, Jihad – The Islamic Doctrine of Permanent War, p.20.
5. Dr. Titus, Indian Islam, p. 10.
6. Suhas Majumdar, Jihad – The Islamic Doctrine of Permanent War, p. 29.
7. Sahi Bukhari 52.271.
8. Sahi Bukhari 84:64-65
Copyright @ Ram Ohri

Jinnah to Hafiz Saeed

2009-10-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

Similarities in their anti-India agenda
By: G. Parthasarathy

Addressing a gathering of tens of thousands of zealots at the headquarters of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (earlier calling itself the Lashkar-e-Toiba), on November 3, 2000, the Amir of the Lashkar, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, thundered: “Jihad is not about Kashmir only. About 15 years ago people might have found it ridiculous if someone had told them about the disintegration of the Soviet Union (Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics). Today, I announce the breakup of India, Inshallah. We will not rest till the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan.”

Over the past two decades, Saeed has been publicly pronouncing a war that would encompass the whole of India. Till the terrorist outrage of 26/11 no one took him seriously. Shortly after his November 2000 speech, Saeed sent his “mujahideen” into the very heart of India’s national capital, New Delhi, to attack the historic Red Fort on December 22, 2000. Addressing a gathering of political leaders from Islamic parties shortly thereafter, Saeed proudly proclaimed that he had unfurled the green flag of Islam in the historic Red Fort.

Hafiz Saeed was and is no ordinary person. He enjoyed the patronage of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who had sent Punjab Governor Shahid Hamid and his Information Minister Mushahid Hussein Syed to personally call on and pay their respects to Saeed in 1998. The Wahabi/Salafi school of Islam propagated by Saeed was patronised by Nawaz Sharif’s father, Mian Mohammed Sharif, through the Tablighi Jamaat. Moreover, at the grassroots level, the Lashkar is closely linked to the Pakistan Army and the ISI, which provide weapons, training and logistical support to the extremist group. But is Saeed’s talk of “disintegration” of India merely rhetoric of a demented mind, or does it reflect a wider strategic vision within Pakistan and particularly in its armed forces?

While the “idea” of Pakistan was first enunciated by Chaudhuri Rehmat Ali in 1933 and given shape in the Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League in 1940, the hope in Pakistan, ever since it was born, was that India would be a loose confederation, with units like the Nizam’s domain in Hyderabad and even a “Dravidistan” going their own separate ways. Jinnah often spoke contemptuously of upper caste Hindus while fostering separatism by emphasising on a separate linguistic and ethnic Dravidian identity, characterising the social ethos in South India.

While Mahatma Gandhi tried to address centuries of exploitation and alienation of Dalits in India together with leaders like Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Jinnah endeavoured to foment Dalit alienation. He also encouraged elements in princely states like Jodhpur and Travancore-Cochin to declare independence. His aim was to Balkanise India and ensure domination of the sub-continent by a minority of its population. Jinnah’s approach to the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 was motivated by the belief that after 10 years, a united Punjab and Sind in the west, together with Bengal and Assam in the east, would break away from a fragile and fragmented India.

Jinnah shared a common interest with the British in ensuring that there was a weak central government in India, incapable of firmly holding the country together. Jinnah’s aims regarding India were thus not very different from those of Hafiz Saeed, though he was a virtually agnostic Ismaili Muslim who, according to his biographer Stanley Wolpert, loved Scotch whisky and ham sandwiches! Saeed, however, espouses rabid Wahabi causes.

Saeed makes no secret of his contempt for parliamentary democracy based on the principle of “one man, one vote”. But was Jinnah’s demand for a disproportionate share of parliamentary seats for his community on the basis of their having been the “rulers” of India before the British arrived, also not a negation of the concept of “one man one vote,” which is the fundamental principle of parliamentary democracy? It was Jinnah’s quest for “parity” for a minority that forms the basis of Pakistan’s unrealistic yearning for parity with India — a yearning that has led Pakistan to disaster.

Jinnah’s successors, from Liaquat Ali Khan to Gen Pervez Musharraf, have all conducted relations with India in the belief that India’s unity is fragile. Ayub Khan launched the 1965 conflict with India believing that Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was a weak leader facing serious separatist problems, because of the Punjabi Suba movement in Punjab and anti-Hindu riots combined with the rise of Dravidian parties in the South, apart from continuing insurgencies in the Northeast.

Gen Zia-ul-Haq set up an elaborate network to encourage separatism within India and laid special stress on creating a Hindu-Sikh communal divide in Punjab, in much the same manner as Jinnah had sought to sow doubts in the mind of Master Tara Singh. Such efforts failed the primarily because Hindus and Sikhs alike saw through Pakistan’s game-plans. The ISI effort to “bleed” India in Jammu and Kashmir is a continuation of policies that Pakistan has followed since its birth. It is shocking when Indians, who should know better, extol Jinnah’s “virtues”. His culpability in the communal holocaust he unleashed by his call for “Direct Action” cannot be condoned.

In his book, “The Shadow of the Great Game — The Untold Story of Partition”, former diplomat Narendra Singh Sarila has revealed that well before the Cabinet Mission arrived in India in 1946 two successive British Viceroys, Lord Linlithgow and Lord Wavell, had decided to partition India by creating a Muslim-majority state in its northwest, bordering Iran, Afghanistan and Sinkiang, in order to protect British interests in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was coopted to further this British objective around 1939.

Jinnah’s efforts to impose Urdu as Pakistan’s sole national language sowed the seeds of Bangladeshi separatism and of Pakistan’s disintegration in 1971. His assumption of office as an unelected Executive Head of State, who presided over the Cabinet, led to his successors arbitrarily dismissing Prime Ministers and staging a takeover of Pakistan by a military-dominated feudal elite — a malady the country suffers from even today.

The statesmanlike visit of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to the “Minar-e-Pakistan” in Lahore signalled that India had no intention of reversing Partition and that it wishes the people of Pakistan well. The challenges that Pakistan’s establishment poses will be overcome when the values of secularism, pluralism and inclusive democratic development are established as being more enduring than the fantasies of nationhood based exclusively on religion, which Jinnah propounded, or the hate and bigotry of Hafiz Mohammed Saeed. Banning books whose contents many may find objectionable is not the way to deal with such challenges.

The Tribune, New Delhi
October 3, 3009

JINNAH VIRUS DISTRACTS AND DEBILITATES BJP

2009-08-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

Wages of Poor Scholarship

- R.K. Ohri, IPS (Retd)

For a second time during the last four years Jinnah virus has struck the Bharatiya Janta Party. Greatly impressed by the success of Mohammed Ali Jinnah in carving out the Islamic State of Pakistan by ensuring division of India, almost single-handedly, some BJP leaders are bending backwards in praising Jinnah as a great ‘secular’ leader. Overwhelmed by ‘Jinnah virus’ and trying to outdo his senior colleague, L K Advani, in his latest book Jaswant Singh (a prominent BJP leader and former Foreign Affairs Minister in NDA government), has showered encomiums on Jinnah, while criticizing the murky role of Nehru and Gandhi in accepting partition of the country as a fait accompli. While this belated claim to wisdom by Jaswant Singh about greatness of the founder of Pakistan further bewildered the average middle class Hindu, the BJP was left with no option but to expel Jaswant Singh from the party due to his deliberate deviation from the ideology of BJP.

In June 2005 the then President of BJP, L.K. Advani, had praised Mohammed Ali Jinnah, as a secular leader during his visit to Pakistan, without verifying the facts. That controversial statement bestowing the halo of a “secular leader” on Jinnah was greatly resented by the Hindu masses. Ultimately it led to large scale criticism of Advani’s wrong perception and he had to step down from the office of BJP President.

Advani’s misadventure about Jinnah’s secular status was based on Pakistan’s Qaid-e Azam’s address to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, in which he had declared that “you are free to go to your mosques, or any other place of worship …… you may belong to any religion, caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of the state. You will find that in the course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense ….. but in the political sense as citizens of the State”. Apparently that statement was enough to make Advani conclude that Jinnah was indeed a secular democrat. The veteran leader did not care to check up the reasons which could have prompted Jinnah to make that most-unlike-Jinnah statement in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947. Perhaps he relied too much on the advice and assessment of his aide, Sudheendra Kulkarni, yet another admirer of Jinnah, who had accompanied him. Advani just could not figure out that what Jinnah had pronounced on August 11, 1947, was nothing but mere posturing done on the advice of Lord Ismay who was the Chief of Staff of the then Governor General of India, Lord Mountbatten.

The inside story of Jinnah’s August 11, 1947, statement has been narrated by a distinguished Punjabi scholar, Dr. Kripal Singh, on page 740 of his book, Select Documents on Partition of India -1947 (India and Pakistan), published in 1990. As revealed by Dr. Kripal Singh, the advice to make such a statement was given by Lord Ismay to Jinnah, under specific instructions of Lord Mountbatten in order to douse the raging fire of communal violence across Pakistan at that time. It was a belated attempt to assure the Hindus and the Sikhs living in Pakistan about their safety, expressly made on the suggestion of Lord Mountbatten, the then Governor General of India. The sole aim of the August 11, 1947, statement was to check the spiraling communal violence in Pakistan which had already generated a violent reaction in East Punjab (India).

The fact that Jinnah had been prevailed upon to make such a statement was told to Dr. Kripal Singh by Lord Ismay himself. His aforesaid book contains interviews with Lord Attlee, the Prime Minister of U.K. in 1947, Sir Francis Muddies, the then Governor of Punjab and Sir Cyril Radcliff, Chairman of the Boundary Commission who drew the final lines of the partitioned sub-continent. In an exclusive interview to TNS (Tribune News Service) Dr. Kripal Singh had disclosed that he had interviewed Lord Ismay on August 17, 1964, at his residence in U.K. Dr. Kripal Singh is a former Head of the Department of Historical Studies, Punjabi University, Patiala, and an erudite scholar and author of several books.

Every Indian, except perhaps Jaswant Singh, knows that Jinnah had repeatedly said that the Hindus and the Muslims cannot live together in India and had pompously declared in August 1946, “We shall have India divided or we shall have India destroyed”. He was a fundamentalist who was squarely responsible for organizing the great Calcutta killings on August 16, 1947, by giving a call for Direct Action to achieve the goal of Pakistan. Apparently the fast ageing BJP leaders like Jaswant Singh and Advani have forgotten that on July 27, 1946, while giving a call to Muslims for observing August 16, 1946, as Direct Action Day for achieving the goal of Pakistan, Jinnah spoke thus:

“The Muslims of India would not rest contented with anything less than the immediate establishment of independent and fully sovereign State of Pakistan… Now the time has come for the Muslim Nation to resort to Direct Action. ….We have taken a most historic decision. Never before in the whole history of the Muslim League did we do anything except by constitutional methods. Today we have said good-bye to constitutional methods. Throughout the painful negotiations the two parties with whom we bargain held a pistol at us - one with power and machine-guns behind it and the other with non-cooperation and the threat to launch mass civil disobedience. The situation must be met. We also have a pistol”.

That open declaration to defy the law had prompted Muslim League’s Mayor of Calcutta, Mohammed Usman, to give a call for jihad on August 16, 1946, by issuing an inflammatory leaflet titled “Munajat for Jihad”. On the Direct Action Day the city of Calcutta (now Kolkata) went through a grisly bloodbath which continued for several days a brief account of which has been given by Justice G.D. Khosla in his famous narrative, ‘The Stern Reckoning’. The total number of innocent citizens killed during the jihad unleashed by Muslim League on the Direct Action Day was estimated to be between 5,000 and 10,000. Subsequently communal riots broke out in many parts of the country.

Thus Jinnah was never ’secular’ in his outlook, much less in deed. Both Advani and Jaswant Singh appear to be suffering from age-related amnesia. How else could they forget that barely 10 weeks after Jinnah’s statement of August 11, 1946, Pakistan had invaded Jammu & Kashmir and let loose a horrendous campaign of murder, rape and pillage against unsuspecting hapless people? At that time Jinnah was very much alive (he died only in September 1948) and no one can deny that the Kashmir invasion was launched with his approval as Governor General of Pakistan.

Apparently the two BJP leaders never ever cared to ascertain the truth behind Jinnah’s deceptive statement made in Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly on 11th August 1947. What made Jinnah issue the so-called “secular statement” on August 11, 1947, has been clarified by Dr. Kripal Singh, as stated above. In essence that statement of Jinnah was nothing but recourse to ‘Taqiyah’, a convenient Islamic tool for befooling the so-called ‘kaffirs’.

Going far beyond what Advani had stated in June 2005, in a TV interview Jaswant Singh claimed that the widespread opinion in India that Jinnah was anti-Hindu was mistaken, and that he was unfairly demonized. The tall leader failed to explain why Jinnah did not try to prevent the massive ethnic cleansing of Hindus from Pakistan, why did he not raise even a small finger to save the lives and properties of lakhs of Hindus trapped in Pakistan?

Giving further twist to his love for Jinnah, during a TV interview by Karan Thapar Jaswant Singh bemoaned, “Look into the eyes of the Muslims who live in India and if you truly see their pain with which they live, to which land do they belong? We treat them as aliens ….. Without doubt Muslims have paid the price of partition”. It is difficult, nay impossible, to comprehend why Jaswant Singh does not realize that the real price of partition was paid by Crores of Hindus and Sikhs who were killed, converted and driven out from Pakistan and Bangladesh (formerly known as East Pakistan). How can he be so insensitive to the ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan, Bangladesh and even from Kashmir, an important part of our bogus secular political dispensation? Surely he cannot be oblivious of the fact Hindu population in Pakistan has come down from 23% in 1947 to less than 2% now, and in Bangladesh it has dwindled from 27% in 1947 to a meager 8%. And in Kashmir valley there are hardly any Hindus left now, except government servants! Yet Jaswant Singh’s heart bleeds only for Muslims - nary a tear did he shed for millions of ethnically Hindus and Sikhs. What hypocrisy, what poor scholarship?

It is extraordinary that Jaswant Singh does not know that in four globally recognized human development indices, namely, the Infant Mortality, Child Mortality, Degree of Urbanization and Life Expectancy at Birth the Muslims of India are better placed than the Hindus, and that according to a survey conducted in 2005 by the Centre for Studies of Developing Studies, New Delhi, at the all India level the proportion of “very poor” people is higher among Hindus than among Muslims.

The untruthful book of Jaswant Singh and his interviews to the media are indeed classic examples of poor scholarship. No wonder, Jaswant Singh has been expelled from the BJP. The lesson is that book writing is a serious academic pursuit. It should not be taken as a casual exercise, even by the tallest politicians.

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Hindu Spiritualism: The Ancient Hindu Way

2009-08-05T08:47:00.000-07:00

By: Om Prakash Sharma Former Governor Nagaland

It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in human history , the only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way. Here we have the attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together into a single family.
-Dr. Arnold J. Toynbee British Historian

The Ancient Hindu Way, in the above-quoted perceptive observation, is the soul of the Indian Nation and Democracy. Toynbee could as well say: The chapter which had an Indian beginning in pre-historical times will have to have an Indian ending as well. The ancient Hindu way stands for liberal outlook, constructive attitude and an accommodating spirit. Pursuit of universal values made it possible for world’s greatest diversity that even now comprises more than two thousand ethnic groups, 652 languages & dialects and every major religion, to live in harmony. India continues to be a home to the third largest Muslim population, even after the birth of Pakistan as a separate homeland for them.

Unfortunately, the ancient liberal creed of India has been undermined in recent times. It is further mired in the turbid waters of narrow politics of pretentious secularism and intellectual dishonesty. There is an appalling disconnect from the Indian heritage of the large westernized segment of the society that tends to be more effete than elite in outlook. The object of this paper is to make a comparative study of the cardinal features of Hindu spiritualism that has shaped the Hindu Philosophy of life that went into making India a unique nation and a vibrant democracy. India is a dynamic democracy due to its liberal ethos and democratic traditions at grassroots level, nurtured over the millennia, and not because of the British legacy, as generally assumed. British parliamentary institutions succeeded in India because of the receptive environment. Will Durant rightly gives credit for this to the “democratic traditions of India through village communities of self-government." Indologists like T.W. Rhys Davids and R.C.Majumdar also endorse the view about the widespread political culture based on popular assemblies. Buddhism and Jainism contributed to the development of democratic institutions. The Buddhist Sangha was a democratic institution. The Buddhist canons were finalized during the three Synods of Buddhism, and of Jainsm at Vallabhi in 456 AD after 800 years of Vardhman.

If the British influence was indeed a potent factor for the success of democracy in India, then many Afro-Asian countries that were part of the British Empire would have been practicing democratic values today. Nothing illustrates the fallacy of the assumption better than the failure of democratic experiments in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the successor state to East Pakistan, that were offshoots of India. Fired by fanaticism, they partitioned the assets without sharing the liberal Indian heritage. It is no coincidence that out of about 50 Muslim majority countries, very few have managed to establish genuinely democratic form of governments. A section of the Muslim clerics, in a recent statement to the effect that democracy is not compatible with Islam may have confirmed the views of many scholars. In fact, some of the leading Islamic countries, like Saudi Arabia, figure among the worst governed countries in the world.

A study in contrast is quite revealing. Christianity and Islam, two major religions of the world grew out of Judaism. In India, Buddhism and Jainism, two great ethical religions, emerged against the Hindu background. But, the similarity ends here. The two Judaism-based religions have a long history of violent confrontation with each other and with Judaism. One can see the depth of their historical aversion in Dante's Divine Comedy (Canto XXVIII), that puts Prophet Muhammad in Hell "among the sowers of discord and the schismatics, being lacerated by devils again and again." In contrast Gautam, the founder of Buddhism the rival religion to Hinduism, was merely brushed away as ‘nastika’- an atheist (Valmiki Ramayana); as per Manu’s definition, a non-believer of Vedas.

India has an ancient civilization, with the longest unbroken continuity. India had not witnessed religious violence until the Muslim invasions of India. "The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history", wrote Will Durant in ‘The Story of Civilization’. Koenraad Elst, the Belgian historian, estimates that between the year 1000 and 1525, eighty million Hindus died at the hands of Muslim invaders, “probably the biggest holocaust in the whole history of our planet. Likewise, historians write that Christianity as a group has murdered more people in the name of ‘their God’ and wiped out entire cultures, than probably any other group in history. Over the course of 200 years, some 2 to 5 million persons are estimated to have been killed during the crusades. Muslims still consider the Crusades to be a symbol of Western hostility toward Islam. Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), author of ‘Perennial Philosophy’, further writes of "Islam's black record of holy wars and persecution - a record comparable to that of later Christianity." Swami Vivekananda wrote: "Mohammedans talk of universal brotherhood, but what comes out of that in reality? Why, anybody who is not a Mohammedan will not be admitted into the brotherhood; he will more likely have his own throat cut. Christians talk of universal brotherhood; but anyone who is not a Christian must go to that place where he will be eternally barbecued."

A canard was spread by western historians that the Aryans had wiped out the native non-Aryan populations and that the Hindus had finished Buddhism. The first charge seeks to cover up the guilt of the imperial powers for having committed massive genocide of the indigenous people in the lands they had colonized. B.R. Ambedkar, a Buddhist himself, has replied to the second charge. According to him, “There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India was due to the invasions of the Musalmans." He mentions in his book, ‘Ends and Means’; "It is an extremely significant fact that, before the coming of the Mohammedans, there was virtually no persecution in India. The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, who visited India in the first half of the seventh century and has left a circumstantial account of his 14 years in the country, makes it clear that Hindus and Buddhist lived side by side without any show of violence.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher and writer, gives an account of fortitude shown by Hindus in the face of atrocities perpetrated by foreign invaders as follows:

“Hinduism remains a vibrant, cultural and religious force in the world today. To understand Hinduism, it is necessary that we examine its history and marvel at its sheer stamina to survive in spite of repeated attacks across India's borders, time and again, by Greeks, Shakas, Huns, Arabs, Pathans, Mongols, Portuguese, British etc. India gave shelter, acceptance, and freedom to all. But, in holy frenzy, millions of Hindus were slaughtered or proselytized. Their cities were pillaged and burnt, temples were destroyed and accumulated treasures of centuries carried off. Even under grievous persecutions from the ruling foreigners, the basics of its civilization remained undefiled and, as soon as the crises were over Hindus returned to the same old ways of searching for the perfection or the unknown”.

Islam and Christianity wiped out Pagans and maligned their intensely humanitarian religion. In a fit of extreme malice towards them the Bible created a Genocidal God that ordered the killing of every single man, woman and child during the conquest of Canaan by Moses and Joshua. It concludes that all the Canaanites and Amalekites were killed. The stated reason for the genocide was that God wanted to prevent the coexistence of His people with Pagans, which would result in religious syncretism and the restoration of polytheism. The burning of heretics by the Roman Church on stakes has its own chapter of ignominy. Lao Tse was closer to the Indian thought in saying in Tao The Ching: “The Way of Heaven is to help not harm.” The universal religion of Hinduism urges mankind to be the sarva-mitra- friend of every being. In the Yajur Veda, the devotee prays to look upon all created things as friends.

In a striking contrast, Hu Shih, a former Chinese ambassador to the United States, observed: “India conquered and dominated China culturally for twenty centuries without having to send a single soldier across her border.” It is worth recalling that two Chinese emperors had persecuted the Buddhist missionaries to China. When the succeeding emperor wanted to punish the persecutors, the Buddhist monks magnanimously dissuaded him from doing so. Religions of India reached other lands through enterprising traders and pacifist monks that promoted harmony instead of discord. The religions that entered India belligerently under the Imperial push could hardly be expected to be integrative. As a defense mechanism, Hinduism erected the walls of orthodoxy around it with ‘hundred exits and not one door for entrance’. This was to have a deleterious impact on the internal harmony of Hinduism.

The Hindus have welcomed and respected all religions with an open mind. St Thomas Church, the oldest Church at Palyar in Trichur, Kerala was established in 52 A.D. Christianity reached India three centuries before it reached Rome. Likewise, Cheraman Jama Masjid located at Kodungallur, about 37-km from Thrissur, built in 628 AD, 7 years after the Prophet's migration to Medina, is believed to be the second oldest mosque in the world after the Medina mosque. Hounded and persecuted in other countries, the Jews in India led a peaceful life in the coastal state of Kerala. The first Jewish migration was around 605 BC when they landed in the ancient port town of Cranganore (now called Kodungallore). After that there were waves of migration in 586 BC, 68 AD, 369 AD, 486 AD and 490AD. Nathan Katz, in his book titled: ‘Who are the Jews of India?’ writes that India is the only country where the Jews were not persecuted. Zoroastrians, fleeing from the persecution of Muslim rulers in Iran made India their home as early as the 10th century AD. A population of 70,000 out of about one lakh Parsees live in India. Some 2.2 Million Bahá'ís of India - members of the largest Bahá'í Community of the world, persecuted in Iran, live here in peace. In their sheer liberal exuberance the Hindus even wrote Allah-Opanishad, probably during Akbar’s reign.

Emperor Ashoka was the epitome of national integration. D.R. Bhandarkar commenting on Ashoka, observed that he perceived the fundamental unity of all religions as seen in his edicts. He summed it up in two words: self-restraint (sanyama) and purity of heart (bhavaa-shuddhi). He exhorted his people to cease praising one’s own sect and decrying other’s unnecessarily. On the contrary, they should show reverence to other sects for those aspects where they deserve it. His advice to mankind is: “Listen and desire to listen to one another’s dharma.” The consequence of all this would be that they would be bahushrut- more knowledgeable about dharama and they will also be kalyanagam- conducive to the welfare of the world.

In sharp contrast to the above, Christianity holds, that if a man does not follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, he shall be condemned to hell. Islam says the same about those who do not follow the teachings of Prophet Mohammed. Tagore had misgivings about the adverse impact of such religious views on the human psyche when he said: “It has become tragically evident during the course of human history that the religions that were to liberate soul have in some form or the other been instrumental in shackling freedom of mind and even moral rights. Much of the bigotry, fanaticism, and religious persecution, has risen in the world from our dogmatizing.” Thomas Jefferson, an American President, seemed to echo the attitude of a liberal Hindu. He wrote his own Gospel minus the miracles. It was published 75 years after his death. He retained the teachings of the Bible through parables. He thought all miracles were added through the stupidity or roguery of Jesus’ disciples. His Jesus was simply a praying man. In defense of religious freedom he wrote: “It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

For several centuries, the men concerned with religious organisations, especially in Europe, imprisoned, tortured and even put to death the seekers of truth. The revolutionary theory of Copernicus about the earth revolving around the sun was published on his deathbed, sparing him conflict with the Vatican church. Bruno, born seven years after the death of Copernicus, published a book ‘Infinity of universe and the Worlds.’ He was burnt alive at the stake in Italy. He was produced before the Roman governor in 1600 who sentenced him with the usual directives to treat him “with as great clemency as possible and without the effusion of blood.” He was burnt at the stake; there was no effusion of blood! Thousands of ‘heretics’ were done to death in Inquisitions by the Roman Catholic church in such a compassionate manner! Contemporary historians have given blood-curdling accounts of the Hindu killings during the Goa Inquisitions carried out by the Portuguese. Francis Xavier sent to Goa by Ignatius Loyola of Jesuit order under the direction of the King João III of Portugal in 1541, came to the conclusions: “Hindus are an unholy race that they are liars and cheats to the very backbone, that the Indians being black themselves, consider their own color the best and also that they believe that their gods are black. On this account the great majority of their idols are as black as black can be, and moreover are generally so rubbed over with oil as to smell detestably, and seem to be as dirty as they are ugly and horrible to look at." He wrote to Rome to install inquisition in Goa immediately. The Goan inquisition is regarded by all contemporary portrayals as the most violent inquisition ever executed by the Portuguese Catholic Church. It lasted from 1560 to 1812 though in Europe it ended by 1774, (briefly restarted in 1778).

After the perspective account based on the observations of scholars, statesmen and historians, the stage is set to examine the rationale behind the ‘The Ancient Hindu Way’- the amalgam that has galvanized India into a nation with its creed of tolerance. The Vedas, world’s most ancient library of scriptures, hold the key to a proper understanding of the phenomenon that India is. According to Dr. Radha Kumud Mookerji, the Rig Veda is the first book of Hindus and also of mankind. Some observations that may appear in the nature of clichés need to be stated as a prologue to the narrative that follows. According to the Yajur Veda, the Vedas represented the first civilization in the entire world: prathama sanskritih vishvara (Ya. 7.14). The Yajur Veda further proclaims that the Vedic seers had the task of awakening mankind: vayam rastre jagrayama purohitah- with the purpose of ennobling the human race: kranvantu vishvam aryam-(Rig. 9.63.5); not through conquests but through the pursuit of truth. The Vedic Aryan had the vision of the world as one family: Vasudheva Kutumbakam or yatra vishvam bhavati ek nidam (YAJ. 3.8). In the bhumi sukta, he delighted in being the son, not merely of the Aryavrata, but of the Earth: putro ahm prithviyah. The Sukta further hails the earth for giving shelter to numerous faiths: nana dharmanam Prithvi yathanksam.

The Vedas were envisioned by the seers who had seen the Truth: Satya-Shrutah, Kavayah. They are also referred to as mantra- drasta, seers who had divined the hymns. More importantly, what the seers could perceive is not the whole Veda, but part of the Veda - 'anantah vai vedah'. There is no dogmatic finality about the Truth. The Upanishads also proclaimed the same, concluding that there is no end to it - 'neti neti '. This is typical of the India-born religions. The Buddha told Anand, his chief disciple, that he “had given him a handful of truths, but besides these there are many thousands more truths than can be enumerated.” The syadvaad of the Jains also deals with probability of the Truth, not the finality of it. Only Truth as per the Upanishads was that of the Self-existent- braham eva satyam. The second sutra of the Brahma-sutra defines braham as: janmadasya yatah- That who is the cause of creation etc. This observation is to be viewed in the light of a fierce debate that was going on between the Mimansakas who did not believe that God was the cause of creation and the Vedantists, who did.

The term for religion in the Rig Veda is ‘rit’, synonymous with Truth personified (ritam- to go the right way, be pious or virtuous: RV- Sanskrit English Dictionary by M. Monier- Williams). The religion of Hindus, a nomenclature tagged by Persians, had no founder. It sprang from the depths of surging spiritualism. The Nasadiya Sukta (RV X, 12 9), the poetic Hymn of Creation of the Rig Veda, is the core of monotheism of the Vedas. It states that in the beginning when nothing existed and it was like darkness wrapped in layers of darkness; only That One (Tad Ekam) breathed by itself: aanid vaatam swadhaya tad ekam. The Creator had no name, as Lao Tse said: You can not name the nameless. The Vedic Aryan was in close communion with the forces of Nature, which he deified as His divine aspects. The Veda, however, clarified unequivocally: One alone exists though the sages call It variously- ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti. (Rig. I. 164. 46). God is One without a parallel: ekameva-advityam or as interpreted by Sayana Acharya: There is only one supreme deity: 'Ekam eva Sat Tatva'. That only one supreme being created the earth and the heaven. (Rig. X. 8.3). That the Truth was called variously supplied the genes to the liberal Hindu psyche. Significantly, one name for war in the Rig Veda is ‘mam satyam’- my truth. History is a witness to religious wars to settle scores over the claims of Truth. India has a long history of resolving spiritual and religious differences through enlightened debates.

Internal reform has been a regular feature of Hinduism. There was an opposition to ritualism within Rig Veda itself. It not approve of ritualism: richa kim karishyati- what can the mere recitation of the hymns do? The Gita admonished the veda-vaada ratah- those who paid mere lip service to the Vedas. There is a celebrated legend about Ashtavakra, an eight-humped scholar, during king Janaka’s reign. While in his mother’s womb he had the audacity to tell his father who was reading Veda to her mother, to look within for enlightenment, instead of reading scriptures which were only a storehouse of verbiage. The Sama Veda takes a stand against sacrifices of the early Vedic age. It says of famous Horse Sacrifice (ashva-medha): “O! Ye gods! We use no sacrificial stake. We slay no victim. We worship entirely by the repetition of sacred mantras”. The Gita transformed the Vedic theory of sacrifices and reconciles it with true knowledge of the eternal as Manduka Upanishad observed: ‘braham vid braham eva bhavati- the knower of Braham is Braham Himself.
The freedom of thought is the hallmark of Hindu scriptures. The Mahabharata says: “There is no muni that has not an opinion of his own”. The differences of opinion between Rishi Vaishampayan and Rishi Yagvalkya led to the division of the Yajur Veda into two schools of thought: The Krishana Yajur Veda and the Sukla Yajurveda. The acceptance of the Atharva Veda as the fourth Veda was a momentous development. It illustrates the Hindu genius to resolve conflicts in religious matters with great sagacity. There were polemics between the followers of the three Vedas, called strotriya, and those of the Atharva Veda, derisively called mantrikam (believers in magic), as they believed in mantra vidya. In many early scriptures only three Vedas were mentioned. (R.V., x. 90. 9.;v. 7. 1; Tait Up., ii. 2-3.) The Gita, Valmiki Ramayan and the Maha Bharata mention only 'Veda Trai’. The canonical works of the Buddhists do not mention the Atharva Veda. Grammarian Panini who flourished in the 3rd century B.C mentioned only three Vedas and not the Atharva Veda. Brahadaryanak Upanishads also mentions three Vedas. Some Atharva-vedic Acharyas considered it as the first Veda or even as brahmveda. Jayant Bhatt wrote in Nyay Manjari: "tatra vedaschtvar prathmo Atharva Veda"- among the four Vedas, the Atharva Veda is the first.

Ved Vyas, the compiler of the Vedas, can be called the the first nation builder as he created the institution of teertha yatra- pilgrimages, for ‘chitta-shuddhi’ that prepared the ground for national unity. He was a great harmoniser. He could see the threat of schism among the Vedas to religious harmony. He regrouped the four Vedas by accommodating the Atharva Veda as the fourth Veda. Sumantu, son of Rishi Atharvan (of Atharva Veda), was one of his four shishyas, whose chain of disciples founded 1180 shakhas: Rig Veda 21, Yajurveda 101, Samaveda 1000 and Atharveda 58. Four disciples of Vyas, representing four Vedas were Pail, Jaimini, Vaishampayan and Sumantu. Dr P.V. Kane in the ‘History of Dharma Shastra,’ highlights how, in every age, the social thinkers tried to adjust Hindu institutions to the requirements of the time.
The Vedic system came to have two schools of thought: of the gyan-kand (Upanishadic path of knowledge) of the uttar-mimasa, and karma-kand (path of ritual) of the Poorva mimasa of Jamini. Differences at times were acute but never violent. They called karama-kandis as ‘devam priya' which according to Panini meant idiot. Upanishads and the Bhagwad Gita, were to draw the attention of the world to the greatness of the Hindu philosophy. The earliest translation of fifty Upanishads by Dara Shukoh attracted the attention of European scholars in the year 1775 when Anquetil Duperron received one MS of the Persian translation of Upanishads, sent by M.Gentil, the French resident at the court of Shuja ud Daula, and brought to France by M.Bernier. It was translated into Latin, published in 1801 and 1802, under the title of Oupnekhat. Schopenhauer proclaimed to the world ‘the vast treasures of thought which were lying buried beneath that fearful jargon’. His philosophy is powerfully impregnated with the doctrines of the Upanishads. He wrote: “Indian air surrounds us, and original thoughts of kindred spirits. And oh, how thoroughly is the mind here washed clean of all early engulfed Jewish superstitions, and of all philosophy that cringes before these superstitions! In the whole world there is no study, except that of the originals, so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Oupnekhat. It has been solace of my life, it will be solace of my death!” Max Muller fully agreed with him. Deusen, the German philosopher, explained the validity of the Vedantic message: ‘Because all other selves are your own selves’. He used to keep a copy of the Oupnekhat by his bed-side and read it before going to sleep. The German philosopher Nietze was very much influenced by the Upanishads which he learnt from Schopaneuher and Deusen.

The Upanishads proclaim that Brahman is the only God-head. In Kathopnisad, it is Vishnu; in Mandukyaopnisad it is called Shivam. Staunch advaita monotheist, Adi Shankaracharya with his concern for unity, instituted six religious systems or sanmata: which included the prevailing worship of Shiva, Vishnu, Sakti, Ganapati, Kumar and Surya. Shankaracharya, a seer and a great nation builder, set four coordinates of the Indian nation by establishing four mathas at four geographical extremities at Puri, Sringeri, Dwarka and Badrinath, in 8th century when communications should have been extremely difficult. It is for every Indian to remember with pride that India owes its status as a nation to the harmonizing influence of Hindu spiritualism and the great vision of Hindu seers.

The role of Bhagwad Gita , as an interpreter of the Upanishadic thought and a synthesiser of Hindu systems, deserves attention. Gita has been translated 1412 times in Indian languages and 191 times in other languages. Abul Fazal a scribe in Akbar’s court translated it in Persian. Dara Shukoh translated Gita in 1656. Its first English translation was done by Charles Wilkins, the first librarian of the East India Company. Warren Hastings, a soldier and a statesman observed: “Gita and the Indian scriptures will survive when the British dominion in India shall have long ceased to exist.” Thoreau observed about Gita that ‘in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial.’ Oppenheimer, father of the atom bomb, who knew the Gita, on seeing the first atomic explosions in 1945, spontaneously quoted the Gita and described the spectacle as: divi surya sahasraya – brilliance of thousand suns.

The Gita had a role in nation building. It democratized the spiritual pursuit by opening the doors to all by taking to the devotional path. Besides, Shri Krishna gave freedom of pursuit of any faith, saying that ‘what ever paths men have taken any where, all paths lead to Me’: mam vartma ‘nuvartante manusyah partha sarvasah-Gita.4.11.. The Hindu God does not emerge as ‘a jealous God’ or a sectarian like a ‘Hebrew God’ or a God with a regional bias. The Gita is a synthesis of prevalent thoughts. The Sankhya, an atheistic school of philosophy in the beginning was given an equal status by Shri Krishan in the Gita: (III.iv, V.iv and V.v)- ekam sankhyam cha yogam cha yah pashyati sa pashayati- he who sees that both the Sankhya and the Yoga, both paths, are the same, he truly sees (the truth).

How Jainism and Buddhism two great non-theistic faiths found a common meeting ground with theistic Hindu religion makes an intersting study. The Jain view is called Syadvada since it holds that all knowledge is only probable. It is a common feature of the Indian philosophies. As in the case of Buddhism, the founder of Jainism was a Kshatriya. Spiritualism was not a monopoly of Brahmins. Brahmanism was, however, too strong to be resisted. When the followers of the Krishna cult came into the fold of Jainism, a relationship was established between the 22nd Tirthankar (Aristanemi) and Krishna. Many Hindu gods crept in, so that there were divisions among Jains as Vaishnavas and non-Vaishnavas.

Hinyana Buddhism is a colourless religion denying God in doctrine. A religion more catholic and less skeptic was required. A readjustment to the emerging situation also became imperative. At the formative stage of Mahayana, there was an influx of nomadic tribes from outside the country. It imitated the success of Hinduism and imbibed the theism of the Yoga of the later Upanishads and of the Bhagvad Gita. Mahayan believes in a saviour God. Emancipation could be delayed for the good of humanity. Life of the people was dominated by Brahamanism. It came to dominate Buddhism as well. Buddhism included Indra, Brahma and other Hindu divinities in its pantheon. While the Brahamins accepted Buddha as incarnation of Vishnu, the Buddhists identified Vishnu with Boddhisatva. Buddha represented the world as soulless. The religious instinct of man requires a God, so Buddha himself was deified.

The six Brahmanical schools of Philosophy, or darshanas, make the liberal Hindu approach to spiritual matters clearer. These are: Gautama’s Nyaya, Kanada’s Vaishesik, Kapila’s Sakhya, Patanjali’s Yoga, Jaimini’s Purva Mimasa, and Badrayana’s Uttara Mimasa or the Vedanta. First five of these do not regard God as the creator of matter. Early Nyaya was not theistic. Vaishesika does not openly refer to God. It traced the primeval activities of the atoms and souls to the principle of adarshta. Kanad held that the Vedas were the act of seers and not of God. For Sankhya, the world is not a creation of God. Theism is not part of Patanjali’s creed. A personal god serves the practical purpose as an aid to Yoga. The central theme of Purva Mimasa is ritual; of the Uttara Mimasa, it is knowledge or Truth. Jamini doe not as much deny God as much he ignores Him. Later writers slowly smuggled God into it.

The Epic period, which falls prior to the sixth century BC, was the era of Charvaka as well as of the Buddha. Acharya Brahaspati, the founder of the Charvaks, did not believe in God or religion. The Buddha and the Charvaks strongly denied the authority of the Vedas. The Charvakas denounced the scriptures, priests and the rituals. The worshippers would merely laugh at their diatribes and move ahead. There was no head-hunting, no bloodshed, not even bad feelings. This is the greatness of Hinduism. The epicurean thought finds a mention in other religious books as well. In a famous argument in the Hindu epic of Ramayana, Javali, a minister told Rama ; “O Sagacious Prince, there is no world but this; let this thought be absorbed by thee. Concern yourself with what is evident and turn thy back on what is beyond our knowledge. Take the crown”.

During the epic period Brahamanism adjusted to the revolt against it in the east, and to fresh changes in the west in view of the influx of communities with their new beliefs. The Aryan culture met the new entrants half way ‘to build a new Aryan culture based on non-Aryan symbolism’, as observed by Dr. Radhakrishan. The concept of Trimurti was evolved in the Mahabharata, when the Greeks (Yavanas), Parthians (Shakas) and the Parthians (Pahlavas) entered the country. The Mahabharata apart from becoming a Brahamanical theistic poem, was a multi-disciplinary encyclopedia. It earned the title of the Fifth Veda as all classes could have access to it. Sister Nivedita observed that there were two distinct features quite discernible in the Mahabharata: “One of Unity in complexity and second constant impression upon its hearers of the single centralised idea of One India, with heroic tradition of its own”.

Durga Puja figures in Mahabharata. Durga soon became the consort of Shiva. The merger of three philosophic and historical streams in present day Hinduism, one of Vedic through Upnishads and Vaishavism, the second of Shaivism from the South, with Agams (108) being the basic scriptures, and the third of the Shakta religion emanating from eastern India, was a vital homogenizing process that integrated Hindus.

The Bhakti movement that democratized the spiritual pursuit served as a strong stabilizing force through the length and the breadth of the country. The medieval saints of north India inherited the traditions set by Alavar saints of the south. Their compositions were in the local language instead of Sanskrit. Their faith was accessible to all without distinctions of caste and status. The Tamil Alavars were twelve in all and belonged to the Pallava and Chola times from the fifth to ninth centuries AD. They came from different backgrounds. They believed in monotheism. Alavar means one who is "immersed" in the experience of God, the omnipresent mysterious One. The Alavars composed approximately 4000 Tamil verses. In the 9th-10th century, the philosopher-saint Nathamuni arranged them as the Divya Prabandham, or Divine Collection, popularly called the Tamil Veda.
Hindu saints endeavoured to bring a social revolution through the medium of religion. Sri Basava of Karnataka, and Ramanujacharya in Tamilnadu in the 11th century took up the cause of the oppressed. Basava founded a sect in 1160. This sect led to social reforms, such as the elevation of the status of women, abolition of caste distinction, removal of untouchablity, and inculcating the dignity of manual labour and simplicity of life in the community. These preachers, in many cases, came from the submerged classes of Hindu society. This trend was earlier set in motion by the parivrajikas, the itinerant religious teachers in Buddha’s time, who often belonged to non-Brahmanic castes. In medieval times, the followers of Ramanand came from the lowest classes and even from outside the fold of Hinduism. This was the period when Muslim invaders were drenching the Indian soils with the blood of Hindu ‘Kafirs’. According to the estimates of historians, nearly seventy Muslim invasions had taken place before Guru Nanak. He had witnessed the atrocities perpetrated by Babar, whom he called as ‘yam’, the god of death. These saints were the consolidators of the Indian nation in the true tradition of Rishi Vyas and Adi Shankaracharya.
After an overview of the Ancient Hindu Way spread over several millennia it is time to address the present-day reality. The Hindu society is experiencing a state of siege. The nation is facing two types of aggressions; one demographic, inundating the country with millions of illegal immigrants altering the demographic map of India, and second of Christianization by missionaries, of vulnerable chunks of the Hindu society. In both cases they get impetus from the vote-bank politics. If the Hindu society shows concern about infiltration and conversions they are dubbed as Hindu chauvinists. Even if they talks about reconverting the converts they earn the odium of being communal and divisive. Two different norms are applied to the same problem.

It is hard to ignore the subversive impact of missionary activities backed by powerful foreign churches. The nation is still feeling the subversive impact of Baptist missionaries in the northeast. Baptist Mission entered Naga Hills in 1872, when the Hills came under the British administration. The Baptist Missionaries in Nagaland infused secessionism, when Independent India was in an embryonic state. A senior British ICS officer who served in Nagaland had forewarned that the activities of the Baptists who were a source of inspiration for the terrorist outfit of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in America, did not augur well as they would be a source of trouble in times to come. He proved right. Under the permissive political climate, the missionaries have further spread their tentacles in the north-east region, in recent times.
There is a clear ruling on conversions. In the Stainislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh (AIR 1977 SC 908), the Supreme Court has held that Article 25 (1) of the Indian Constitution does not grant any right to convert any person to one’s own religion. However, there is no halt to aggressive evangelization. While addressing missionaries in New Delhi on 7th November, 1999, late Pope John Paul II gave a call to convert Asia to Christianity as follows:- “Just as the first millennium saw the Cross firmly planted in the soil of Europe, and the second in that of America and Africa, so may the Third Christian Millennium witness a great harvest of faith on this vast and vital continent”. His successor and present Pope Benedict XVI reiterated this agenda of conversion with the words: “The Church is by its very nature missionary; its first task is evangelization. Hindus in India and Nepal are prime targets for this harvest of faith”. It was expected from a self-respecting nation to strongly rebuff such moves and additionally insist on getting an apology from the Pope for the Hindu holocaust in Goa Inquisitions, instead of listening to papal harangue about the aggressive evangelisation in the sub-continent.
Hindus had promoted secular environments and social harmony in ancient India. The present-day unprincipled politics, has regrettably replaced the British policy of ‘Divide and rule’ with the more sinister political tactics of ‘Fragment and Rule’. Fragmentation of the Indian society on communal, regional and caste lines has been the most dubious contribution of politics of opportunism. The Indian society was never so fragmented with each group confronting the other as it is now. The word “Hindu” has become synonymous with ‘communal’; Hindu bashing is considered secular. The process of social integration has given way to social engineering to meet demands of political expediency. The state has become a partisan by catering to the sectarian needs of certain religious groups with special dispensation. This is nothing short of state- promoted communalism. Under true secularism the state should stay neutral.
The nation is facing a new threat from modern day generation of iconoclasts from ‘eminent historians’ to pseudo intellectuals. Their efforts to deny and denigrate India’s rich and liberal heritage is diabolic. Hindus that were burnt on the stakes are martyrs of their faith and of the nation. Millions of Hindus put to the sword by fanatic invaders are martyrs of the motherland. They deserve a memorial in the hearts of all true Indians if not in monuments. Not to recall their sacrifices for their faith and the motherland is an act of disrespect towards them. Vidiadhar Naipaul summed up the situation well: "In art and history books, people write of the Muslims "arriving" in India as though they came on a tourist bus and went away again. The Muslim view of their conquest is a truer one. They speak of the triumph of faith, the destruction of idols and temples, the loot, the casting away of locals as slaves."
Yet India is a nation, despite incongruities, fractious politics, and massive backlog of unfulfilled missions. It is on account of the indestructible, all-sustaining and ever rejuvenating soul- ‘The Ancient Hindu Way’. India is a land of many creeds, customs and mores, and peoples savouring the munificence of mother India. It is the bounden dharma of all Indians to contribute to an atmosphere of peace and harmony under which every one develops according to one’s own peculiar genius, respecting the sensibilities of fellow citizens. It is befitting to conclude the exposition of the ‘Ancient Hindu Way’, by quoting the lines from the last Sukta of the Rig Veda, which is in the nature of an international anthem for its message of harmony to the entire humanity. Such sublime sentiments can be expressed only by a spiritually alive civilization. The thrust of the message in the Sukta is Sahchittamesam- to be of one mind, as a key to the harmonious living.

Sangacchadhvam samvadadhvam
Samvo manamsi janatam
Samano mantrah samiti samani
Samanam manah Sahchittamesam.

"Let all men meet and think as one mind,
Let all hearts unite in Love,
Let the goal be common,
May all live in happiness with a common purpose".

Letter to Dr. Karan Singh

2009-07-03T10:38:00.000-07:00

June 22, 2009

Dear Sir,

Sub: US President Obama’s 4th June Address.

We take the liberty of intruding into your valuable time for a cause that, we feel, your goodself will appreciate.

US President Barak Obama’s speech at the Al Azhar University, Cairo, on 4th June 2009, has been held as historic. A copy of this speech, as available publicly, is attached for ready reference. While the primary objective of this speech looking for bringing in all round peace is appreciated, we failed to persuade ourselves to accept his extremely bipartisan effort to please the Muslim world and in the process totally ignoring India’s contribution and role if world peace is to be ensured. Even if this is a diplomatic move, one cannot, and we strongly feel, one must not, evade or ignore the truth. We, from the platform of the Patriots’ Forum (www.patriotsforum.org), have therefore, lodged a protest of sorts. A copy of our “Open letter by an Indian to US President” is attached.

The Forum strongly feels you as the proud inheritor and flag-bearer of the Indian (read Hindu) civilization, could also consider taking up the issue formally from your esteemed organization (Indian Council for Cultural Relations - ICCR) in the manner thought fit.

Sir, we should be grateful to know that the matter has been taken up by you appropriately.

Kind regards,

Yours sincerely,

(D.C. Nath)
President, Patriots' Forum

To,
Dr. Karan Singh
President,
Indian Council for Cultural Relations
Azad Bhavan Indraprastha Estate,
New Delhi- 110002, India
Phones:23378616 23370698
president@iccrindia.org

OPEN LETTER BY AN INDIAN TO US PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

2009-07-03T10:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. President,

First and foremost, I take this opportunity to compliment you for initiating a dialogue with the “Muslim World” in a bid to restore peace across the world. But after reading the text of your speech at the Al Azhar University, Cairo, on 4th June 2009, I was greatly disappointed because it contained no reference, absolutely none, to the rampant discrimination practiced in Islamic countries and Muslim societies against non-Muslims, especially the one billion strong Hindu community and millions of Buddhists – the so-called “kaffirs”, uniformly considered as children of a lesser God by Islamic societies. In every Muslim country, they are denied the freedom to practice and preach their religious beliefs. There is no tolerance for the religious beliefs and sacred shrines of Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and most other Muslim countries. In sharp contrast, the Muslims have always enjoyed complete religious freedom in India and most Buddhist countries, nay, in almost all non-Muslim countries. Mr. President, during the last 50 years, there has been a systematic ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Buddhists from two Islamic countries, namely, Pakistan and Bangladesh. While the international community slumbered, Islamists continued to kill, convert and drive out millions of hapless Hindus. Their share in the population has come down to barely 2 percent in Pakistan from 23 percent in 1947, while in Bangladesh their proportion is now down to 8 percent from nearly 27 percent in 1947. This ethnic cleansing of millions of innocent Hindus and Buddhists is far worse than the suffering of the people of Darfur! Unfortunately, the world leaders took no notice of it ! On top of it, in most Muslim countries no temple or place of worship for Hindus and Buddhists is allowed. One is left wondering how such diabolical discrimination has been ignored in your Cairo speech?

May I remind you, Mr. President, that it was in the same historic city of Cairo, where you decided to launch your overture to woo the Muslim world , that the Organization of Islamic Countries unveiled in the year 1990 their version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, known as the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, categorically stipulating in Article 24 that in Islamic countries, “All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration” will be subject to the Islamic Shari’ah. Article 25 of that Declaration further asserted that “The Islamic Shariah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this Declaration”. The Preamble of that Declaration stated that its objective was to reaffirm “the civilizing and historical role of Islamic Ummah which God made the best nation” for guiding the humanity.

Mr. President, you cannot be unaware of the fact that Islam has very little tolerance even for the Christians and the Jews with the result that their proportion in population is dwindling fast across the Middle East and most other Muslim countries, a fact to which the present Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger, drew pointed attention during his recent visit to the Middle East. It would have surely enhanced your prestige if you had called upon the Islamic world to respect the religious beliefs of non-Muslims and grant equal rights to them in the same measure and on the same scale in which Muslims have been enjoying civil rights in secular societies like India and other non-Muslim countries.

One is left wondering at your polemical pronouncement that America is not at war with Islam. The ongoing war against civil society was declared first by the Islamists on February 23, 1998, by making a declaration in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi calling upon all Muslims worldwide to kill the Americans and the Jews. That historic call for global jihad against the crusaders and the Jews was signed among others by the Al Qaeda ideologue Ayman al-Zawahiri, Sheikh Amir Hamza, Secretary of Jamiat-ul-Ulema, Pakistan, and Fazlur Rehman of the Jihad Movement of Bangladesh. It was followed by the 9 /11 carnage which gave a rude shock to the Americans and compelled George Bush to join the war against radical Islam. Soon thereafter in October, 2001, Al Qaeda added the name of “Hindu India” to the list of enemies of Islam. In a video-taped message released through Al Jazeera television channel in October 2001, an Al Qaeda spokesman blamed the Hindu India for oppressing the Muslims of Kashmir with the help of the USA. Fairly soon, the two Pakistan sponsored jihadi outfits, Lashkar-e- Tayyeba and Jaish-e Muhammad, brazenly attacked the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001. And since then innumerable jihadi attacks on India have continued with impunity. Please understand that the global jihad today is being waged against three important civilizations, namely, the Christians, the Jews and the Hindus. Kashmir is only an excuse. Pakistan sponsored Islamists have made that clear more than once.

While seeking peace with radical Islam, you should not forget that peace is not, repeat not, a one-way street. The USA must avoid following the appeasement policy of Neville Chamberlain (the then Prime Minister of U.K), who signed the Munich agreement in 1938 with Germany in the vain hope of securing peace. That notorious treaty further whetted the ambitions of Hitler and ultimately led to the second World War. No wonder, Chamberlain was forced to resign after Germany invaded the Netherlands, France and Belgium on May 10, 1940.

Mr. President, your speech has completely ignored the aspirations and geopolitical concerns of the one billion strong peace-loving Hindus - an iconic civilization, perhaps the oldest one in the world. As a statesman, you cannot be ignorant of the fact that the Islamists operating through Pakistan have a global design of establishing a ‘seamless caliphate’ from Indonesia to the Balkans by overrunning and subjugating India, which is the only bulwark of democracy and secularism in this part of the world. Pakistan has been waging a gory jihad against India now for more than 50 long years the most morbid instance of which was the notorious Mumbai Massacre of November 26, 2008. Unfortunately, the USA and international community have singularly failed to take cognizance of Pakistan’s perfidy by failing to force Pakistan to punish the perpetrators of Mumbai 26/11. You are aware that the mastermind of Mumbai carnage, Pakistan-based Hafeez Saeed has been let off by Pakistan. The release of Saeed will surely lead to many more dastardly attacks on India, which threat perception is shared by more than one strategic thinktank and security analyst! Meanwhile, after being let off by the Pakistani establishment, Hafeezz Saeed made an inflammatory speech at Lahore in a compound owned by Jamaat-ul-Dawa calling upon the USA to withdraw from Afghanistan and stop drone attacks on jihadis. He had the gall to advise you and the American people to embrace Islam!

And to rub salt into India’s wounds, your government appears to be trying to pressurize India for starting peace talks with Pakistan. William Burns, the visiting U S Under Secretary of State and Hillary Clinton are actively working towards that goal, just to placate the Pakistani establishment. It is a classic instance of rewarding the criminal at the cost of the victim!

We Indians are truly amazed that while Americans have not forgotten the bloodbath of 9/11, you want Indians to forget Mumbai 26/11 as if it was some sort of a petty picnic organized by the ISI of Pakistan? On behalf of all right thinking Indians, I implore you to stop pampering Pakistan at the cost of India. Prima facie, Hillary Clinton’s message conveyed through William Burns that “India was a priority nation” sounds hollow and unconvincing!

Mr. President, I must remind you of the glorious tribute paid by the celebrated American thinker and historian, Will Durant, to the Indian civilization (read Hindus). He candidly admitted that “India was the mother of our race and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages. She was the mother of our philosophy, through Arabs much of our mathematics, through Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity, mother through village communities of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.” You may also recall what another American historian hailed as the greatest historian of the twentieth century Arnold Toynbee has said, “It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in the self– destruction of the human race.... At this supremely dangerous moment in human history, the only way of salvation for mankind is the Indian way – Emperor Ashoka's and Mahatma Gandhi's principle of non–violence and Sri Ramakrishna's testimony to the harmony of religions. Here we have an attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together into a single family - and, in the Atomic Age, this is the only alternative to destroying ourselves.”

It is indeed extraordinary that while trying to please the ‘Muslim world”, you have completely ignored the Hindus.

Please don’t forget that the Hindus of India can and will surely play a pivotal role in the maintenance of peace in South Asia. In this part of the world, they are a force to reckon with. Here is a community whose members possess a high Intelligence Quotient, a very high Knowledge Quotient and whose civilizational ethos are guided by their superb Spiritual Quotient. Additionally, Hindus hold a centuries old world record of tolerance and multiculturalism despite India’s blood-soaked history of fighting against the jihadi onslaught for nearly one thousand years. Mr. President, the voice of Hindus needs to be heard more attentively by you and the American people for addressing their geopolitical concerns, if peace is to be restored in this part of the world.

Thanking you for your attention and with regards,

Yours sincerely,

(R.K. Ohri)
Secretary General , Patriots' Forum
New Delhi; June 20, 2009

Copy to:

Mr. Timothy J. Roemer,

U.S. Ambassador to India, U.S. EmbassyShantipath, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 110021, Tel: 011-2419-8000, Fax: +91-11-2419-0017

DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE

2009-06-17T05:21:00.000-07:00

On 26 March 2009, the Geneva based U N Human Rights Council adopted a resolution moved by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Countries condemning “defamation of religion” as a violation of human rights. Twenty three of the 47 member body voted in favour of the resolution, 11 voted against while 13 abstained from voting. Although India expressed its opposition to the resolution on the floor it abstained from actual voting..

" Defamation of religions is a serious affront to human dignity leading to a restriction on the freedom of their adherents and incitement to religious violence," says the Resolution adding that "Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism." It calls on states to." ensure that religious places, sites, shrines and symbols are protected, to reinforce laws “to deny immunity” for those exhibiting intolerance of ethnic and religious minorities ,and “ to take all possible measures to promote tolerance and respect for all religions and beliefs Pakistan, speaking for the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said a "delicate balance" had to be struck between freedom of expression and respect for religions.

Earlier, on 24 Nov 2008, the UN general Assembly had adopted a similar OIC sponsored resolution calling on all countries to alter their legal and constitutional systems to prevent "defamation of religions," asserting that "Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism." Among other things, the resolution "urged states to take actions to prohibit the dissemination ... of racist and xenophobic ideas" and material that would incite to religious hatred. It also urged states to adopt laws that would protect against hatred and discrimination stemming from religious defamation.

BACKGROUND

The resolutions are plainly an effort by the Muslim member countries of the United Nations and its bodies to put Islam and many of its beliefs and practices beyond criticism. Reacting to the deteriorating image of Islam and its followers in western countries the sponsors are seeking to present Islam as an innocent party needing protection of the international organizations against unmerited criticism. There is also an implied threat that if criticism is not kept within acceptable limits, those exercising their freedom of expression by criticizing Islam may face violent protests from those whose feelings are hurt by their criticism.

Criticism of Islam and its alleged association with terrorism started figuring prominently in international media following the devastating Al Qaida attacks on vital targets within USA on 11 Sept 2001 and gathered strength with the spate of terrorist attacks in UK, Spain, Indonesia, etc. The gruesome murder of the Dutch film maker Theo Von Gogh in Amsterdam in November 2004 (for having produced a short documentary film entitled “Submission”), and the widespread disturbances across the Muslim world in protest following the publication of some blasphemous cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in a Danish paper Jyllands- Posten in September 2005 led to a prolonged controversy in the international media on the subject of freedom of expression and hurting of Muslim sentiments. The recent effort of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders to screen his film “Fitna” in UK and USA has served to revive the controversy.

A SERIOUSLY FLAWED CASE

The case of the sponsors of the resolutions seems to suffer from several serious and obvious flaws which for some reason or the other do not appear to be visible to the sponsors. An extremely wide and possibly unbridgeable gulf seems to separate the fundamental perceptions of the proponents of the resolutions from those of the opponents. Let us examine the justifications quoted and the objectives sought to be achieved by movers of the resolution.

1. “Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.” : That Islam is frequently associated with human rights violations and terrorism is a fact. But to say that it is wrongly blamed is simply not true. Reports of cases of human rights violations and acts of terrorism perpetrated by the followers of Islam figure frequently in the world media, including the media of some Islamic countries giving rise to the cliche “All Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims” All these acts (involving human rights violations and terrorism) are committed by their perpetrators invoking the authority of Islam for their actions. The e-mail warning sent by the Indian Mujahideen quoting copiously from the Quran and the Hadith just before the terrorist attacks in Ahmedabad is just one example. While the Islamic apologists argue that the aggressors are misguided individuals who are wrongly interpreting Islam the overwhelming majority of practitioners of Islam plainly disagree. Human rights violations of minority citizens or women routinely receive quiet approval/acceptance of the Muslim majorities. Many have been seen rejoicing after successful terrorist attacks carried out against infidels. Neither the arguments of Islam’s sophists nor the speeches of the suave and sophisticated OIC diplomats during the sessions of international bodies reflect the true fate of the victims of Islam’s prejudices against unbelievers, minority sects and women. One has only to look at the actual condition of the minorities and women in Pakistan to realize the pervasiveness and frequency of violations of human rights of these unfortunate members of Pakistan’s population. The situation in other Islamic countries is not much better.

2. “Defamation of religions is a serious affront to human dignity leading to a restriction on the freedom of their adherents and incitement to religious violence”: There are several elements in the above statement of which two need to be examined here. Firstly, what is meant by defamation of religion and secondly, why should criticism of religion lead to incitement to religious violence? Defamation essentially involves making a false allegation with the intent of injuring someone’s reputation. The clinical, objective examination of the tenets of a religion and exposing its shortcomings can by no means be called defamation. A religion after all is a product placed before the humanity with a claim of possessing certain virtues and inviting outsiders to embrace it. The virtues claimed have to be, in all fairness, investigated and appraised and the appraisers’ view made available to all concerned. In fact it is necessary for the good of humanity that all religions are subjected to a deep and dispassionate scrutiny so that the people are enabled to make a free and informed choice.

The second point for examination is the link between the alleged defamation and incitement to religious violence. Promoters of many religions have at times been guilty of presenting intentionally distorted pictures of the beliefs and practices of other religions, particularly if they seek to win converts. Intentional, malicious misrepresentation of any religion from whatever motive deserves to be condemned. Misrepresentation proceeding from ignorance will be a shade less blameworthy. Those whose feelings are hurt by misrepresentation or even by exposure of faults in the religion held dear by them have always the liberty of expressing their unhappiness through legitimate means. But use of violence as the means of expressing protest is neither legitimate nor indeed allowed under the law of any country. It is also seen that protests against alleged insults do not generally lead to religious violence except in the solitary case of Islam. Even there the violence is not usually a spontaneous reaction but on most occasions is the result of incitement by clerics. It indeed needs to be examined as to why, among all the religions of the world, do the Muslims alone express their protests by resorting to violence. It also needs to be considered whether the clerics who incite their congregations to violence should be made liable to penal action.

3. Exhortation to states to ensure that religious places, sites, shrines and symbols are protected, to reinforce laws” to deny impunity” for those exhibiting intolerance of ethnic and religious minorities, and "to take all possible measures to promote tolerance and respect for all religions and beliefs."

While the steps recommended by the resolution, to be taken by the governments of the member countries, are indeed laudable, the irony of the proposition is really astounding. Protection of religious places, tolerance and respect for religions of the minorities is most conspicuously absent in the leading Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and even the smaller Islamic states like Bangladesh, and Malaysia. What kind of tolerance or respect does the leader of the Islamic bloc, Saudi Arabia, show for other religions? What kind of record does the frequent spokesman for the block, Pakistan, have in the matter of protection of religious places ,sites shrines, and symbols of non –Muslims or for tolerating ethnic and religious minorities? The Hindus and Sikhs, subjected to unremitting oppression, have been reduced from 24% in 1947 to 1%.The Baluchis (an ethnic minority) have revolted repeatedly against the tyranny of the Pakistan government. Christians, who started as equal citizens have been facing the heat for decades. The Ahmadiyyas who gave Pakistan their first Foreign Minister (Sir Zafarullah Khan) and several war heroes and distinguished civil servants have not only been declared Non-Muslims but are liable to be jailed if they call themselves Muslims or refer to the places of their community prayers as “mosques”. Even the Shias have been targeted by aggressive Sunnis who demand that they be declared Non -Muslims . Having consistently oppressed and decimated the religious and ethnic minorities within their own territories, it is the height of hypocrisy for these countries to ask other countries to take steps for the protection of the religious symbols etc. of the minorities. What the sponsors of the resolution seem to be seeking is that irrespective of what Islamic countries do to their minorities, the rest of the world must be protective and respectful of the beliefs, practices and persons of Muslims minorities in the non-Muslim world !!

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE FUNDAMENTAL PERCEPTIONS OF THE TWO SIDES

Differences in the thinking of the Muslim countries and the rest of the world on the subject of human rights surfaced soon after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations GA in December 1948.While most of the Muslim countries signed the non-binding declaration, Saudi Arabia refused to do so on the ground that the provisions of the declaration were in conflict with the shariah. With the increase in their strength and influence in international affairs the Islamic countries kept pursuing the objective of evolving an Islamic version of UDHR and in 1990 came up with the Cairo Declaration of human Rights in Islam (CDHRI). It will be instructive to compare the provisions of the two Declarations dealing with human rights.

The Preamble to the Universal Declaration (UDHR) opens with the following statement -
“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,….”

Compare this with the opening statement of the Preamble to the Cairo declaration ;

“Reaffirming the civilizing and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which God made the best nation …….; and the role that this Ummah should play to guide humanity …………..
“Wishing to contribute to the efforts of mankind to assert human rights, to protect man from exploitation and persecution, and to affirm his freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with the Islamic Shari’ah ..”

The articles of the two Declarations specifically dealing with human rights and freedoms are equally illustrative.

The UDHR provides;
“Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
“Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers…”

The Cairo Declaration CDHRI
Article 24
"All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari'ah."
Article 25

It likewise declares that "The Islamic Shari'ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this Declaration."

The above extracts illustrate the reason behind the queer logic of the OIC members. In deciding what is right and what is wrong the Muslims have necessarily to follow the instructions handed down to them by Allah through His Messenger. There is no scope whatsoever for independent thinking beyond the confines of the Holy book and the shariah. And therein lies the crux of the problem. The Muslim countries have been commanded to believe not only that their religion is the best but that the Umma has to play the role of the guide for the rest of the humanity. The Qur’an divides human beings into three categories- (

(1) the Muslims (the believers and therefore the best),

(2) the Christians and the Jews (the other People of the Book, but misguided and therefore second class, only to be tolerated if they willingly accept their status as Dhimmis ) and

(3) the unbelieving rest (accursed, destined to roast for ever in hellfire, and deserving to be put to sword if they do not accept conversion to Islam).Women too are condemned to a God ordained inferior status. While the Muslims are entitled to hold whatever beliefs they want to (howsoever wrong or outrageous in the eyes of others) they are by no means right or logical in expecting that those who are abused by Islam’s scriptures would or should respect Islam.

The simple solution to the acrimonious debate between those demanding respect for Islam and those insisting on freedom of expression would be the acceptance of the golden rule—do unto others what you would like others to do unto you. But reciprocity would imply acceptance of equality. Unless those crusading for respect for Islam come round to showing respect to others, the resolutions and discussions in the international for a are unlikely to lead to any satisfactory solution.

……..J P Sharma
(copyrights author)

An open letter to Gen Kayani

2009-04-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

View from the other side
Col (Retd.) Harish Puri
Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Dear Gen Kayani,

Sir, let me begin by recounting that old army quip that did the rounds in the immediate aftermath of World War - II: To guarantee victory, an army should ideally have German generals, British officers, Indian soldiers, American equipment and Italian enemies.

A Pakistani soldier that I met in Iraq in 2004 lamented the fact that the Pakistani soldier in Kargil had been badly let down firstly by Nawaz Sharif and then by the Pakistani officers' cadre. Pakistani soldiers led by Indian officers, he believed, would be the most fearsome combination possible. Pakistani officers, he went on to say, were more into real estate, defence housing colonies and the like.

As I look at two photographs of surrender that lie before me, I can't help recalling his words. The first is the celebrated event at Dhaka on Dec 16, 1971, which now adorns most Army messes in Delhi and Calcutta. The second, Sir, is the video of a teenage girl being flogged by the Taliban in Swat -- not far I am sure, from one of your Army check posts.

The surrender by any Army is always a sad and humiliating event. Gen Niazi surrendered in Dhaka to a professional army that had outnumbered and outfought him. No Pakistani has been able to get over that humiliation, and 16th December is remembered as a black day by the Pakistani Army and the Pakistani state. But battles are won and lost – armies know this, and having learnt their lessons, they move on.

But much more sadly, the video of the teenager being flogged represents an even more abject surrender by the Pakistani Army. The surrender in 1971, though humiliating, was not disgraceful. This time around, sir, what happened on your watch was something no Army commander should have to live through. The girl could have been your own daughter, or mine.

I have always maintained that the Pakistani Army, like its Indian counterpart, is a thoroughly professional outfit. It has fought valiantly in the three wars against India, and also accredited itself well in its UN missions abroad. It is, therefore, by no means a pushover. The instance of an Infantry unit, led by a lieutenant colonel, meekly laying down arms before 20-odd militants should have been an aberration. But this capitulation in Swat, that too so soon after your own visit to the area, is an assault on the sensibilities of any soldier. What did you tell your soldiers? What great inspirational speech did you make that made your troops back off without a murmur? Sir, I have fought insurgency in Kashmir as well as the North-East, but despite the occasional losses suffered (as is bound to be the case in counter-insurgency operations), such total surrender is unthinkable.

I have been a ‘Signaler’, and it beats me how my counterparts in your Signal Corps could not locate or even jam a normal FM radio station broadcasting on a fixed frequency at fixed timings. Is there more than meets the eye?

I am told that it is difficult for your troops to "fight their own people." But you never had that problem in East Pakistan in 1971, where the atrocities committed by your own troops are well documented in the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report. Or is it that the Bengalis were never considered "your own" people, influenced as they were by the Hindus across the border? Or is that your troops are terrified by the ruthless barbarians of the Taliban?

Sir, it is imperative that we recognise our enemy without any delay. I use the word "our" advisedly – for the Taliban threat is not far from India's borders. And the only force that can stop them from dragging Pakistan back into the Stone Age is the force that you command. In this historic moment, providence has placed a tremendous responsibility in your hands. Indeed, the fate of your nation, the future of humankind in the subcontinent rests with you. It doesn't matter if it is "my war" or "your war" – it is a war that has to be won. A desperate Swati citizen's desperate lament says it all – "Please drop an atom bomb on us and put us out of our misery!" Do not fail him, sir.

But in the gloom and the ignominy, the average Pakistani citizen has shown us that there is hope yet. The lawyers, the media, have all refused to buckle even under direct threats. It took the Taliban no less than 32 bullets to still the voice of a brave journalist. Yes, there is hope – but why don't we hear the same language from you? Look to these brave hearts, sir – and maybe we shall see the tide turn. Our prayers are with you, and the hapless people of Swat.

The New York Times predicts that Pakistan will collapse in six months. Do you want to go down in history as the man who allowed that to happen?

The writer is a retired colonel of the Indian army who lives in Pune.
Email: hbpuri@hotmail.com

Appeal to the Islamic Religious Institutions and Leaders by Dharma Raksha Manch

2009-03-12T10:06:00.000-07:00

From:

Guru Ramrai Udasin Ashram
Aaram Bagh, Panchkuiyan Road, New Delhi- 110005
Mobiles: 09313635825, 09415139200

Appeal to the Islamic Religious Institutions and Leaders by Dharma Raksha Manch

It is the sacred duty of Islamic religious leaders to isolate the terrorists who claim the right to kill Kufirs as per the tenets of Islam. Dharma Raksha Manch, which consists of ancient and highly revered Hindu religious institutions, is extremely concerned about the relentless attacks on India by terrorists who openly claim to be inspired by the Islamic faith and the Islamic Holy Texts. The e-mails which were proved to have been sent at the instance of the terrorists clearly make it out that the terrorists are motivated by what they interpret to be their religious duty. Such emails came ahead of the blasts in Bangalore, Jaipur and Delhi and the media had carried them.

Some extracts from the email sent by the terrorists who described themselves as Indian Mujahideen [IM] before the terror attack on Gujarat in September brings out their reliance on their religious edicts for their act of 'Jihad' against the unbelievers [Kufirs].

"Wait only for five minutes from now! Wait for the Mujahideen and Fidayeen of Islam who will make you feel the terror of Jihad. And stop them if you can. Feel the havoc cast into your hearts by Allah, the Almighty, face His Dreadful Punishment, and suffer the results of fighting the Muslims and the Mujahideen. Await the anguish, agony, sorrow and pain. Await, only for 5 minutes, to feel the fear of death."

"O Hindus... Haven't you still realised that the falsehood' of your 33 crore mud idols and the blasphemy of your deaf, dumb, mute and naked idols of ram, krishna and hanuman are not going to save your necks, Insha-Alla, from being slaughtered by our hands? Nor is your fictitious faith in monkeys, pigs and nude statutes going to save you from the Wrath of Allah and His Humiliating Punishment. Know that it is only the true confession of the Oneness of Allah Alone, with no associates, that can save your blood from being spilled on the streets of your own cities. We call you, O Hindus, O enemies of Allah, to take an honest stance with yourselves lest another attack of Ibn-e-Qasim sends shivers down your spines, lest another Ghauri shakes your foundations, and lest another Ghaznawi massacres you, proving yourblood to be the cheapest of all mankind! Have you forgotten your history full of subjugation, humiliation, and insult? Or do you want us to repeat it again? Take heed before it is too late!"

"Yes! We - the terrorists of India - THE INDIAN MUJAHIDEEN, - the militia of Islam whose each and every Mujahid belongs to this very soil of India - have returned, to execute the compulsion of Allah:

'Fight them (the disbelievers), Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace, and give you victory over them and He will heal the hearts of those who believe.' (Qur'an 9: 14). It goes on to quote: 'Fight those disbelievers who are near you and let them find harshness in you'. (Qur'an 9: 123). 'Go forth light armed or heavy armed and fight with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah'. (Qu'ran 9: 41].

The terrorists' claim is this: one, the Hindus are Kufirs; the Holy Koran commands the faithful to kill them; whatever they do constitutes religious war, the Jihad. So they are only obeying the command of the Allah as proclaimed in their holy text.

The Dharma Raksha Manch is extremely concerned at the religious motivation for the terror. We are also concerned that the terrorists view of Islamic holy text has the potential to motivate many fellow Muslims not only to support their acts but also turn them into terrorists. Despite this explicit and brazen invocation of the Islamic text for violence, the Islamic religious institutions have kept total silence on the terrorists that their holy book commands them to kill non-believers [namely, Kufirs] in Islam. Instead there is an attempt by some to explain away the phenomenon of terror as due to illiteracy, unemployment and other socio-economic causes. The Dharma Raksha Manch is of the firm opinion that the Islamic theological institutions and their leaders owe it to their very faith and its adherents to comeforward and comprehensively deny, with appropriate Fatwas as per Islamic tradition, the claims of the terrorists. But regrettably there is no such thought or move by the Islamic religious leaders even though most of them have expressed themselves against terror andasserted that Islam is a religion of peace.

The Dharma Raksha Manch therefore appeals to the Islamic religious Institutions and scholars to come forward with an appropriate Fatwa to declare in unequivocal terms that: - The Hindus are not Kufirs, that the Hindus are not non-believers; - Therefore there can be no Jihad [or war] against the Hindus;

The Dharma Raksha Manch also appeals to the Islamic religious leaders to issue a proper Fatwa according to their tradition to further declare –

* that: India is not Dar-ul-Harab,
* that is, India is not a land against which Islamists have to wage a war; - India is a Dar-ul-Amen,
* that is, India is a land of peace as Muslims could practice Islam without any impediment.

Such an unequivocal declaration alone will deny the terrorists the legitimacy to use Islamic religion for their violence, and isolate them within the Islamic community. The Dharma Raksha Manch recalls that in the year 1992 the Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband, a respected Islamicschool did issue a Fatwa saying that Hindus were not Kufirs, India was not Dar-ul-Harab, but, Dar-ul-Amen. But, unfortunately, many other Islamic institutions had issued Fatwa against Dr. Abdul Raza Bedar, the then director of Kuda Bhaskh Library in Patna, who had said that Hindus were not Kufirs. But now even the Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband has kept silent on this vital claim of the terrorists, even though it has held large conventions against terror and has declared that Islam is against terror.

The Dharma Raksha Manch therefore appeals to all Islamic religiousinstitutions and particularly, the following, namely -

1. All India Milli Council

2. All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat

3. All India Muslim Personal Law Board

4. All India Ofganisation of Imams of Mosques

5. Al Jamea Tus Saifiyah

6. Al Jamiatul Ashrafia

7. Darnl Uloom Deoband, India

8. Darul Uloom .Nadwatul Ulama, Lucknow

9. Darul Uloom Manzar-e-Islam

10. Islamic Figh Academy (India)

11. Tabligh Jamaat (Known as a Markaz)

12. Jamaat-e-Islami Hind

13. Jamiat Ulama-i-Hindto

come forward to declare, as mentioned earlier,

* that Hindus are not Kufirs,

* that India is not Dar-ul-Harab,
* that it is Dar-ul-Amen, and
* that there can be no Jihad against India or Hindus.

The Dharma Raksha Manch also appeals to the Islamic religious leaders that anyone who violates their above Fatwa, is not a Muslim at all. The Dharma Raksha Manch is firmly believes that the Islamic religious leaders will not allow their faith to be misused by the terrorists and will positively respond to the appeal of the Dharma Raksha Manch. The Dharma Raksha Manch is firmly of the view that this is the only way to isolate the terrorists from the Islamic faith and mainstream Muslim society. This will only stop the faith-motivated recruitment and support for terror. All other efforts can never bear fruit unless this fundamental cause of the terror, namely the claim of the terrorists, is clearly and effectively repudiated by the Islamic religious and spiritual leaders.

The Dharma Raksha Manch is sending this appeal to the Islamic religious and spiritual institutions individually.

This appeal has been signed by the Acharyas who have constituted the Manch. The names and the signatures of the Acharyas.

This appeal will be sent by email and also by signed letters to the email addresses and postal addresses of the Islamic institutions.
Correspondence Address:

Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha,
Near Saurashtra
University,
Rajkot -360005

Source: Email from Secretary, Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha

Kerala’s biggest challenge – the fastest breeding Talibanization

2009-03-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

C. I. Issac
9 March 2009

The State of Kerala came into being in 1956, and Hindus then comprised 61.5% of the population. In half a century, this has swiftly declined and reached barely 55%. Meanwhile, the two other minority religions, contrary to the general trend of population growth, have grown drastically. The negative growth of Hindu population is a continuing phenomenon, and cannot be treated as an inadvertent phenomenon. Several factors can be seen behind this fall, political, religious, economic, and so on.

Christians are taking advantage of the existing political situation through their stratagem of ‘mission of education and open-ended proselytism’ that marginalized Hindus economically and numerically. On the other hand, Muslims are spreading their net of annihilation of Hindu life in Kerala through ‘petro-dollar, hawala money, aggressive proselytism and Talibanization’ of the State. They are supported by the self-styled ‘cultural-cum-intellectual magnates’ functioning as the tails of CPI(M), who patronize all fundamentalist-cum-extremist activities in the State under the guise of human rights.

For instance, one Malayali, Javed [before conversion to Islam he was Pranesh Nair], a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba team of four who masterminded the plot to assassinate the Gujarat Chief Minister, was killed in a police encounter on 15 Nov. 2004 at Ahmedabad. The cultural magnates tried to portray this as a fake encounter and exalted Javed as a fallen hero. But the recent shooting of Malayali terrorists by security forces on the Kashmir border had them scuttling into deep burrows.

Kerala’s history of Talibanization goes back to the days of Moplah Riots of 1921, but Left historians and coalition politics connived to conceal its fanatic disposition and projected the incident as agrarian rebellion. Moreover, the state conference of the CPM (February 2005) at Malappuram officially declared the fanatic Wariamkunnathu Kunjahammed Haji, leader of the notorious Moplah Revolt who killed thousands of Hindus including innocent women and children in cold blood during 1921 Khilafat agitation of Malabar, as a martyr of the Communist Party! Even Muslim League is reluctant to make this bigot their Badar.

Islamic fundamentalism tightened its hold over the social, economic and political scenario of Kerala in the post-independence period; it was constantly appeased by the Communist Party. In 1946, one Unnian Saheb [1] and his family of Perinthalmanna, Malappuram district, Malabar, returned to the Hindu dharma. Enraged, a Moplah mob [2] brutally exterminated Ramasimhan [Unnian Saheb] and his family as an admonition to all wishing to return to purva dharma. At that time, all political parties, particularly the Communist ‘vanguard’ Party under self-styled revolutionary leader EMS Nambudiripad, attempted to misdirect the police investigation and save the culprits from the law [3]. Kerala political parties even today continue this minority appeasement...

The anti-Hindu approach of the Communists drove a sizable number of Hindus to desert the party fold during the 1960s, leaving the Communist Party free to adopt an open policy of minority appeasement. The immediate result was the birth of an exclusive Muslim district, Malappuram in 1968 – its layout conforms to the Muslim League demanded Mopilastan of 1946. Today it is the hatchery of all anti-national and terrorist activities in Kerala.

The State Government acquired 24 acres of land for the Aligarh Muslim University Centre at Malappuram district, which was later decided to be enhanced to 1000 acres. Sources suggest that the proposed land will comprise the Elemkulam Mana, the household of veteran Marxist leader and first Communist Chief Minister EMS Nambudiripad. It is a shortcut for the CPM to secure the benevolence of the Jamaat-e-Islami in the forthcoming general elections. The district already hosts Calicut University; hence the attempt to open a centre of Aligarh Muslim University is not logical. Kerala is today a haven for terrorists operations. Its 580-km unchecked coastline is a major attraction for terrorist outfits.

Subsequently, a Christian district carved out, a political decision that legitimized the communal divide of Kerala. The Communist Party’s history of minority appeasement goes back to the days of its inception in Kerala. First, it glorified communal riots masterminded by Muslims as revolutions; then it shared political power with Muslim and Christian communal outfits; now the bigot Abdul Nassar Madani is dear to it. This is a ‘suicidal compromise’ as far as the national mind of Kerala is concerned.

In the 1980s, several cinema halls were set ablaze by fundamentalists in Malappuram district; police remained inactive due to political pressure. To this day it remains lukewarm towards terrorists; more than a dozen bomb blasts have taken place in the northern districts during the past decade. No one was booked for the blast at Bepoor Port, thanks to the blessings of the ruling party.

The Talibanism of Malappuram is now a serious threat to the nation and Hindu values. Bangalore city witnessed a series of bomb blasts on 25 July 2008. Recently, the Karnataka police booked the culprits of this incident - all nine were Malayalis from Malappuram. The brains behind most of the recent blasts in our metro cities hail from Kerala; besides Malappuram, most Malabar districts face fundamentalist threats. Hence the police failed or was ‘forced to fail’ to book the culprits of the Thrissur train blast on 6 December 1997.

The Thrissur blasts were followed by Coimbatore blasts on 14 February 1998, which took the lives of 50 persons and injured over 150. The target was L.K. Advani who escaped miraculously, and the prime accused Abdul Nasser Madani, presently a respectable icon to Marxist and Congress coalitions of Kerala. His henchmen hijacked and set fire to a Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation bus from NH 47 near Cochin demanding his release. The police have registered a case, but its destiny is still mysterious.

A strategy of ethnical cleansing is now in operation on the Kerala coastline, to make the 580-km coastline safe for ISI-sponsored activities. Currently, from Ponnani to Beypore, a length of 65-km coastline, no Hindu fishermen hamlet can be seen; all were cleansed by conversion or by threat. A few Hindu fishermen hamlets survive north of Beypore, such as Marad.

On 2 May 2003, ISI-sponsored terrorists [NDF] conducted an ethnic cleansing operation here. Eight Hindu fishermen were brutally killed by terrorists. They reputedly prepared for a communal riot aimed at total annihilation of Hindu fishermen community from the coastal regions, but the alertness and restraint of Hindu leaders foiled their plans. Recently, the special trial court awarded life terms to 65 accused in the case.

On 10 March 2005, NDF assassinated Aswini, RSS district leader; police were helpless to nab the actual culprits because of political pressure. It is a convention among Muslims of northern Kerala to insist Hindus to keep business establishments closed on Fridays, not go for fishing on Fridays, shut down of hotels during Ramzan; those who disobey pay the price. Police under political pressure are becoming inactive on every instance of Talibanization of Kerala. Santhosh of Mathilakom police station area of Thrissur district violated the above fatwa and opened his shop on Fridays. On 9 August 1996 he was brutally killed by terrorists, and money power and political power became victorious in this case, as usual [4].

Another Taliban experiment is the extension of Islamic wedlock to non-Muslim girls; a one-way traffic. In 2001, one Balakrishnan of Kasargod fell in love with a girl named Raziabanu and got married. Some time later, he was brutally slaughtered; the police and political parties together depicted this homicide as a political murder. They fabricated a story that the murdered Balakrishnan was a Congress worker of Kasargod and the police, Congress and CPM unanimously found that the culprits behind the murder were Marxist workers! The story doesn’t end here. With the meaningful silence of the authorities, the chief accused in the case absconded to a foreign country, as in the case of the abduction and butchering of progressive Islamic theologian Chekannoor Maulavi.

According to Kerala Marxist’s conceptual framework, for a person to be recognized as a progressive or revolutionary, he has to be fundamentally anti-Hindu and pro-Muslim/pro-Christian. Those who talk in a broader national perspective may be called ‘saffron’ or renegade. In short, Marxist, Missionary, Muslim-dominated Kerala is terrorist-friendly.

In the hilly districts of Kottayam and Ernakulum, the banned jihadi organization SIMI conducted all-India terrorist training camps. The public brought the matter to the attention of the authorities, so police rushed there and arrested all on petty charges and released them on bail! Political intervention forced the police to close the file without further investigation.

Recently, those who participated in the terrorist camps were arrested from different States of India. Kerala police and ‘cultural magnates’ were reluctant to accept that the jihadis shot by security personnel at the Kashmir border were Malayalis.

Converting non-Muslim criminals to Islam is a new technique in Kerala. Several such convert-criminals were killed in police encounters in different parts of the country. Further, terrorist organizations in Kerala frequently change their names to maintain the façade of a secular organization. Once SIMI was tainted, it changed its name to NDF. So now NDF has become a watchword for subversive activities in Kerala. Likewise, half a dozen organizations camouflaged as NGOs are at the forefront justifying talibanism (these include the Forum for Ideological Thought, Karuna Foundation, Islamic Youth Centre, Minority Rights Watch) [5].

Talibanism flourished in the economic front, under the euphemism of “Hawala”. In a decade, the economic disparity between Muslims and Hindus widened unbelievably. The weekly “Malayalam” in its editorial warned of the inherent danger of this imbalance between Hindus and minorities. “While examining the records of the registration [land] department, it is evident that in several districts 70% of the lands were purchased by the above said [Muslims] communities… In certain specific districts the purchase of land is the exclusive right of a particular community. The intermediaries in these land deals are also their religious institutions.” [6]

For generations, Hindus have been worshipping cows. Only one state in India legitimizes cow slaughter – Kerala, due to the impudence of minority religious groups. Government official data states 5,00,000 cows were slaughtered in the State during 2002 and 2,49,000 tonnes of beef sold [7]. The real statistics will be much higher. Medical science advises people to refrain from the consumption of beef, yet the minority religious leadership insists on continuing this cruelty to humiliate and hurt Hindu self-esteem.

Talibanization of Kerala’s cultural scenario began around the 1970s. In the State School Youth Festival, art forms like Moplah Song [Muslim] and Margamkali [Christian] were introduced as events of competition by Muslim education ministers [8]. A traditional Hindu art form, Kolkali, an event of competition in the youth festival, was transformed into an Islamic one through introduction of a new dress code - the Moplah dress like green colour lungi, belt and banyan [vest] – was made the event costume. Finally, all non-Muslim students were forbidden to take part in the State Arabic Youth Festival.

Muslim League Ministers holding the education portfolio call the ceremonial lighting of lamps as un-Islamic, though Muslim ministers of other secular parities light lamps without hesitation. People’s representatives who took their oath of allegiance contrary to the constitutional directive, i.e., in the name of Allah and Infant Jesus, continue as ministers, MLAs and MPs. If a Hindu took an oath of allegiance in the name of his personal deity, it would be termed a “gross violation of the stipulations enshrined in the Constitution of India.” The Kerala High Court’s decision of 3 March 2003 in the case against Umesh Challiyil [MLA 2001-06] is an example to this embargo.

The erection of the statue of Tunchathu Ezhuthachan, father of Malayalam language and literature, at his birthplace Tirur, now Muslim-dominated, proved problematic. It was resolved by erecting a symbolic representation of ‘an inkpot and brush,’ the official emblem of Jamaat-e-Islami. It is true Ezhuthachan used only stylus and Palmyra leaf for writing, never pen or ink, but the compromise was pure political appeasement.

Kerala Muslim society was more national until the 1960s, but has been steadily alienated from the mainstream, thanks to uninterrupted hawala money from the Gulf reaching fundamentalists. In dress code and social gatherings they are forced to keeping away from the mainstream. Only 10.3% of the older generation ladies used purdah; now 31.6% of the new generation have adopted purdah [9], which certainly suggests fundamentalist compulsions.

On 6 November 1999, Pope John Paul II in a sermon at Sacred Heart Cathedral, New Delhi, stated, “Just as in the first millennium the Cross was planted on the soil of Europe, and in the second on that of the Americas and Africa, we can pray that in the Third Christian Millennium a great harvest of faith will be reaped in this vast and vital continent [Asia]”.

In the light of this ambition one should view Hindu antipathy to the minority approach of en masse dismemberment of a community and culture. This proselytism is suicidal so far as a civilization is concerned.

Under the guise of charitable service, a Kenyan national, Brother Bernard, on a tourist visa, and some nuns of the Missionaries of Charity, engaged in conversion through allurements in an economically backward Hindu settlement. They were opposed and blockaded at the entrance of the hamlet by some youths hailing from all non-communal political parties. This news is being vocally debated in mainstream Kerala newspapers. The police pressed charges against those who protested the conversion agenda of the Kenyan missionary, but recently the court acquitted all the accused in this case.

Three years ago, an American citizen, Rev. Joseph Cooper, on a tourist visa, publicly ridiculed Hindu gods and goddesses [10] at a Christian convention at Kilimannoor near Trivandrum. The public gave him a proper response, but the state government and opposition front provided him an escape route, even though he had violated visa norms and, like Brother Bernard, engaged in conversion of Hindus.

Hindu society faces multifaceted attacks from all anti-national forces. They must protect this nation from another division, and they must, above all, save the dying Hindu community of Kerala.

Notes
1] After his conversion to Hinduism he received the name Ramasimhan.
2] Muslims of this region is called so.
3] See EMS’s Selected Works, [Mal], Vol. VII, pp 356-57
4] Deepak Dharmadam, Keralam Feekararude Swantham Nadu, pp 59, 60.
5] Mangalam Daily, Kottayam,9th February 2009
6] Malayalam Varika, Editorial, Vol. VII, No. 12, 25th July 2003.
7] The New Indian Express, Kochi, 13 August 2003.
8] Not ignoring the fact that in the 53 years of Kerala’s history, for 49 years the portfolio of education is controlled by the minority religious parties or a person from a minority community who represents the secular parties.
9] Dr. K. P. Aravindan [ed], Kerala Padanam, Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, Kozhikode, 2006, p135
10] He uttered that Lord Krishna was the first AIDS patient.
11] Malayala Manorama, daily, Kottayam, dtd. 19th March 2005
12] Keralam 2000, State Language Institute, Trivandrum, pp 908, 909

Dr. C.I. Issac is a retired Professor of History, and lives in Trivandrum. The article is based on the First P.A. Ramakrishnan Memorial Lecture delivered in Chennai on 8 March 2009
http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=428

Barbarians at the Gate!

2009-02-26T07:42:00.000-08:00

Kanchan Gupta Sunday, February 22, 2009 (Pioneer)

There is sufficient reason to be worried about the gutless civilian Government in Pakistan abjectly capitulating to the Islamic fanatics of Swat Valley who have prohibited girls from attending school, ordered women to stay at home, instructed parents to give their daughters as 'wives' to the Taliban, begun flogging men in public squares, and will soon replace popular entertainment by way of films and music with stoning victims of rape to death in bazaars. With the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi — never mind that we are talking about the Pakistani variety of Mullah Omar's masked Afghan killers - virtually coming to power in Malakand division of North-West Frontier Province, reducing the secular ANP Government to no more than a nominal 'authority' forced to do Islamabad's bidding, it's only a matter of time before the geographic expanse of 'Jihadistan' increases to consume large chunks of what remains of Mohammed Ali Jinnah'smoth-eaten Pakistan.

It's really of little or no relevance that last week's 'peace deal' hinges on the imposition of 'Nizam-e-Adl', or shari'ah criminal law: Malakand won't be the only place in the world where limbs will be chopped off for petty offences or women done to death for the crimes of men. Nor should we be unduly impressed by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's description of the Taliban as "murderous thugs and militants" who "pose a danger to Pakistan, the US and India". Surely he hasn't forgotten that it was Benazir Bhutto who connived with the ISI to promote the Taliban, nor should he pretend to be ignorant of the fact that it was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who aggressively preached "Islam is the solution, the Islamic Bomb is the means". Having sent Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to the gallows, Gen Zia-ul-Haq could not but have aggressively pushed Islamism and its attendant evils. The poison fruit is now for the PPP and the people of Pakistan to relish.Mr Arun Jaitley of the BJP was not being facetious when he said that the Taliban are a mere five hours away from India. Parliament may have missed the point and the Prime Minister's flatterers may be upset that he should have compared the absentee head of Government as a 'night watchman', but it would be outright stupid to ignore the fact that the barbarians are at the gate. Let us also bear in mind that the Deobandi madarsas which produced the taliban who then went on to become the Taliban — in Pakistan and Afghanistan — are not entirely dissimilar to the madarsas which have mushroomed across the length and breadth of India, nurtured by both mullahs and their patrons in the 'secular'political parties, of which the Congress is just one example.

Let it also be said that the 'intolerance' of the Taliban which so alarms us is not specific to the 'murderous thugs' of Swat Valley and Kandahar. We have seen dissident Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen being hounded out of Kolkata by Islamic fanatics and forced to leave India by the 'secular' UPA Government which now wrings its hands and waxes eloquent on the dangers of the rise of Talibani fanaticism. If only such concern had been expressed over the editor and publisher of The Statesman being arrested for reproducing a scintillating articlefrom The Independent, written by Johann Hari, Mr Anand Sharma's vapidreaction to the fall of Swat Valley would have carried some conviction. If Pakistan is now paying a steep price for its duplicitous policy of using violent Islamism to further its strategic interests in Afghanistan and bleed India through a 'thousand cuts', we too shall pay a price for following a line of least resistance and legitimising appeasement by grafting what the Prime Minister described as "Muslims first" to the policies of an allegedly secular state.

There are other similarities which make India as vulnerable as Pakistan to the scourge of Taliban. For all its emphasis on subjugating the country to the supremacy of Islam, of being one with the ummah, and its repeated proclamation of the equality of Muslims, Pakistan has abysmally failed to deliver good governance. Elected Prime Ministers and military dictators have equally fleeced the country, pushed the masses deeper into poverty, made a mockery of the judicial system, and maintained a dissolute elite's hegemony over Pakistan's politics, economy and society. Islamism was once a useful means to distract the masses and silence critics. Islamism now has become a powerful tool to mobilise the masses against the elite. Real grievances and imagined victimhood have coalesced to create a fetid swamp that breeds the deadliest of germs, of which the Taliban is a particularly venomous species.

Cut to India. The vast Muslim underclass remains unaffected and untouched by the Prime Minister's "Muslims first" creed. While Mr. Manmohan Singh spends sleepless nights agonising over the plight of those suspected to be involved in jihadi terrorism, millions of Muslims spend sleepless nights — as do millions of Hindus — wondering where their next meal is going to come from. When the Government decides to reward the families of slain jihadis, it sends out a loudmessage to Muslims: Take up the gun, die in action, ensure a better life for your families. By casting aspersions on Delhi Police and accusing them of killing 'innocent' Muslims, the Prime Minister's Cabinet colleagues encourage moderates to turn extremists. When madarsas are euologised and Saraswati Sishu Mandir schools are relentlessly demonised, the ulema feel sufficiently emboldened to include hate in their teachings.

When the Government slyly allows the setting up of qazi courts, which dispense justice according to shari'ah, and lets them function without so much as a whimper of protest, it tells Muslims that India's secular justice system is incapable of protecting their interests. When a wholly illegitimate All-India Muslim Personal Law Board is allowed to dictate how Muslims should run their personal lives, the state abdicates its responsibility to its citizens. As in Pakistan, here too the Government has come to believe that Islam is a substitute for jobs, housing and health services. Azamgarh to Alappuzha, Dibrugarh to Dharwad, a fetid swamp similar to that of Pakistan's is spreading; the 'Indian Mujahideen' are the produce of this swamp.

The distance between Swat Valley and Islamabad is 160 km. Jamia Nagar is in Delhi!
(Mail to Author at : kanchangupta@rocketmail.com)

(Refer to site : http://sites.google.com/site/hindunew/challenges)

Krunvanto Vishvamaryam!

Its not 1, we will be 15,000: Arun Bhatia can organize and mobilize change

2009-02-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

Arun Bhatia, IAS Retd. (arun@arunbhatiaelect.com)

is contesting the 2009 Lok Sabha Elections from Pune.

The criticism made by the major parties against an independent is that "one man is powerless" regardless of the caliber of the contestant. It is a convenient argument and allows major parties to field men much less competent or honest than the independents. Gullible voters believe this and either vote for bad leaders or not vote at all. 8 lakhs registered voters did not vote last time. And when a good man contests they ask him what will one man do!

We have the answer ready. One man will organize more than 15,000 citizens who will change the governance of Pune. Pune will be changed and managed through citizen committees in partnership with the media and the judiciary.

Get ready to own this city
Today we have INDIRECT citizen empowerment where citizens only vote and then beg elected representatives and bureaucrats for help. I will bring DIRECT empowerment where citizens will control govt. offices after election.

The entire governance of Pune will be reformed by setting up a parallel governance system. All departments and offices in Pune especially Police, Revenue, Town Planning, PMC, Labour, Industry, Health, Education and Environment will be monitored and brought under citizen control. A citizen budget will be enforced, if necessary through courts. Offices will be inspected by citizen committees and corrupt or bad officials will be prosecuted.

I will guide, organize and set up the citizen committees.

New Pune Governance model
50 Police Committees (20 members each) ...... 1,000 citizens Examples: If serious complaints of assault, threats, wife beating, police harassment etc. are not registered, the Police Inspector and Commissioner will be given legal notices and prosecuted within 15 days

400 Water Supply Committees (20 members each) ...... 8,000 citizens Prepare budget for fitting pipes and pumps in all water starved areas, enforce priority in expenditure by prosecuting Standing Committee members and Commissioner for violating duty priorities in Municipalities Act and for damages per citizen family of Rs. 200 per day

2 Finance Committees (20 members each) ........ 40 citizens Prepare citizens budget, ensure funding request from C. Govt. according to citizen priorities as endorsed by court, prepare domestic and international loan proposals

Similar committees for sewage management, river development and tourism, roads, environment, health, slum rehabilitation, physical audit of PMC works, court cases, media, other departments ........ about 5,000 citizens

At least 15,000 citizens, experts and NGO members will be involved in governing and modernizing the city. Partnership with the judiciary will be ensured by group action in pursuing litigation and by close media coverage.

You think this is IMPOSSIBLE?
You will never know until you try it. Is it better to leave the mess and gross inefficiencies as they are?

Is it better you keep electing the same old parties so that change never comes about for another 100 years?

Don't simply keep debating and living in the mess. I'm willing and able to bring about the change.

Are you ready for the change?

You have the power to let me bring about the change. Thank you

Sincerely

Arun Bhatia
arun@arunbhatiaelect.com

http://www.arunbhatiaelect.com

31 Ashoka Mall
Bund Garden Road
Pune 411001
Tel: +91-20-3233 5402
Tel: +91-20-3052 0242

The contemporary Hindu predicament By Dr. Gautam Sen

2009-02-09T09:22:00.000-08:00

Hindus are in serious danger of reaching the point of no return in the very near future. Political circumstances are changing swiftly and will soon make it very difficult, if not impossible, for Hindus to recover from the onset of political, social and spiritual oblivion. The combination of modern communication technologies for brainwashing and political assault has placed Hindus in greater danger.

The underlying dominance of Islam in West Bengal is obscured by the outward resilience of a superficially communist dispensation. At an opportune moment, a Muslim party will pose a deadly challenge to it in alliance with opportunistic parties like the Trinamul Congress. Many areas of UP, Bihar, Delhi as well as other states are effectively quasi-sovereign Muslims enclaves and access to them by legally constituted authorities minimal.

This is the life-and-death struggle that Hindus are unable to comprehend and resist. Instead the outflow of educated Hindus to a militantly evangelical US has created a diabolical situation in which they are overwhelmingly dependent on the US, and to a lesser degree the British market, for their livelihoods. Virtually every author from Mumbai, writing for the English speaking market, sought to downplay the role of terrorism. The scandalous disarray of Indiaʼs political class has been highlighted in recent weeks, without Hindus apparently unable to even comprehend the unfolding drama affecting their destiny. The UPA has descended to treasonous co-ordination of its pending general election campaign with governmental agencies in Pakistan, including, in effect, the ISI. The diabolical enemy of Hindu India, the US, has brokered a deal between India and Pakistan that includes the disingenuous arrest of 124 jehadis and measures like the closure of their Internet web sites, contrived to provide respite to Manmohan Singhʼs beleaguered government. David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary was evidently sent by the US to deliver a message that India must abandon, as a quid pro quo, its demand for the extradition of the planners of the Mumbai terror carnage. The idea that Pakistan will actually prosecute anyone and punish them for attacking India is laughable, but it will buy time for the UPA to apply the balm of forgetfulness to India. The Indian EAM, Pranab Mukherjee, of Murshidabadʼs Jangipur Islamic constituency, which he bribed with 2100 crore rupees in 2006, obliged with alacrity, quite forgetting his periodic hypocritical belligerence towards Pakistan, all apparently intended to deceive. His subsequent delirious recanting of his initial surrender to Indiaʼs erstwhile colonial masters occurred because Congress Party managers evidently deemed such public acknowledgement impolitic.

Far from being indiscreet, British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has merely restated what has been British policy towards India since the 1940s, which has been to incite Islamic jehad to undermine it. The British Foreign Secretary rounded of his imperious visit to India by joining Rahul Gandhi on the campaign trail in Amethi, underlining the extent of Indiaʼs subordination to the Anglo-American imperialists. And Miliband, the lowly whippersnapper, gallingly added insult to injury by asserting that the Mumbai carnage was due to Indian policies in Kashmir. But this is all of a piece, which echoes the cynical and unflagging attempts of Britainʼs elites since the late nineteenth century to damage Hindus as much as possible. Author Narinder Singh Sarila has documented the extent to which Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the butcher who sponsored the bloodletting in Calcutta on Direct Action Day in August 1946, was a mere pawn in British imperial designs to create a strategic hold over the Indian subcontinent. It is therefore cause for dismay that the NDA candidate for Prime Minister and his advisers have now embraced both the murderous Jinnah and the jehadi Deobandis. Where will it all end?

Alas, Hindus are in serious danger of reaching the point of no return in the very near future. Political circumstances are changing swiftly and will soon make it very difficult, if not impossible, for Hindus to recover from the onset of political, social and spiritual oblivion. The combination of modern communication technologies for brainwashing and political assault has placed Hindus in greater danger than at any time in their entire history. Hindus need to reflect deeply on the fact that their civilisational reach once included East, Southeast Asia and modern Iran and the latter itself encompassed territories today part of the Islamic Arab world. Islam and Christianity have subjugated all these regions in succession. Yet, no Hindu regards the fate of these vast lands as relevant to their current predicament and the political conquest threatening them. Most even dismiss the loss of vast additional territories in 1947 to murderous usurpers determined to destroy them and which includes areas once the cradle of their civilisation.

Hindus are also unable to grasp their effective dis-empowerment in significant areas of the Indian Union. Christians barely tolerate Hindus in the Northeast, which is an armed Christian enclave that will assert its political independence the moment the federal centre is embroiled in a crisis of authority. Muslims and Christians have long imposed a condominium in Kerala, but predictable rivalry between them for supremacy has arisen now that the common goal of curbing Hindus has been achieved. The initial political alliance between Muslims and Christians against Hindus followed by competition between them is the pattern likely to occur elsewhere in India. Tamil Nadu politics is dominated by Christians under the spurious guise of Dravidian irreligiousness and in concert with Islam. Andhra Pradesh is witnessing a remarkable surge of Christian conversions under an evangelical Chief Minister. However, Muslim resistance to Christian primacy will surface vengefully in the future since Muslims retain strong local historical roots, backed by significant numbers and ideological consciousness. The underlying dominance of Islam in West Bengal is obscured by the outward resilience of a superficially communist dispensation. At an opportune moment, a Muslim party will pose a deadly challenge to it in alliance with opportunistic scum like the Trinamul Congress. Many areas of UP, Bihar, Delhi as well as other states are effectively quasi-sovereign Muslims enclaves and access to them by legally constituted authorities minimal.

A number of inter-linked reasons account for the disastrous decline of Hindu civilisation. Some of them are internal to the Hindu tradition and arise from their very own spiritual identity and historical legacy. Still others are accidental though consequential, such as the misadventure of one individualʼs diabolical role in their society and the constitutional structure of the Indian polity inherited after Independence. India is suffering from the disastrous impact of the usurpation of political power by one individual, whose loyalty to Indian sovereign interests is suspect and who, in addition, is mainly motivated by private family aspirations for wealth. The constitutional structure of Indian politics has also guaranteed national disunity, by articulating and amplifying every domestic division and dispute for electoral advantage. Finally, India is facing determined assault by imperialists, who are deploying the advantages of modern technology and economics to subordinate it. All of these factors in combination seem to outweigh the ability of Hindus to respond in a farsighted way to protect their civilisation and assure a legacy to their children and grandchildren as well as the wider world.

A mortal external danger facing Hindus and India is the Christian Crusader State, the US. The US and its British, German and Scandinavian allies are assiduously engaged in evangelical conversion to destroy Hinduism once-and-for-all. As Sitaram Goel averred, Christianity and Islam are both political ideologies and, one should add, their fervent claims to divine inspiration subterfuge to deceive. The US hatred for India is long-standing, having begun more or less from the moment India became independent in 1947. It has been the principal sponsor of Indiaʼs enemies in the region, with some sterling help from Britainʼs duplicitous political elites. In the late 1960s, the US joined with China to undermine India, with Henry Kissinger in 1971 inviting the Chinese ambassador to the UN, Huang Hua, to advise his country to attack India. But Pakistan remained the main US instrument to torment it and collusion with its merciless butchers to commit genocide in Bangladesh was the most blatant example of evil US predilections towards Hindu India. Even at this very moment, the US government and its liberal media are working overtime to stop India punishing Pakistan by resorting to intrigues about a common enemy and pretending to chastise Pakistan when the Pakistani ISI was created in fact as an outsourced branch of the CIA.

Contemporary evangelism is the modern offspring of Nazism, which sought to implement a programme of racial subjugation in a pattern with long antecedents in the history of Christian nations. Christianity highlights an unbroken history of torture and mass murder to achieve imperialist political goals. From the sixth century onwards it showed its true colours once it had suborned the Roman State and began a programme of extirpation against all rivals. From Charlemagneʼs cold-blooded execution of tens of thousands of pagans and the subsequent killing spree in the Christian expansion into Eastern Europe to the mass murder of Cathars and the unrelenting persecution of Jews, the Church was the unequivocal progenitor of modern Nazism. The instances of the complicity of most major denominations in murder and enslavement is endless, from active participation in the genocide of Amerindians and Africans, to the creation of the Southern Baptist Convention to defend US slavery and their Absolution for apartheid in South Africa. But in India they have appeared to liberate so-called oppressed groups who are merely going to become instruments for the introduction of modern slavery for all Indians.

This is the life-and-death struggle that Hindus are unable to comprehend and resist. Instead the outflow of educated Hindus to a militantly evangelical US has created a diabolical situation in which they are overwhelmingly dependent on the US, and to a lesser degree the British market, for their livelihoods. Virtually every author from Mumbai, writing for the English speaking market, sought to downplay the role of terrorism per se in the recent murderous assault against its people. They engaged instead in self-flagellation and deviously advanced the idea that there were deeper causes of terrorism and for which of course India was allegedly responsible. All this cynical hand wringing is really designed to validate the fervent US desire to shield its dastardly ally from the consequences of terrorism against innocent Indians. And of course it does no harm to the book sales of these distinctly second-rate wordsmiths.

As any reasonable observer is aware, there is no such thing as Hindu except to locate them geographically as a people. And to also differentiate Hindus in the negative sense from the imperious monotheisms of Christianity and Islam. Hindu practices do share some features, the central attribute of which is the ability to accommodate what other faiths denounce as the heresy of rivals. Of course most Hindus do privilege some common practices and beliefs, especially the singular importance of certain key texts. There is also a willingness to accord recognition to deities privileged by competing sects even as they continue to accord primacy to their own particular form of worship. However, one striking commonality for Hindus is a feeling of affinity that they experience entering temples anywhere within India and beyond. The most significant aspect of Hindu religious life remains its ingrained tolerance towards each otherʼs spiritual beliefs. It is important to note that Hindus instinctively react in the same way to Islam and Christianity despite the fact that both are determined to extirpate Hinduism and impose their own exclusive faith on them.

The result of Hindu eclecticism and its admixture of the divine and secular make it difficult to create an overarching sense of political belonging. In the absence of the kind of rigid beliefs that define Semitic religious identity, accompanied by a single text and clear prescriptions and proscriptions, Hindu consciousness remains determinedly local. The philosophical scepticism of the Adi Shankaracharya co-exists with the assertion of a later successor, Swami Vivekananda, who argued that belief in a Supreme Being was necessary for attaining Moksha. But it was Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and their acolytes who inadvertently, in the first case and actively, in the second, who have instigated the worst damage to the possibilities inherent in Hinduism. Gandhijiʼs misguided insistence on neutering any manifestation of Hinduism that might be found provocative by Islam and Nehruʼs illiterate, Anglicised socialism created a devastating moral vacuum in Indian society. This was a huge and many-sided emptiness that socialist nonsense has failed to fill anywhere in the world and which the passionate reversion to religious faith across former socialist countries is demonstrating. In India, the expulsion of all Hindu sensibility from public life in the name of secularism resulted in its substitution by crass materialism and a pitiable sentimentality, both deriving from Bollywood. The Hindu moral universe, in both its secular and specifically religious variants, has been all but destroyed except for what endures in the private sphere since Hindus still crave for transcendental meaning even as they lose their moorings in possessive individualism and materialism.

(The Author has taught at the London School of Economics for more than two decades and now writes on international political economy). The writer can be contacted at gautam.sen@gmail.com)

Tackling Terrorism: A Questionable response?

2009-02-07T09:22:00.000-08:00

(Author is an independent researcher, and freelance contributor based in New Delhi, India)

http://www.blogs. ivarta.com/ Tackling- Terrorism- Questionable- response/ blog-237. htm

Terrorism in the name of one particular religion is haunting humanity today. Two months have elapsed since 26/11 and the masterminds behind the attack are still at large. Why the Indian government and security agencies have failed to safeguard the lives and properties of innocent Indians and when can we put a full stop to terror? The answer to this vexed question lies in answering those politically incorrect others which escape public discourse.

The principle question is whether we follow a "zero tolerance" policy against terrorism? After all, India’s terror death toll in the past five years is second only to Iraq. Yet, bizarrely terrorism does not seem to be an electoral issue in India as evident from the recentDelhi assembly elections which took place 2 weeks after the Mumbai terror attack. Shivraj Patil, the former defense minister barely a week before the ill fated attack was patting his own back for ingeniously restricting terror strikes to all the major cities of India! The Times of India frivolously suggested that there is a greater possibility to die of a lightning strike in India as against a terror attack. Comparing apples and oranges perhaps, for terror attacks take place predominantly in urban India as against lightning strikes in rural India! The English media and leftist social activists" days after 26/11 began a procession of publicly censuring all politicians (and Pakistan) instead of those exclusively in government proving the farcical nature of the act deployed to divert seething public sentiment and deny advantage to their enemy in the "communal" opposition ahead of the Assembly polls.

The second question posed is whether we remain absolutely unconditionally critical of terrorists? The answer is a frank no! Rather, India’s collective progressive consciousness is dominated by the Stockholm syndrome. So, we have the radical Christian writer and activist Arundhati Roy maliciously justifying the Mumbai attack as a consequence of Indian Army’s supposed deplorable human rights record in Kashmir. The far-left who are teeming everywhere being votaries of revolutionary terror are principally sympathetic to violence against the Hindu bourgeoisie. Several Indian Muslim communities subscribe to dangerous conspiracy theories of the Urdu press with some English patrons. So, 26/11 becomes a Hindu-Zionist conspiracy. A R Antulay, the minority affairs played to his galleries giving further fillip to these allegations leveled by the Islamic fundamentalists. Letters to the editor in "The Hindu" showed a clear communal divide, all Muslims supported Antulay and all non Muslims objected to this blatant political opportunism. One indeed wonders, what the level of deception would have been if a jihadi was not caught alive! Previously, M C Sharma, the man who lived and died for his country was abused and reviled by local Muslims as a fake encounter specialist, and the Batla House encounter rendered objectionable. Since then, these Muslims have found political voice both in the Samajwadi Party and Arjun Singh of the Congress. Islamic terror organizations like SIMI, extremists like NDF and separatists like PDP derive their continuous support both from Muslim masses and certain "secular" politicians.

The third question is whether we collectively condemn terrorism as the worst crime against humanity with a most dangerous ideological core? Instead, we find Islamic terrorism being uncritically compared to the obverse of communal riots with the simplistic premise that bothsupposedly feed on each other. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Communal riots often follow a period of building communal tensions yet post riots when tensions have eased, both communities go back to their own way of life. Of course, the root cause of communal conflict in a pluralistic society is the exclusivism of monotheistic faiths which accentuates social tensions by trying to impose their hegemonistic views, thinking and culture on the "others". But terrorists with totalitarian intentions of establishing a globalIslamic caliphate or fluttering the banner of the red star across the world, irrespective of interruptions continue to cultivate the same ideological drive. Yet, no effort is made to comprehend the theology which drives Islamist terror. B Raman the security analyst hasrecently voiced his apprehensions that "Indian (terror) experts have not been able to quantify...the threat from sections of Indian youth outside J&K because of a fear in political circles that such an exercise for quantification might have an adverse effect on the Muslimvote in the forthcoming parliamentary elections." Similarly, there is no dearth of Naxalite sympathizers even in elite academic institutions who vituperate legitimate anti-Naxal groups like the Salwa Judum. Such moral vacuity on the part of our "progressives" is intolerable and unacceptable.

The question of government sincerity in tackling terror transcending the parochial dictates of electoral vote bank considerations also arises. While it is true, that the UPA government under severe public criticism in a clear volte face had reluctantly beefed up theanti-terror laws but it still excludes all "confession statements" made to police officers, irrespective of their rank. Meanwhile, Mr. Modi has raised a very pertinent question. He reminds us of the ironical position that Kasab"s confession before the police that theIndian government has attested in its "evidence" dossier to Pakistan are inadmissible in any Indian court of law ever since the repeal of POTA by the UPA under orders of Sonia Gandhi, presumably to appease both Muslims and the left. Fortunately, there is clinching evidence of Kasab"s involvement including real time camera footage of the terrorists in actions along with the eyewitness testimony of the lone surviving constable of the slain Mumbai ATS chief"s Hemant Karkare"s police team. Yet to expect law agencies to depend upon such "fortuitous" evidence under the most unfortunate circumstances onlyproves the inadequacy of extant anti-terror laws which expects hard-core jihadis and Islamic fundamentalists to confess their "honourable actions in God"s cause" before magistrates! The "secularist" objections to tough anti-terror laws are rather inane and have been conclusively dismissed in the past but I repeat them for the sake of reiteration. The first is the vain assumption that such laws don"t act as a deterrent against terror because some terror strikes did take place in spite of the presence of POTA. Since, the existenceof no criminal law till date has managed to immunize society against crime , the opposition to tough anti-terror laws on this ground is clearly an anarchist suggestion which has no place in a democratic constitution. Also, provisions which allow pre-emptive arrest anddetention of terror suspects can go a long way in preventing terror strikes. Finally, ever since 9/11 most democracies including US and UK have adopted anti-terror laws which contain far more stringent provisions than did POTA. The second argument against POTA type law is the cynical "secularist" moaning against misuse of it against Muslims and tribals suspected to be Naxals. However, these cynics are perfectly aware that every law is potentially exploitable by those with vested interests. Even a very uncontroversial IT act has been used to persecute ordinary internet users whose views were against the establishment. The same Congress Party virulently abused TADA against20,000 Gujarat farmers in 1995 despite it never having been categorized as a problem state. The charge of misuse against Muslims is also unsubstantiated and rather politically motivated. Or else, what explains the annual death of more than 500 under-trials in policecustody (> 90% of whom are non Muslims) and even the delayed trials of thousands of others arrested for the pettiest charges receiving no media attention. The objections against POTA indicate only the deep seated aversion to tackling Islamist terror. All in all, in the absence of a POTA like law the newly set up NIA will only function as a toothless tiger.

Finally, India expects international community to pressurize Pakistan into closing down its terror camps but as a Statesman editorial comments, "it is wishful-thinking to expect foreigners to fights India’s war against terror." David Miliband rationalizing the terror strike with the Kashmir dispute is a symptom of the larger pathology which has catalyzed UK into an active breeding ground of Islamist terror. The USA’s concern is primarily focused on the undesirable activity along the Pak/Afghan border. The fact of the matter is thatAmerica for decades has supported what they call the right to determination of the Kashmiri people excluding the Hindu Pandits of course!

The solution to terror then is not to evade but face the facts.

Saurav Basu

Antulay and Lies of Sachar Report

2009-02-07T09:05:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. Editor,

I shall be grateful if you publish my following letter in your esteemed daily. Apropos the news 'Antulay picks and chooses his battles' (TOI 03-02-2009) may I point out the following facts on behalf of our Think-tank, Patriots'
Forum:

1. Sachar report is a document full of suppresio veri, suggestio falsi, many instances of which were pointed to Justice Sachar and Minister of Minority Affairs / PMO by us vide our letter dated 29-01-2007 to which no reply was ever received. We had invited Justice Sachar in that letter to join a public debate on his flawed findings, but he did not respond, nor joined a seminar on the subject held in the IIC in February 2007.

2. Muslims are far better placed than Hindus in 4 globally recognized Human Development Indices, namely, Infant Mortality, Child Mortality, Degree of Urbanization and Life Expectancy at Birth. These are documented facts. Thus it is the Hindus who are more disadvantaged, notMuslims.

3. A study by Centre for Developing Societies revealed that economically and educationally Muslims were not backward vis a vis Hindus, and that “the proportion of very poor people" was higher among Hindus than among Muslims.

4. In our two Memorandum to Sachar Committee (not considered by Justice Sachar for reasons best known to him) we had pointed out all these facts and also highlighted that in terms of Census 2001 the lower per capita income of Muslims was due to 2 factors: first, every Muslim woman is giving birth to at least one more child than her Hindu counterpart whichincreases burden on the household; and second, that the work participation of Muslim women was 50% less than that of Hindu Christian women which reduces the overall household income (percentages being 14.1% for Muslim women. 27.5% for Hindu women and 28% for Christian women).

Thus, Sachar Report is a fraud on the Indian people. That is why our Think-tank filed a PIL in Delhi High Court where it is pending. That surely makes it difficult for Shri Antulay, Minister for Minority Affairs, to continue denying the truth.

Yours Truly

R. K. Ohri

Secretary General, Patriots' Forum
D-6/13-D Vasant Vihar,
New Delhi - 110 057
Phones: 26142277 and Cell: 9810279264

Huge Foreign Contributions Received by the NGOs for Evangelism in India

2009-02-07T08:54:00.000-08:00

http://documents. scribd.com/ docs/stawfh6u10s ya9n82x2. pdf

Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI, Report.
From: Sanjeev Nayyar; Date: Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 9:38 AM
Subject: FCRA Report 2006-07
This report is released by the Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI, & gives details of Contribution received by the NGO's under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act 1976:-
1 Crore (100,00,000) = 10 million (10,000,000)

1. Highest receivers of Foreign Contribution state-wise:
Tamil Nadu -- Rs 2244 crores
Delhi -- Rs 2186 crores
Andhra Pradesh -- Rs 1,211 crores

2. Highest receivers of Foreign Contribution city-wise:
Chennai -- Rs 928 crores
Mumbai -- Rs 891 crores
Ranchi -- Rs 653 crores

3. Largest Donors:
USA -- Rs 2971 crores
Germany -- Rs 1650 crores
UK -- Rs 1425 crores

4. List of foreign Donors topped by:
Misereor Postfech, GERMANY -- Rs 1243 crores
World Vision International, USA -- Rs 469 crores
Fundacion Vicente Ferrer, SPAIN -- Rs 399 crores

5. The Highest Contribution received by:
Ranchi Jesuits Ranchi Jharkhand -- Rs 621 crores
Sonthome Trust of Kalyan Near Mumbai -- Rs 333 crores
Sovereign Order of Malta Delhi -- Rs 301 crores

To know more about the amounts received by the NGOs for Evangelization in India, read the FCRA Report 2006-07, Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI: http://www.mha. gov.in/fcra/ annual/ar2006- 07.pdf

Note:-

1. We are not talking of the money that comes from the Arab world which I presume comes mostly through the Hawala route.

2. Hindus need to donate a lot more to worthwhile organizations. A friend recommended this site: www.bharatheritagefoundation.org as an example of a Samstha doing good work.

3. Amongst many others who are doing good work and need to be supported:

i) The Ramakrishna Mission,
ii) Friends of Tribal Society,
iii) Vivekananda Kendra,
iv) Chinmaya Mission,
v) Arya Samaj …

Critique of Slum dog milionaire

2009-02-07T08:38:00.000-08:00

With everyone singing hosannas to Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, let me offer an alternative perspective. This film targets the easiest of targets: the average placid Hindu.The hero is, of course, a Muslim in India, whose mother is burned to death by an attack on Muslims by barbaric, fanatical Hindu mobs. No need for subtlety in either dialogue or depiction here; the Hindu mob says: "They are Muslims. Let us hit them," and the hapless Muslims cry as they flee in terror: "The Hindus are coming! The Hindus are coming."

To make sure his point about Hindu devilry is not missed, director Boyle has a shot of a child dressed as Rama, one of Hinduism's most cherished gods. Imagine the outcry that would have resulted if Boyle had reversed the above: i.e., had a shot of a child dressed as prophet Mohammed or Jesus as Muslims / Christians hurried off to persecute members of another faith! But since Hindus seem oblivious to any and every insult, Boyle has not only gotten away with his blasphemies, but seems well on his way to awards and accolades.

The sledgehammer hits against Hindus and Hinduism does not end there. On the TV show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the Muslim hero is asked a question by the TV host: "What weapons does Lord Rama bear in his hands?" Our Muslim hero answers: "If there was no Rama, my mother would have been alive." Again, imagine the outcry that would have resulted if the hero was a Hindu from Kashmir (Islamic terrorism has almost wiped out the Hindu population in Kashmir) and he had said: "If there was no Allah, my mother would be alive."

The contemporary Hindu predicament : By Dr. Gautam Sen

2009-02-07T07:32:00.000-08:00

The scandalous disarray of India's political class has been highlighted in recent weeks, without Hindus apparently unable to even comprehend the unfolding drama affecting their destiny. The UPA has descended to treasonous co-ordination of its pending general election campaign with governmental agencies in Pakistan, including, in effect, the ISI. The diabolical enemy of Hindu India, the US, has brokered a deal between India and Pakistan that includes the disingenuous arrest of 124 jehadis and measures like the closure of their Internet web sites, contrived to provide respite to Manmohan Singh's beleaguered government. David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary was evidently sent by the US to deliver a message that India must abandon, as a quid pro quo, its demand for the extradition of the planners of the Mumbai terror carnage. The idea that Pakistan will actually prosecute anyone and punish them for attacking India is laughable, but it will buy time for the UPA to apply the balm of forgetfulness to India. The Indian EAM, Pranab Mukherjee, of Murshidabad's Jangipur Islamic constituency, which he bribed with 2100 crore rupees in 2006, obliged with alacrity, quite forgetting his periodic hypocritical belligerence towards Pakistan, all apparently intended to deceive. His subsequent delirious recanting of his initial surrender to India's erstwhile colonial masters occurred because Congress Party managers evidently deemed such public acknowledgement impolitic.

Far from being indiscreet, British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has merely restated what has been British policy towards India since the 1940s, which has been to incite Islamic jehad to undermine it. The British Foreign Secretary rounded of his imperious visit to India by joining Rahul Gandhi on the campaign trail in Amethi, underlining the extent of India's subordination to the Anglo-American imperialists. And Miliband, the lowly whippersnapper, gallingly added insult to injury by asserting that the Mumbai carnage was due to Indian policies in Kashmir. But this is all of a piece, which echoes the cynical and unflagging attempts of Britain's elites since the late nineteenth century to damage Hindus as much as possible.

Author Narinder Singh Sarila has documented the extent to which Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the butcher who sponsored the bloodletting in Calcutta on Direct Action Day in August 1946, was a mere pawn in British imperial designs to create a strategic hold over the Indian subcontinent. It is therefore cause for dismay that the NDA candidate for Prime Minister and his advisers have now embraced both the murderous Jinnah and the jehadi Deobandis. Where will it all end?

Alas, Hindus are in serious danger of reaching the point of no return in the very near future. Political circumstances are changing swiftly and will soon make it very difficult, if not impossible, for Hindus to recover from the onset of political, social and spiritual oblivion. The combination of modern communication technologies for brainwashing and political assault has placed Hindus in greater danger than at any time in their entire history. Hindus need to reflect deeply on the fact that their civilisational reach once included East, Southeast Asia and modern Iran and the latter itself encompassed territories today part of the Islamic Arab world. Islam and Christianity have subjugated all these regions in succession. Yet, no Hindu regards the fate of these vast lands as relevant to their current predicament and the political conquest threatening them. Most even dismiss the loss of vast additional territories in 1947 to murderous usurpers determined to destroy them and which includes areas once the cradle of their civilisation.

Hindus are also unable to grasp their effective dis-empowerment in significant areas of the Indian Union. Christians barely tolerate Hindus in the Northeast, which is an armed Christian enclave that will assert its political independence the moment the federal centre is embroiled in a crisis of authority. Muslims and Christians have long imposed a condominium in Kerala, but predictable rivalry between them for supremacy has arisen now that the common goal of curbing Hindus has been achieved. The initial political alliance between Muslims and Christians against Hindus followed by competition between them is the pattern likely to occur elsewhere in India.

Tamil Nadu politics is dominated by Christians under the spurious guise of Dravidian irreligiousness and in concert with Islam. Andhra Pradesh is witnessing a remarkable surge of Christian conversions under an evangelical Chief Minister. However, Muslim resistance to Christian primacy will surface vengefully in the future since Muslims retain strong local historical roots, backed by significant numbers and ideological consciousness. The underlying dominance of Islam in West Bengal is obscured by the outward resilience of a superficially communist dispensation. At an opportune moment, a Muslim party will pose a deadly challenge to it in alliance with opportunistic scum like the Trinamul Congress. Many areas of UP, Bihar, Delhi as well as other states are effectively quasi-sovereign Muslims enclaves and access to them by legally constituted authorities minimal.

A number of inter-linked reasons account for the disastrous decline of Hindu civilisation. Some of them are internal to the Hindu tradition and arise from their very own spiritual identity and historical legacy. Still others are accidental though consequential, such as the misadventure of one individual's diabolical role in their society and the constitutional structure of the Indian polity inherited after Independence. India is suffering from the disastrous impact of the usurpation of political power by one individual, whose loyalty to Indian sovereign interests is suspect and who, in addition, is mainly motivated by private family aspirations for wealth. The constitutional structure of Indian politics has also guaranteed national disunity, by articulating and amplifying every domestic division and dispute for electoral advantage. Finally, India is facing determined assault by imperialists, who are deploying the advantages of modern technology and economics to subordinate it. All of these factors in combination seem to outweigh the ability of Hindus to respond in a farsighted way to protect their civilisation and assure a legacy to their children and grandchildren as well as the wider world.

A mortal external danger facing Hindus and India is the Christian Crusader State, the US. The US and its British, German and Scandinavian allies are assiduously engaged in evangelical conversion to destroy Hinduism once-and-for-all. As Sitaram Goel averred, Christianity and Islam are both political ideologies and, one should add, their fervent claims to divine inspiration subterfuge to deceive. The US hatred for India is long-standing, having begun more or less from the moment India became independent in 1947. It has been the principal sponsor of India's enemies in the region, with some sterling help from Britain's duplicitous political elites. In the late1960s, the US joined with China to undermine India, with Henry Kissinger in 1971 inviting the Chinese ambassador to the UN, Huang Hua, to advise his country to attack India. But Pakistan remained the main US instrument to torment it and collusion with its merciless butchers to commit genocide in Bangladesh was the most blatant example of evil US predilections towards Hindu India. Even at this very moment, the US government and its liberal media are working overtime to stop India punishing Pakistan by resorting to intrigues about a common enemy and pretending to chastise Pakistan when the Pakistani ISI was created in fact as an outsourced branch of the CIA.

Contemporary evangelism is the modern offspring of Nazism, which sought to implement a programme of racial subjugation in a pattern with long antecedents in the history of Christian nations. Christianity highlights an unbroken history of torture and mass murder to achieve imperialist political goals. From the sixth century onwards it showed its true colours once it had suborned the Roman State and began a programme of extirpation against all rivals. From Charlemagne's cold-blooded execution of tens of thousands of pagans and the subsequent killing spree in the Christian expansion into Eastern Europe to the mass murder of Cathars and the unrelenting persecution of Jews, the Church was the unequivocal progenitor of modern Nazism. The instances of the complicity of most major denominations in murder and enslavement is endless, from active participation in the genocide of Amerindians and Africans, to the creation of the Southern Baptist Convention to defend US slavery and their Absolution for apartheid in South Africa. But in India they have appeared to liberate so-called oppressed groups who are merely going to become instruments for the introduction of modern slavery for all Indians.

This is the life-and-death struggle that Hindus are unable to comprehend and resist. Instead the outflow of educated Hindus to a militantly evangelical US has created a diabolical situation in which they are overwhelmingly dependent on the US, and to a lesser degree the British market, for their livelihoods. Virtually every author from Mumbai, writing for the English speaking market, sought to downplay the role of terrorism per se in the recent murderous assault against its people. They engaged instead in self-flagellation and deviously advanced the idea that there were deeper causes of terrorism and for which of course India was allegedly responsible. All this cynical hand wringing is really designed to validate the fervent US desire to shield its dastardly ally from the consequences of terrorism against innocent Indians. And of course it does no harm to the book sales of these distinctly second-rate wordsmiths.

As any reasonable observer is aware, there is no such thing as Hindu except to locate them geographically as a people. And to also differentiate Hindus in the negative sense from the imperious monotheisms of Christianity and Islam. Hindu practices do share some features, the central attribute of which is the ability to accommodate what other faiths denounce as the heresy of rivals. Of course most Hindus do privilege some common practices and beliefs, especially the singular importance of certain key texts. There is also a willingness to accord recognition to deities privileged by competing sects even as they continue to accord primacy to their own particular form of worship. However, one striking commonality for Hindus is a feeling of affinity that they experience entering temples anywhere within India and beyond. The most significant aspect of Hindu religious life remains its ingrained tolerance towards each other's spiritual beliefs. It is important to note that Hindus instinctively react in the same way to Islam and Christianity despite the fact that both are determined to extirpate Hinduism and impose their own exclusive faith on them.

The result of Hindu eclecticism and its admixture of the divine and secular make it difficult to create an overarching sense of political belonging. In the absence of the kind of rigid beliefs that define Semitic religious identity, accompanied by a single text and clear prescriptions and proscriptions, Hindu consciousness remains determinedly local. The philosophical scepticism of the Adi Shankaracharya co-exists with the assertion of a later successor, Swami Vivekananda, who argued that belief in a Supreme Being was necessary for attaining Moksha. But it was Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and their acolytes who inadvertently, in the first case and actively, in the second, who have instigated the worst damage to the possibilities inherent in Hinduism. Gandhiji's misguided insistence on neutering any manifestation of Hinduism that might be found provocative by Islam and Nehru's illiterate, Anglicised socialism created a devastating moral vacuum in Indian society. This was a huge and many-sided emptiness that socialist nonsense has failed to fill anywhere in the world and which the passionate reversion to religious faith across former socialist countries is demonstrating. In India, the expulsion of all Hindu sensibility from public life in the name of secularism resulted in its substitution by crass materialism and a pitiable sentimentality, both deriving from Bollywood. The Hindu moral universe, in both its secular and specifically religious variants, has been all but destroyed except for what endures in the private sphere since Hindus still crave for transcendental meaning even as they lose their moorings in possessive individualism and materialism.

(The Author taught at the London School of Economics for more than two decades and now writes on international political economy). The writer can be contacted at ( gautam.sen@gmail.com )

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=275&page=13

Europe would be Eurabia soon

2009-02-04T09:57:00.000-08:00

There are now 16 million Muslims in the western Europe and the numer is fast increasing .atahe danger is to democracy due to increasing number in years ahead because as their number would increase so would their demand for Sharia laws and so forth as it has happend in many countries in the world and as a result 57 countries are now absolutely Islamic countries and the following European countries are in immediate danger of becoming Islamic countries if you take the present number of host and Muslims in these countries and project at 10 ,20, 30, years from now you would find that whites would be in minority within 30 years.

1. Switzerland

2. Swdwn.

3. Norway

4. France.

5. Scotland.

6. England.

7. Italy.

8. France .
Europe would be Eurabia soon.

From: Shriharsha Sharma <shsharma04@yahoo.co.uk>

The UPA shenanigans from Malegon to Mumbai: B. R. Haran

2008-12-24T05:52:00.000-08:00

Pakistan is doing to India precisely what UPA has done to Hindus

Yes! The UPA created a nonexistent 'Hindu Terror' with a motive of diluting the fight against Jihad, and in the process, it maligned Hindu religious leaders and Army officers implicating them in the Malegon blasts without any concrete admissible evidences in spite of a marathon two-month investigation by the Maharashtra ATS. The ATS also attempted to implicate them in the Samjhauta train blasts, which was clearly the handiwork of terrorists belonging to SIMI. This misadventure by the UPA helped Pakistan to defend itself against India's charges and also paved the way for its machinations against India.

The incompetence of the UPA government in fighting terror was exposed totally with the occurrence of frequent terror attacks leading to a high level of 'an attack a month'. When it was 'SIMI' written all over the attacks, the important allies of Congress within and outside UPA like Lalu Yadav, Ramvilas Paswan and Mulayam Yadav recommended with secular passion to revoke the ban on SIMI. These leaders are not far behind the UPA Chairperson, who had served this 'noble' cause in parliament in 2001 itself! But, due to nationwide protests the government had to plead in the Supreme Court for the continuance of the ban despite the allegedly deliberate flip-flop by the Home Ministry leading to the cancellation of the ban by a tribunal of the Delhi High Court.

As the assembly elections for five states were fast approaching, the effete UPA, which allowed a free run for Jihadis in the country, resorted to 'create' Hindu terror not only to dilute the fight against Jihad but also to sustain its Muslim vote-bank and thereby seeking to block the BJP's advance in the electoral arena. The UPA in general and the Congress in particular are notorious for viewing anything and everything through the prism of vote-bank politics with the intention of enjoying power always. Notwithstanding the sustenance of minority votes, the division in Hindu votes is also necessary for winning elections and hence the nonexistent 'Hindu terror' was 'created' ably supported by the 'secular' brigade including the mainstream media, both print and electronic.

The zealous and ambitious investigation carried out by the Maharashtra ATS on Malegon blasts, supposedly on the instructions of 'powerful' vested interests, had its desired impact. Added to this was the 'secular' media's unstinted and tireless campaign of brainwashing the nation and diverting its anger against an amorphous 'political class' instead of pinpointing ruthlessly the inept 'ruling establishment'. In the immediate aftermath of Mumbai terror attack, some vested interests continued the 'Hindu terror' campaign, as the entire nation erupted in outrage against Islamic terror perpetrated by Pakistan. A 'Hindu-Zionist' conspiracy theory was concocted and spread through the internet and clandestine mediums. A suspicion on the death of ATS Chief Hemant Karkare was also brought out connecting it with the Maelgon probe.

This vituperative campaign was initiated by one Mumbai based writer Amaresh Misra, who claimed to have seen a sequence of events and reported them from ground zero at 4 am on 27 November! He wrote an article titled 'Mumbai and India under Attack' (http://www.topix.com/forum/religion/sikh/TPDIJVHL8EOGUFEIM), in which he had invented the 'Hindu-Zionist' conspiracy and claimed that Marathi speaking Hindus had killed Hemant Karkare. He had also sent a message of a possible 'civil war' and even called for the 'arrest' of BJP leader and Prime Ministerial candidate Advani and other leaders of RSS/VHP in that article and spread it in the internet. Even while his malicious article was being translated in various languages and published in many Islamic and 'secular' websites, (http://www.satyamargam.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1108&Itemid=51) he had the audacity to write a sequel in the name of 'Mumbai Terror Attack: Further Evidence Of The Anglo-American-Mossad-RSS Nexus' in http://www.countercurrents.org/misra031208.htm This man also seems to be 'highly' connected as evidenced by the fact that one of his books was recently launched (March 2008) in Delhi and the launch function was graced by the Honourable Vice President of India (http://www.warofcivilisations.blogspot.com/). It is indeed shocking to note that such dangerous elements are allowed to go scot-free even after spreading such baseless, hateful and anti-national propaganda.

Probably taking a cue from Amaresh Misra, the Minister for Minority Affairs, Abdul Rehaman Antulay, became the first 'official' personality to attempt spreading this canard. He raised doubts whether Pakistani terrorists killed Hemant Karkare and questioned his visit to Cama Hospital instead of Taj or Oberoi or Nariman House, where actual encounters were happening. He indirectly blamed 'Hindus' for the death of Hemant Karkare by drawing a parallel with the Malegon probe and demanded a separate probe on Karkare's death. Though the callous and irresponsible remarks of Abdul Rehaman Antulay outraged the nation, the Congress led UPA government's response was meek and barring a Congress spokesperson no leader worth mentioning came out strongly denouncing the minister. In fact, UPA parties such as RJD, LJP and SP supported Antulay and endorsed his statements.

It may be recalled that the Maharashtra ATS, under Hemant Karkare, had for the first time in the nation's history, politicised the probe into the Samjhauta Express attack by blaming Colonel Purohit for the Samjhauta train blasts, which was later used by Pakistan against India's investigation of the Mumbai attack. In such an extraordinarily sensitive situation, the dreadful utterances of Antulay, has compounded the damage already done by the creation of Hindu terror by the Maharashtra ATS, giving ammunition to Pakistan to take on India. Pakistan is doing to India precisely what the UPA government in Delhi and its ally in Maharashtra did to the Hindus using the Maharashtra ATS as a political instrument.

Despite the NDA's opposition in parliament, neither the Prime Minister nor the UPA Chairperson attempted to sack the treacherous and irresponsible minister, who had by this time caused irreparable damage to the UPA. Even after the minister had submitted his resignation letter, they could not come to a decision whether to accept it or not. A meeting chaired by UPA Chairperson and attended by stalwarts like Prime Minister, External Affairs Minister and the Home Minister failed to arrive at a decision even after long hours of deliberation. This utter failure of the party's core committee to remove a minister, who deserves to be tried for treason, from the cabinet, parliament and the party, clearly exposes its dishonesty and also culpability.

It becomes imperative now to revisit the statements made by two other Maharashtra Politicians, R R Patil of NCP and Narayan Rane of INC. R R Patil, who was asked to resign from the post of Home Minister, had said that Karkare had come and met him on the fateful evening and cried over the allegations levelled against him in the Malegon probe. R R Patil has not made it clear whether Hemant Karkare cried for the 'allegations' of the opposition or for the 'instructions' of the government. But just before the Mumbai attack, Hemant Karkare had told a TV Channel that the entire ATS had been asked to focus on Malegon probe and that ninety percent of their forces were diverted into the Malegaon blasts investigation alone.

The Congress man Narayan Rane, who was snubbed by the Congress High Command during the selection of a successor to Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmuk, hit out at his rivals within the party and said that some of them financed terrorists and also provided terrorists safe haven in the country. He accepted full responsibility for this statement and added that he would provide all the details with proof at the appropriate time. Now since the lackadaisical attitude of both the state and central governments and the inexcusable failure of the intelligence & security agencies have come out in the open, the statements made by R R Patil and Narayan Rane gain significance. The point to note here is that both the INC and NCP high commands have preferred to remain silent on the two politicians' remarks and the reason for their silence is quite conspicuous!

If Abdul Rehaman Antulay's utterances are viewed in correlation with the remarks of R R Patil and Narayan Rane, it can be easily inferred that there is indeed 'more to it than what meets the eye'. That is, a lot of things seemed to have happened between the beginning of Malegon investigation and Mumbai terror attack. Even after two months of 'focused' investigation on Malegon blasts, the Maharashtra ATS could not bring out either credible or admissible evidence. Now since Hemant Karkare is no more and the charge sheets are likely to be filed, it has to be wait and seen whether the further proceedings on the Malegon blasts would be continued with the same 'agenda'.

Meanwhile, Abdul Rehaman Antulay, in a show of defiance, has been addressing groups of people and attempting to gather support for his 'communal' stand. Apart from a section of Muslims including clerics, a few leaders within the Congress like Digvijay Singh and Shakeel Ahamed have come out openly in his support. As the core group of the Congress High command has been dillydallying on this vital issue and is poised to take some stupid 'face-saving' action instead of sending a strong message by sacking him, a group of concerned right-thinking citizens have petitioned the Prime Minister by writing an open letter and hosting it 'on line' ( http://www.PetitionOnline.com/mara1234/petition.html)
for all the Indians and others empathising with India to sign the petition for the immediate removal of Abdul Rehaman Antulay from the cabinet.

In the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack, the UPA, had it been sincere in its fight against terror, could have taken some drastic actions by arranging for the hanging of Afzal Guru thereby sending a strong message to the terrorists. But, it failed to utilise the opportunity. Now since it has passed the bills in parliament with regard to the formation of 'National Investigation Agency' and inclusion of amendments strengthening the 'Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act', the UPA can correct its approach further by dismissing Antulay. But the way it has been going about in this issue, it is most unlikely that it would live up to the expectation of the people and the onus lies on the people to throw out UPA along with Abdul Rehaman Antulay.

2008-12-24T05:45:00.000-08:00

This year, in two pieces, one on Kashmir and the other on Mumbai, Miss Arundhati Roy has taken a position on these vital issues that is both offensive and false. The enclosed piece was carried by Outlook magazine on their website this week.

Warm regards

Abhinav Kumar

The author is a serving IPS officer. Though these are his personal views, they hopefully reflect the anguish of an entire fraternity of proud Indians in uniform as also in general.

Dear Miss Roy,

For many years now you have enriched the public life of our nation. First as a Booker winning novelist with a meteoric debut on the literary firmament, and then as an essayist, persistently pricking the conscience of a sometimes indifferent and ignorant nation, highlighting wide ranging issues of urgent concern. Over the years your provocative essays in the pages of Outlook magazine amount to a substantial intellectual achievement in their own right. One has not always agreed with you, but from big dams to the nuclear bomb, from the vagaries of capitalism to the dangers of American Imperialism, your writings on these important issues have left no one in any doubt about where you stand. Disagree with them as one might, your views occupied an intellectually coherent and morally compelling space in our public life. Until recently, when one read your two pieces on Kashmir and Mumbai with a growing sense of shock, anger, pity and dismay.

As a literary device, self loathing has its uses; the God of Small Things was a splendid lesson in the use of this sentiment. However I am not sure that nations and civilizations can organize their policies around this self indulgent mood. Your two pieces, 'Azadi' and '9 is Not 11' see you as usual in top form as far as style and rhetoric are concerned, but as far as substance goes, I think you have fallen into the trap of being in love with the sound and significance of your own voice. It is still a powerful voice, a seductive voice too, but because it chooses to amplify only those other voices that are prepared to sing in chorus, it is a voice bereft of any sense of moral responsibility. I am sure once again your latest writings will bring you further international recognition as a writer of conscience and conviction, striving tirelessly to expose the monstrosities of the Indian state and civilization. Dare I suggest that the Magsaysay and the NobelPeace Prize, the Holy Grails of the seemingly rootless international intellectual might not be too far behind? But Madam, despite your great charm and greater intellect this is a Faustian bargain. For in doing so you are doing irreparable harm to the very idea of the intellectual as a defender of virtue and morality in public life who too, like the problems you write about, much as he or she would want to, cannot be removed from the context (your favorite word) that created her, nurtured her and accorded the civic and intellectual space for her to articulate and propagate her views.

As someone who for the past 12 years has worn the Khaki uniform, as a servant of your favorite object of hate, the Indian state, I confess to a persistent sense of ambivalence and despair about the manner in which I am expected to serve. At the same time I cannot deny an equally abiding sense of pride in the importance of what we are supposed to do and of the importance of institutions in general in giving meaning and protection to what would otherwise be a society ruthless and brutal, beyond even your considerable powers of comprehension and description. Therefore, I am offended and disgusted by your incomplete, incoherent and therefore immoral portrayal of the recent upheavals of Indian history. I used to think that you articulate the pain of the silent, marginalized, oppressed masses of our country. I had no idea that you held a brief for all those who never felt anything at all not just for India in particular, but who also actively profess violent rage at the shared values of the entire human race.

According to you, everything that the police and security forces do or say whether in Kashmir, or in the war on terror, or against Naxalism, is a falsehood, where as everything that is said by 'Kashmiri Freedom Fighters', or by the harmless theologians of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and their ideological cousins of the Al Qaeda, or by the peace loving disciples of Marx and Mao living a bucolic existence in the jungles of central India, constitutes sufficient grounds to indict the Indian state and civil society in perpetuity. The people of India have always had a tradition to look up to men and woman of the arts and culture to serve as their moral compass. One really wonders what lines of logic and ethics shape your sense of moral direction.

You seem to passionately believe in and defend the 'right' of the Kashmiris to ethnic, cultural, religious and geographical exclusivism. If this is correct than why we should vilify Raj Thackeray or any other chauvinist who seeks to preserve the purity (however defined) of his people (however defined) from outsiders (also however defined)? If the Kashmiris are justified in picking up the gun to safeguard their exclusive identity, then every part of India is justified in doing so. I do hope you have taken the trouble to examine the fundamental assumptions underlying all such movements based on an assertion of a cultural identity. The creation of a hated outsider, in the case of Kashmir, the Indian, in the case of Raj Thackeray, the bhaiya of UP and Bihar, and in the case of the jihadists, anyone and everyone who does not subscribe to their virulent strain of Islam, including Muslims, is common to all these ideologies but you seem to pick and choose thebigotries you will demonize and the bigotries you will defend. Is it possible to freeze identity to a moment in time and on the basis of this demand recognition, retribution and rights for all time to come?
In your world view, the wrongs of Indian security forces of the last twenty years, and the failures of Indian state craft before it, are sufficient justifications for Kashmiri grievances, just as the wrongs of Babri Masjid, the Mumbai riots of 1993, the Gujarat riots of 2002, will justify Islamist terror against India, and the wrongs of corrupt governance and poor administration will justify naxalite violence, in all perpetuity. Why should only these events be accepted as justification for settling scores by shedding the blood of innocents? By this logic the Crucifixion of Christ amply justifies the Holocaust. We non white societies must all be allowed eternal rights to slaughter the Europeans for the sins of colonialism and slavery. Islam itself had a long history of violent conquest and forcible conversions, perhaps that should justify an eternal crusade or dharmyudhh against Islam. The Greeks and Romans have their own scores to settle with the Christian Church. The Latin Americans have their own grievances with Spain and Portugal. Seen this way human history is merely a parody of the eternal theme of perpetrators and victims, and all present violence, no matter how barbaric or senseless can be justified with reference to some past grievance, and we must allow these grievances full expression no matter what. Only then would we return to a state of original purity where all historical sins of the past and present have been fully avenged and the moral ledger as you see it stands perfectly balanced. Only thing is after this bloody book-keeping there may not be anyone left to enjoy the fruits of such a 'just' society.

The Indian state, whose sworn servant I am, is by no means a perfect entity. It is certainly corrupt, it is sometimes brutal and it is often indifferent to the sufferings of the weak and the powerless. But it does have a vision and aim based on certain civilizational values that are uniquely Indian. Demography and history dictates that these values have a prominently Hindu flavor. It is undeniable that these values have come under attack at times from the Hindu right as well. But even the most rabid of the Hinduvta forces do not see the world united under the saffron flag by force of arms, as is the Islamist project of one world under the Green Crescent, or the Naxal project of one world under the Red Star. It would take a pretty breathless and brainless leap of logic to equate violent, local outbursts of Hindu chauvinism, abetted by the sins of commission and omission of the state apparatus, in themselves however repugnant and indefensible, with the atrocities on a global scale that were inflicted by Communism in the 20th century or the outrages that are now threatened across all parts of the world by jihadi Islam. To call the foreign funded insurgency in Kashmir and the terror attacks across the country as justified blowback for the failures of the Indian state and civil society is both false and callous. It implies a failure of the imagination and the intellect and the complete abdication of moral responsibility by you. One could indeed forgive you Ma'am if you were purely an artist. Art has at the best of times a complicated relationship with truth and life. But in your avatar as a public intellectual, you cannot abandon your commitment to the demands of truth, accuracy and the ability to discriminate between the varieties of human experience and action. The liberties you have exercised in the past and continue to do today, however gratuitously and offensively, do not exist in a vacuum. I am not sure if any of these liberties would have a place in a Naxalite Utopia or a Jihadi Caliphate or even in a self-determined Kashmiri paradise that you eloquently espoused. As visions of human perfectibility they are far more flawed than the vision of India that you love to denigrate. In any case, the liberties that you have recently taken with the sensibilities of proud Indians too exist in a cultural, political and constitutional context, a context that is ultimately safeguarded by men such as Hemant Karkare and Major Unnikrishnan with disregard for their own life. Remember that next time you use your poisoned pen to vent your twisted logic on a polity that deserves better from its intellectuals.

Warm regards

(Abhinav Kumar)

Memorandum to PM after Mumbai Terror Attacks: Forestalling and tackling terrorism in our country.

2008-12-22T22:57:00.000-08:00

BY SPEEDPOST ACK. DUE: MEMORANDUM

D.C. Nath, IPS (Retd.) 204 Munirka Enclave,
President New Delhi-110067.
Patriots’ Forum Tel: 011 - 26169423
Mobile: 9811995693
www.patriotsforum.org
dcnath@patriotsforum.org

Dated December 3, 2008

To,
Dr. Manmohan Singh,
Honourable Prime Minister of India,
South Block,
New Delhi – 110011

Subject: Forestalling and tackling terrorism in our country.

Sir,

Patriots’ Forum is a registered, non-political, voluntary group comprising largely retired civil servants, defence personnel, social scientists, academicians and public individuals. Our main concern is cohesion and health of our Nation State.

2. Like many others in our country, we are taken aback and outraged by the horrible carnage at Mumbai wrought by determined and extremely well-planned and executed act of mass terrorism against innocent population. While we applaud the great courage and professional confrontation of the well-organised terrorists by our defence, special police and other authorities, we are appalled by the number of terrorists involved, the complexity and the length of the operations found necessary to put an end to this greatest terrorist challenge to India’s nationhood.

3. In this Memorandum, we lay out some issues which we feel require immediate consideration, followed by suggestions for concerted and time-bound action by the Central and the State governments.

4. It is indeed a matter of great consternation to us how, despite warnings, our internal and external intelligence and the State police agencies were totally unaware of what so many terrorists seemed to have been doing collectively for many days in Mumbai, near the Gateway of India and more specifically how they had collected so much of ammunition and weapons inside the Taj Hotel and elsewhere. Today, Mumbai and Delhi happen to be the two most terror-bombed cities in the world. How did the Mumbai police forget that Mumbai continues to remain on the radar of jihadis, hellbent on destroying the Indian nation, especially with so much input, as known publicly now, from different concerned agencies? Why were not then any demonstrative and effective steps taken to protect the city and its inhabitants?

5. We feel that time has come to enforce the principle of accountability by taking action against all those responsible for this national shame! Common man often wonders why there is no principle of accountability in the government - be at the political or bureaucratic level. The buck must not stop only at the police or intelligence level. The civil/bureaucratic authority in charge of coordinating governmental efforts should also be held equally accountable. How long can the citizens suffer such serious administrative lapses and crass irresponsibility? If this is not done, the general public will lose whatever little respect, faith and confidence they still retain for the political and administrative leadership in the country, which is, above all, responsible of the safety of the people. Such loss of public confidence will embolden terrorists waiting in the wings and will make the future task of governance more difficult.

6. What happened over the recent three or four days in Mumbai should set at rest once and for all any doubt or difference of opinion among political parties about the ruthlessness of the jihadi forces outside and inside our country. What happened in Mumbai is not merely a reckless action by some “mad and misguided” youth who did not understand what their religion taught them. It should be clearly understood that their main objective was not merely to settle some communal and religious scores or to bring fear in the minds of the masses at large but to destroy the heritage and traditions of our society, destroy its self-confidence and take control of the society. It is in this context that a well articulated, unambiguous, easily understood and transparent doctrine of national security in all its aspects must be worked out placed in the public domain and made known to the citizens.

7. Sir, how could you only now, i.e., in November, 2008, decide to task the National Security Adviser to formulate within 100 days a national security plan? Did not that constitute an integral responsibility assigned to the NSA as part of the charter of his duty several years ago? As concerned citizens, we have a right to know why it was not done all these years.

8. The impression the present government at the Centre has given to the people at large is that it has not squarely accepted its fundamental Constitutional responsibility to defend its people against determined aggression from outside and threats from within the country, on the specious ground that law and order is a state subject. Most citizens are not convinced of the argument of the Central Government that a federal anti-terror agency cannot be set up because some States are against it; nor do we think that for such an agency to be set up unilaterally by the Central Government, a Constitutional amendment is required. You are surely aware that the Supreme Court has unequivocally held that terrorism is an act of aggression against the country and cannot be treated as a law and order issue. We, therefore, urge that the matter should be got reviewed by eminent experts outside the Government. Our understanding is that within the existing Constitutional framework, such an agency can be set up, provided there is political will and maturity. Have not the State governments been listening to and following the guidelines sent from time to time by the Intelligence Bureau in respect of VIP security? What makes the Central Government feel that the directions issued by it for protection of citizens will not be adhered to by States governments? Under the concept of a federal Republic, the Centre cannot abdicate its responsibility for governing the States.

9. Pending the result of the foregoing legal review and the larger study mentioned in the following paragraph, and without waiting for them, the Government of India should immediately identify some of the glaring inadequacies, such as, lack of adequate surveillance of coastal waters, land borders and air-space. The government must ensure appropriate access control of as many public places as possible of high sensitivity, visibility and use. Establishments, such as, refineries, power-plants, hotels, railway stations, offices, business offices, must compulsorily introduce state-of-the-art technology in respect of baggage-screening, access-control and the like. Enough expertise in these areas is available in the private sector. In each State, an identified minimum of intelligence staff for these purposes must be established and clearly tasked.

10. There is an intense feeling among citizens that the Maharashtra government did not perform even the minimal due diligence drill in the light of hellish experience of umpteen terrorist strikes suffered by Mumbaikars in recent years. For instance, why could not an Emergency Response Force, comprising trained commandos, be organized and positioned to meet the diabolical jihadi challenge? Prima facie sheer lack of will and kowtowing to vote-bank politics are responsible for the failure of the powers-that-be to prepare in advance and adequately to tackle the menace of jihadi terror. The public surely has the right to seek answers to these questions regarding the monumental failure of the government to protect the human lives and valuable property, that dealt a serious body blow to the pride and prestige of our one billion strong nation.

11. It is well known that the intelligence agencies and other security forces have been suffering from serious handicaps for a number of years. Why the long-felt need for augmenting their manpower and resources is being considered only now? Why could it not be done much earlier? There appears to be a total lack of accountability in the government in this respect. The people of the country have a right to demand urgent and suitable action against all responsible for such serious lapses.

12. None of the foregoing needs to wait for a detailed multi-agency study of the recent tragedy so as to ascertain how:
· it became possible;
· how it was executed so successfully by the terrorists;
· how it could have been forestalled;
· what clarifications in policy are required;
· what strengthening of security apparatus is required in terms of human intelligence, specialised high-tech equipment, special forces and their training, post-event operational efficiency and effectiveness etc.
Such a multi-agency Experts Committee, comprising innovative and competent persons, should be instituted immediately to undertake such a study. It must be given a clearly understood mandate, and a definite time-frame to complete its work. We consider that, if headed by a committed and competent retired public servant with wide experience in administrative, police, defence and national security matters, such a study can be completed in 6 months’ time. Its recommendations, except those for high national security aspects, must be made public and should be implemented by an empowered multi-agency task-force, with an allocated budget for the purpose. Our Forum places its services for this cause, if called upon.

13. In our considered view, such a study should not be entrusted to any Judicial Commission (our history of judicial enquiries is dismal) or to any group of ministers and politicians. It should be by a committee of experts with wide-ranging experience. The Forum will urge upon you to look for experts outside the fold of the government also.

14. A nation which aspires to play a global role in international security, large geo-political matters and which seeks to sit at the UN Security Council table as a permanent member will have credibility in the international eye only if it has a government which is known for its competence, resoluteness and efficiency to tackle the problem of its own internal security. The political will required for the purpose will have to transcend narrow sectarian considerations of electoral politics of the day. This has to be demonstrated to instill enough confidence among the members of the public.

15. Sir, the Forum urges you to get these issues sincerely debated at the appropriate level, have the accountability fixed and early steps taken to remedy the situation.

We shall be happy to know our submission has reached your hand.

Yours faithfully,

(D.C. Nath)

Copy forwarded for information and action, as deemed fit, to:

i) Shri P.C Chidambaram, Home Minister.
ii) Shri A.K. Antony, Defence Minister.
iii) Shri Pranab Mukherjee External Affairs Minister
iv) Shri M.K. Narayanan National Security Adviser
v) Chief Ministers of States/Union Territories

(D.C. Nath)

2008-12-22T01:26:00.000-08:00

2008-12-20T02:59:00.000-08:00

Sub: An Appeal to Help Build Secure India.

‘Sent herewith a copy of An Appeal we have sent out to:

Chambers of Commerce – National / State.
CMDs of PSUs / Private Industries.
CMDs of Banks.
Select Industrialists.

May be you will find it useful. And, should you think it appropriate, you may also share this with those thought fit by you.

Best regards,

Yours sincerely,

D.C. Nath

Encl: As stated.

No.IISSM/DEL/4/2009- Dated December 16, 2008

Dear Sir,

Subject: An Appeal to Help Build Secure India.

This is with best compliments from IISSM.

The International Institute of Security and Safety Management (IISSM) and its activities would perhaps be known to you. Ours is a registered educational organisation (website: http://www.iissm.com), engaged in promoting professionalism both among security and other senior management executives, directly or indirectly involved in security management in industries.

The cataclysmic event in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, appropriately described as “the seminal event in the history of international terrorism, particularly in the history of global jihad” and as “more sophisticated and logistically more complicated than even 9/11,” was, to all intents and purposes, aimed at crippling the burgeoning Indian economy. As an Institute engaged in bringing about improvement in security management in the country and all over, we therefore felt greatly enthused by recent structured response from business associations like the Confederation of India Industries (CII) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) as also the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM). Indeed, corporate houses as also industrialists, big or small, have a big role to play in defending the national economy and serving the cause of national security.

We are keenly aware that many enlightened and forward-looking industrialists had after 9/11 initiated steps to overhaul or augment the security systems in their group or groups. Even then, in the surcharged security ambience in the country, we take the liberty of making the following suggestions for your consideration:

Please accept and accord recognition to security business as a part of the overall business procedure of your industry.

Please do not remain satisfied by employing a senior or qualified retired police or armed force officer. Please formulate a basic and formal comprehensive security policy, not only for the Security Division but also for all concerned in your esteemed organisation/industry. That will facilitate structured implementation and fix accountability.

Please do not ignore developing the security infrastructure while planning an integrated security management system.

Please take your Security Division into confidence and expose to it your risk potential in as much details as possible, may be just as you do in respect of the audit group. Better the exposure, better the services that the Security Division can render. The results of such exposure have often been more than expected.

Please accept that Industrial Security is, as we, from the platform of IISSM have been demonstrating, is a Total Management Function that includes risk management as well as loss prevention, the raison de etre of security’s existence.

Please add security risks including terrorism to the cost of doing business and thus factor security management into your regular budget and not treat it as a necessary evil that can be dispensed with in times of economic downswing. Cheap security is no security and good security costs money.

A third-party security auditing of your existing security arrangements will be highly desirable. Though one can surely access foreign experts, it is good to know that a fair amount of professionalism in this area has over the years developed inside the country also.

Please encapsulate and build security education into your CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) policy. After all, security is a business of all, for all and by all. Your employees will then help build up the national resilience against all forms of security threats including terrorism. Time is perhaps appropriate to turn current emotional response of people into constructive and participative mode so that they learn to accept responsibility and discharge the Fundamental Duties enshrined in Article 51-A of the Constitution of India.

Well Sir, these are some of our broad suggestions for your consideration. You may have already initiated appropriate steps. In any case, we from the IISSM offer our services, if felt necessary, at any stage.

At the end, we wish to humbly underscore that this is no effort to create or expand security business. This is, as we have highlighted in the beginning, an appeal to help build a secure India and it is our honest perception/belief that the trump card to achieve that lies in your hands.

‘Hope to be excused for inflicting this lengthy unsolicited submission for whatever worth it is at this stage. If thought appropriate, ‘may like to consider forwarding our submission to your constituent members in the manner thought best by you.

Thanking you and with best regards,

Yours sincerely,

(D.C. Nath)
To
All Chambers of Commerce – National/State.

Taqiyah or Holy Deception by Shahrukh Khan

2008-12-14T03:59:00.000-08:00

By: Dr Radhasyam Brahmachari *

In a press interview on 6th December, Sharukh Khan, the well known Bollywood film star, told dark lies and said that the Koran does not inspire terrorism. He told the press that he has read English translation of Koran and the book does not contain any verse that instructs to kill innocent people. On the contrary, he said, the Koran says that if anyone hurts another man, he hearts the entire humanity and if one heels another man, he heels the entire humanity. In fact, Khan has quoted the verse (5.32) of the Koran that reads “…whoever killed a human being, except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all mankind; and that whoever saved a human life shall be regarded as saving all mankind.” It should be pointed out here that whenever Koran uses such lofty humane words, it should be understood that this humanity is confined within the Muslims alone. Koran has no headache to save the lives of the kafirs (non-Muslims) or doing any good to the kafirs. According to the Koran, kafirs are to be slain wherever they could be found.

So the verse (9.5) of the Koran says, “Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters (i.e. kafirs) wherever ye find them, and take them (captive) and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is forgiving, Merciful.” Furthermore, through this verse, Koran declares that for the kafirs in a dar-ul-Islam (or a Muslim country), there are two alternatives, either Islam or death.

Today, only a stupid, ignorant of Islam and of the contents of the Koran, can say that Islam never preaches terrorism. But Shahrukh Khan has said all those rubbish and nonsensical lies not due to his ignorance of Islam. But knowing fully well the contents of the Koran, he has told all these lies simply to misguide and deceive the kafirs. But Khan should know that kafirs today are not so ignorant about Islam as they had been 10 or 20 years ago and it is not so easy to befool them now.

As a matter of fact, translations of Koran in English or in any other major Indian language are now easily available and hence it is not difficult for a kafir to procure one and go through the same. Particularly after 9/11, sale of Koran has gone up by many many times throughout the world. Had Khan been aware of these developments, he would have thought twice before telling all such blatant lies. In fact, by telling such lies, Khan has exposed himself as a stupid liar. He should also know that Internet is now doing an excellent job by exposing Islam to the world of kafirs and recently the film FITNA by Geert Wilders has vividly exposed that Koran and its violent verses of jihad are the fountainhead of Islamic terrorism. We hope that in his similar discourses in future he will restrain himself, so that he might not be taken as a mischievous liar by his fans.

However, the question remains, why this fellow, being fully aware of the contents of the Koran, talked like such a half educated idiot, before the press? There is an Arabic word “Taqiyah” that stands for “holy deception”. If a Muslim can deceive the kafirs by telling lies, or by giving false testimony in the court of law or by any other means, for the benefit of the Muslims, or for the benefit of Islam, the mischief is called taqiyah and Allah has assigned considerable merit on such an act. He will reward such a deceiver profusely on the Day of Last Judgment or Qiyamah.

Any kafir who knows abc of Islam is aware of the fact that the ultimate aim of Islam is to bring the entire world under the banner of Islam or to turn the entire world into a dar-ul-Islam (or land under the rule of Islam). And as part of that goal, India is to be conquered for Islam as soon as possible. So they are going on intensifying terror attacks on the Indian soil. A section of the Muslims are engaged in organizing attacks and procuring Arms and Explosives for the purpose while another section of Muslims are trying to deceive or hoodwink the Kafirs by playing Taqiyah. The reader may recall that a few months ago the clerics of Dar-ul-ulum Deoband, in a press statement, declared that Islam does not profess or support terrorism and a few months later they took out a procession decrying terrorism. But the madrassas that are being run by them are, in reality, are factories for producing terrorists and procuring and storing sophisticated weapons of jihad like AK-47 rifles and high explosives such as RDX and so on. So even a Billy-goat will refuse to believe that they are against terrorism and hence, their above mentioned declaration and propaganda were nothing but Taqiyah. On 7th December, a group of Muslim women took out a procession in Mumbai to condemn terrorism. But even a preliminary investigation might reveal that the women who took part in the said demonstration have taken part in the recent attack in Mumbai by contributing funds and providing safe haven for the terrorists. Hence, their above mentioned demonstration was also a taqiyah.

But the Muslims of these country, including Shahrukh Khan, should know that situation has changed greatly for past a few years. Millions and millions of Kafirs are now studying Koran to know the blood-thirsty creed called Islam and to defend any future onslaught of Islam in this country. So, we like to advise the Muslims, including Shahrukh Khan not to play taqiyah any more because all their efforts will be futile.

As a matter of fact, the Muslims of this divided India have no moral and ethical right to stay in this country. In 1940, these people said that they were a different nation and it was not possible for them to live peacefully with the hateful Hindu Kafirs. In 1947 they got their homeland Pakistan but these treacherous and mischievous people did not go to their cherished land but continued to stay in this country as resident non-Indians with their hidden agenda to make entire India into a dar-ul-Islam. Hindus of this country should have kicked them out as soon as Pakistan had been created. But they have been kind enough to allow them to stay in this country. But there is also a limit of their tolerance and a further irritation might compel them to drive them out of this country.

The author takes the liberty of quoting a few more verses of Koran below so that the reader may judge for himself whether Koran is a book of love and compassion or it is a book of hatred, terror and bloodshed.

Lo! Allah hath bought from the believers their lives and their wealth because the garden will be theirs: they shall fight in the way of Allah and shall slay and be slain.(9/111)

Who is an enemy to Allah, and His angels and His messengers and Gabriel and Michael! Then lo! Allah (Himself) is an enemy to the disbelievers.(2/98)

Muster against them all the men and cavalry at your command, so that you may strike terror into the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others beside them who are unknown to you but known to Allah (8/60)

Did you suppose that you would enter Paradise before Allah has proved the men who fought for Him and endured with fortitude?(3/142)

NB: In plain words, jihad means indiscriminate killing of kafirs, plundering their wealth, occupying their land and other properties by sword, fire and rape. In fact, Islam as a creed has nothing to do with spiritualism and its sole intention is to create an empire throughout the world and hence it puts greatest virtue in its military component, jihad, or fighting against the kafirs with the ultimate motive of eliminating them en masse. Hence for a Muslim, launching a jihad or war against the kafirs, is the highest virtue; higher even than a pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj), not to speak of lower virtues like prayer (namaj) and fasting (roja). So the Koran says, “Fighting against the kafirs is beyond one’s personal likings and dislikings as Allah has commanded to fight the pagans and all those who ascribe partners (shirk) with Allah” (2.216).

The author is a Professor of Applied Physics, University of Calcutta

Mumbai Terror Attacks: Our collective heads are hanging in shame…

2008-11-29T04:15:00.000-08:00

Where was the Crisis Management Group, and, what was it doing all this while? If popular Delhi FM radio station is to be believed, it took precious 9 hours for CMG to assemble and decide about sending NSG team to Mumbai. When it reached there, same source revealed, how they were brought to the venue of their action? No prize for guessing – in BEST buses, no less!

To break the somnambulistic lethargy emanating out of sense of being in power is provably the toughest challenge which Nation faces! Facing the terrorism or hostile nation is consequent and easier!! Leadership changing the dresses and changing the words still spewed same rhetoric! Not only the concerned ministry but the whole country takes the concerned Minister as a liability. ‘Address to the Nation’ with Zombie like glazed looks and monotone - devoid of feelings and emotions can not instill the trust and confidence of the citizens in the national leadership.

Where are the tough anti-terror laws they have been talking about? Where are the tough actions promised time and again?? When police from one Indian state can not enter other state on hot-pursuit then how doctrine of hot pursuit can be practiced when terrorists come from Pakistan and run back to it? Our leaders shy away even naming Pakistan as country behind terrorists activities and on sly name it as ‘neighboring country’ when actually they should name it as Pakistan. Terrorism can not be eliminated by tough talks; it can be eliminated only by tough actions. Taking decision is the most difficulty part; actions are easier for politicians and police forces respectively.

How one redeems his name, ask Hemant Karkare who led from front and sacrificed his life? Till few days back his name was being maligned and now he is a martyr! The political appointment – Director General of Maharashtra Police chose to issue statements from the comforts of his office using brave words when other Director General – in this case – of National Security Guards was in battle fatigue and supervised the whole operation rushing from place to place wherever his guidance was needed. He did not forget to introduce his team of officer involved in operation when he addressed the media. But when a local congress leader faced the camera, not only his followers chanted slogans in his favor as if he was addressing election rally, he himself made it a point to credit his leadership for planning to formulate ‘tough anti-terror law’. Hollow words, all these!

Security personnel and law enforcing agencies are routinely rubbished for being utterly unprofessional, criminally lethargic, poor in intelligence and shabby in action! There have been routinely departmental cases and guilty are punished. What about punishing the leadership? To whom they are answerable?

Some terrorist apprehended will be put through the long drawn legal battle. They might not get punishment, and, even when that happens there is no guarantee that the Government will not dither? Has Afzal been hanged so far? The family members of security personnel who laid down their lives defending the Parliament are still waiting the final decision on Afzal. The Top Executive of the country takes ages deciding on a ‘non-issue’ related to a dreaded terrorist but is always ‘pleased’ to punish some ‘Babu’ coming late to the office!

Those talking bravely about removing ‘North Indians’ from their Land had lapsed in tongue tormenting paralysis and are yet to speak even a single word condemning the terrorist attacks and about their plans to remove the terrorists from their Land. There were already two ‘Senas” in Mumbai specially trained to bully and tormenting the innocents and vandalizing the public and private property. Surely these ‘Senas” could have handled the ‘terror situation’ in Mumbai without the help of ‘outsiders’ for this would otherwise sully the ‘Asmita’ (self dignity) of ‘Marathi Manoos’! Why was it not done remains a mystery! In fact other mystery is what were the ‘Senapatis’ doing at the time of crisis if not hiding in some bunkers?

When India demands America to declare Pakistan as ‘Rogue Nation’ or ‘Terrorist Nation’ it becomes laughing stock as it is same India which has accorded Pakistan the status of ‘Most Favored Nation’. We don’t have to present so called clinching evidences to USA for Pakistan’s involvement in terrorism in India. If we are so convinced about them, what stops us taking drastic actions? Super Power a country doesn’t become by pretensions, one only becomes by tough actions. Time for tough action is now, if there ever was any!

Our collective heads are hanging in shame for the way country’s leadership so irresponsibly and callously handled the situation in Mumbai! Those who know little Greek mythology will understand that cutting the snakes was never a solution as solution was cutting the head of Medusa! We can eliminate terrorism only by eliminating its breeding and feeding ground which is Pakistan.

Violation of Human Rights of Sadhvi Pragya, Col. Purohit and others - Petition to NHRC

2008-11-23T08:33:00.000-08:00

21 November 2008
This afternoon, a petition was submitted to the NHRC by a delegation led by Mr. K P S Gill. The text of the petition is given below.
Apart from those mentioned below, many others also joined the congregation at Mandi House.
It is hoped that you will also send your individual petitions and letters to the NHRC. Some of you may have already received the text of the petition submitted by us.

_______________________________________________________________
PRESS RELEASE
Violation of human rights, dignity & reputation of Sadhvi Pragya & others
A delegation of 81 eminent citizens comprising retired army officers, retired police officers, lawyers, media persons and social workers today marched to the office of the National Human Rights Commission and presented a petition seeking enquiry into the violation of human rights of Sadhvi Pragya and others accused in the Malegaon blast case.

Led by former Punjab Director General of Police, Mr. K.P.S. Gill, the delegation met Justice G.P. Mathur, Member, NHRC and presented a memorandum.

Mr. Gill told the Commission that prima facie a gross violation of human rights has taken place as Sadhvi Pragya was illegally detained for nearly 13 days; physically assaulted and mentally tortured in police custody with no female police officers present; robbed of her dignity by officers who questioned her chastity; interrogated and transferred from one place to another without the presence of female police officers; and worst of all, denied access to her family and lawyers.

The delegation expressed astonishment that despite the affidavit of Sadhvi Pragya being widely covered in the media, and even published in its entirety in one newspaper, the Commission had taken no notice of the case. Justice Mathur assured that the Commission would study the memorandum and follow the due process in the matter.

Other members of the delegation included Mr Balbir Punj, MP Rajya Sabha; Mrs. Nancy Kaul; Brig R.B. Sharma; Mr. Praful Goradia, former MP; Prof. J.S. Rajput; Prof. Makkhan Lal; Mr. K.N. Govindacharya; Mr. Kanchan Gupta, Mr. Jay Bhattacharjee; Mrs. Meenakshi Lekhi, Mr. Rajesh Gogna, Mr. Tarun Vijay, Mr. R. Balashankar; Mr Deepak Rath; Mrs. Jaya Jaitly; Mr. K.R. Phanda and Ms. Sandhya Jain.

Later, a smaller group visited the National Commission for Women and presented a similar petition demanding intervention in the violation of human rights and illegal detention of Sadhvi Pragya, on the basis of her sworn affidavit in a Nashik court.

A copy of the petition to the NCW is attached below.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
21 November 2008
To
Dr. Girija Vyas
Chairperson
National Commission for Women
4 Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg
New Delhi 110001.

Sub: Violation of human rights, dignity & reputation of Sadhwi Pragyan Singh Thakur

Dear Madam,

We the undersigned citizens of India are appalled by the gross abuse of Sadhvi Pragyan Singh Thakur's human rights, dignity, civil liberties, and reputation, by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad.

We are extremely disturbed about the cavalier fashion in which the ATS ignored the law of the land and various judgements of the Hon'ble Supreme Court while inquiring into allegations against Sadhwi Pragyan Singh Thakur and others who have been arrested and are, since 20 November 2008, being held under MCOCA after repeatedly seeking and securing their remand on charges for which no evidence has as yet been put forward.

Sadhwi Pragyan Singh Thakur submitted a sworn affidavit in the Nashik court on 17 November 2008. Prima facie the affidavit reveals serious violations of her rights and those of others named in her statement.

Some points that should be of concern to the National Commission for Women include:

1. She was illegally detained for 10 days and shifted from one place to another.
2. She was physically assaulted and mentally tortured in custody.
3. She was robbed of her dignity by the ATS which questioned her chastity.
4. No female police officers were present during her interrogation and transfer from one place to another.
5. She was denied the right to contact her family and her lawyer.

So immense was her trauma that she even contemplated committing suicide. She was subjected to narco-analysis and brain-mapping tests without her consent; these methods of interrogation are used to make accused persons incriminate themselves, and they were continued even though they repeatedly failed to achieve this objective.

A copy of her affidavit is attached to this petition. We have also attached a copy of The Pioneer, published from New Delhi, dated November 19, 2008, which has reproduced the text of the affidavit.

We believe the National Commission for Women should inquire into the issues raised in the affidavit, especially as Sadhwi Pragyan Singh Thakur and others have been detained under MCOCA. Not to do so would be to deny her right to liberty, dignity, and reputation to which she and other accused are entitled.

Thanking you
Yours sincerely

(The undersigned citizens of India)

2008-10-19T07:18:00.000-07:00

Dr T H Chowdary *
Director : Center for Telecom Management & Studies
Chairman : Pragna Bharati, Andhra Pradesh
Fellow: Tata Consultancy Services & Satyam Computer Services
Former: Information Technology Advisor, Government of Andhra Pradesh
Chairman & Managing Director, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd
Plot No. 8, P&T Colony, Karkhana (Secunderabad), Hyderabad - 500 009.
Phone : +91 (40) 2784-6137,6667-1191 (Off) & 2784-3121 (Res)
Fax : +91 (40) 6667-1111, 2789-6103 (Off)
E-Mail: hanuman.chowdary@tcs.com & thc@satyam.com

1. The weeks-long Hindu Christian riots in Kandhamal District of Orissa and similar incidents in Karnataka are not unlikely to be repeated in Andhra Pradesh very soon. In Orissa and Karnataka the riots are precipitated by the intensive, aggressive, extensive activities of hundreds of missionary organisations with thousands of fulltime, well-paid propagandists and agents. In Kandhamal District, alone there are 350 missionary organisations funded from all quarters of the world. They are engaging lots and lots of unemployed people, to inveigle poor and uneducated Hindus into Christianity by monetary rewards, given in installments related to the number of people that these full-time marketers of Christianity are able to convert. Aiding them are the fifth columns of a number of NGOs with enticing names, all funded by Christian missions from abroad? The fact that in Kandhamal District alone the Christian population has increased from 6 percent in 1970 to 27 percent in 2001, despite an Act enacted by Orissa Legislature in 1967 to prevent conversion shows the intensity of the multinational conversion, [MNC] enterprises marketing and financial clout.

2. In Karnataka, it is plain blasphemy, openly and aggressively indulged in by an MNC enterprise that has led to the Hindu-Christian strife. In Andhra Pradesh, strife is building up and will burst with great fury in not too distant a time. In Village after Village, different denominations of Christians are planting churches, recruiting converts as pastors, paying them handsomely, they are also engaging thousands of unemployed Hindu youth for propagating Christianity and gaining converts. These are being rewarded in installments. Just as the total compensation of company employees is having a fixed and varying components, fixed amount and varying amount related to the number of converts they are able to bring into Christianity.

3. Where from is the money coming for the large number of Christians’ places of worship, if the Christian population is only 1.44%? In contradiction of the census figures, leaders of Christian churches and associations having been asserting that their population is not less 10% to 12% in Andhra Pradesh and therefore every party must put up 10% to 12% candidates of their total number, from Christians. The difference between 1.44% as per GOI’s census of 2001 and 10% to 12% claimed by Christians is clear indication of the fraud that the conversion enterprises are indulging in. It appears that they are telling the converts to continue to describe themselves as Hindu Scheduled Castes, so that they continue to get the benefit of reservations meant for Hindu SCs. They withhold the fact of conversion from the government records. At the same time in order to protect themselves from the exposure of fraud and continue to get benefit of reservations, they have launched a movement for get “Christian dalits”. The greatest lure to get converts from Hindu Harijans is that in Christianity there are no castes. How come then that there are Dalits among Christians? Another fraud that the converters are indulging in is 70% of the Christians in Andhra Pradesh are former SCs. In the educational Institutions and medical Institutions that Christians are founding and managing, there are no reservations for “dalit Christians”. But the churchmen and the converters are asking that in Hindu Institutions, including government and colleges there should be reservations to Christian dalits. 98% of the Bishops in India are from upper castes, while 70% of the Christians are former Scheduled Castes. The caste discrimination continues in Christianity. There are Reddy Christians, Kamma Christians, Brahmin Christians and Dalit Christians. They seldom inter-marry. This is another fraud for selling Christianity.

4. Almost all Hindus are feeling tremendously agitated about the intense activities of the multinational conversion enterprises, their planting of churches in Villages. Families are getting divided, so are Village populations and so will be the entire polity in the state. Wanting to know whether there is anything in the Gospels which promotes this division and strife in the people, I am surprised to find the following in the Gospel according to Luke in the New Testament Chapter 12 -

51 “Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division.
52 “For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two New testament of Bible;
53: “Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother.

5. In Andhra Pradesh especially in districts of the Godavari, we are sitting on a time-bomb of Hindu-Christian strife. To prevent this, intelligentsia in the State and newspapers and media men with integrity must bring out the facts, including the conflict between 1.44% Christian population according to government on the one hand and thousands of churches and claims of Christian leaders that their population is 10% and more. Government should also find out where from the money is coming for thousands of full timers and buildings for churches. Income Tax authorities must also swing into action to assess the total cost of all the churches that are built and find out from the church owners, the sources of their funds.

6. Finally, Government of Andhra Pradesh is contributing not a small measure to the building up of strife between Christians and Hindus by subsidising the pilgrimage of Christians to Jerusalem from the funds of the 'secular' Government of Andhra Pradesh. The 'secular' government is spending tax moneys for the performance of Christians’ marriages. Government of Andhra Pradesh is not spending tax moneys for subsidizing the pilgrimage of Hindus or performance of their marriages. The TTD’s ‘Kalyanamastu’ is financed by offerings of Hindus to the Hindu God, Balaji in Tirumala. Government of Andhra Pradesh is also spending tax moneys, performing marriages of Muslims. This way the government is contributing to the heart burning among Hindus and therefore for the building up of potential strife between the various religious communities in the state. It would be proper for any responsible government, especially the government of Andhra Pradesh which claims to be transparent and accountable to come out with a White Paper on the number of conversion enterprises, associated NGOs and finances available to the MNC enterprises to build numerous churches; how many are engaged as full timers for conversion activities and whether the Supreme Court’s observation that the right to propagate guaranteed in the Constitution does not confer right to convert is being flouted by the MNC enterprises.. And since the conversion activities are conducted as a business with modern marketing methods, with multinational sources for funds, the constitutionally guaranteed freedom to propagate, profess and practise religion is being misused by the commercial activities of the multinational conversion enterprises. Right to convert oneself to another religion is legal; can such a right to convert extend to MNC enterprises, operating on commercial lines? It would be right and prudent to ban this organised marketing of religions by company-like multinational enterprise conversion missions offering the same product competitively under different brands.

^^^^^

The Sachar report: A flawed number game

2008-10-16T08:03:00.000-07:00

By: Nitish Sengupta
(Dr Nitish Sengupta, an academic and an author, is a former Member of Parliament and a former secretary to the Government of India)

The Sachar Committee Report, an often-quoted 404-page document, is disappointing, both in its method of analysis and in the way it has collected and presented some dubious statistics. A fundamental fact that has been ignored is that almost 95 per cent of elite Muslims in India, who largely depended on jobs, went over to Pakistan after Partition. Those who stayed back in India were, by and large, the rural community, the self-employed and the service providers. A great majority of them, under the influence of powerful mullahs, kept away from modern education and, in consequence, modern jobs and professions. Thus, the figures for Muslim percentage in government jobs practically started from a zero base.

This point should have been mentioned in the report’s overall analysis. Its omission is a serious statistical error. Then again, the Committee conveniently ignored the fact that the social and economic position of a community does not necessarily depend on the jobs that its members hold in the government or the organised sector. If that had been the case, I am afraid the position of Parsees, to take one example, would be extremely backward. The Sachar Committee’s Report completely ignored that there is a much larger number of self-employed people, tradesmen and service providers among the Muslims who do not seek government jobs. Another area where it has gone completely wrong is in creating an impression that India’s entire educational and economic system has gone out of its way to exclude Muslims. Whereas, in actual fact, we have all gone out of our way to give placement to them wherever they merit selection.

There are indeed, some very serious errors, on the statistical front. Prof A.R. Hashim has pointed out that in looking at the position of Hindus in general, the Sachar Committee first excluded the Scheduled Castes and Dalits from the general Hindu community and then compared them with the Muslim community. The Committee also pointed out that the position of the Scheduled Castes and Dalits is little or no different from that of the Muslim community. To exclude such a big chunk from the Hindu community and thereafter compare the residual Hindu community with the Muslims is a serious oversight.

Another Muslim scholar, Prof Imtiaz Hussain, also trashed the report on the ground that it ignored the status of Muslims in terms of jobs held in all the South Indian states and others like Gujarat and West Bengal. He pointed out that in all the southern states the Muslims are much better off than what the Sachar Report has made them to be. He questioned the statistics presented by the Sachar Committee in relation to the Census data which shows that the Muslims are better off in several states.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, chief minister of West Bengal, has pointed out that the report ignores the Muslim peasantry who benefited from the state’s land reforms programme. Insofar as the organised private sector is concerned, one point which has escaped the Committee’s attention is that many of our business organisations are still dominated by the caste system. Consequently, a company dominated by banias generally looks out for banias. In that process too Muslims and minorities suffer as much as people belonging to other Hindu castes. This need not necessarily be an anti-Muslim bias.

Clearly, Justice Sachar simply chose to ignore available evidence to make out that the Muslim community is not doing any better than the other communities. He should have taken into account examples like Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro, the richest corporate Indian, Habil Khorakiwala of Wockhardt, the Cipla group, or for that matter, people like Habib Rahman, chairman ITC Hotels, Israt Hussain, a top associate of Ratan Tata, and many others. He should also have objectively made a community-wise analysis of the employees of such successful enterprises as Azim Premji’s Wipro. Is merit their main criterion for recruitment? Does this amount to discrimination and anti-Muslim bias? Or do successful Muslim industrialists reserve jobs for fellow Muslims irrespective of their merit?

I also wish the Sachar Committee had taken into account the brass manufacturers and traders of Moradabad, the glass workers of Ferozabad, the textile operators of Bhiwandi, the carpet makers of Kashmir and the Zari workers of Varanasi. Sadly, these people do not find any mention in the Sachar Report which chose to concentrate only on certain levels of government jobs and worked out the position of Muslims only on that account.

That is not all. The Committee has not taken into account the overwhelming eminent position occupied by Muslims in Bollywood, including the fact that almost 50 per cent of top actors and actresses are Muslims, if not more. Does that smack of discrimination? It remains a mystery as to why the government did not think it appropriate to assign this work to the National Minorities Commission or even to its own department of minority affairs and, instead, chose to appoint a separate committee. Equally mysterious is the fact that without choosing to discuss this matter in the country’s sovereign Parliament or allowing an informal debate, the government has announced that it has accepted all the recommendations of the Sachar Committee. Neither the government nor the Indian nation at large deserves the accusation by the Sachar Committee that they have been anti-Muslim all along. Indian Muslims occupy a pride of place in our democracy, and Gujarat (2002) and Babri Masjid (1992) are exceptions, not the rule.

Taken all together, one has to come to the sad conclusion that the Committee has erred both in its analysis and its conclusions. Mr. Justice Rajinder Sachar has been a much respected friend for many years. But I am afraid, in this report he has side stepped from the position of a judge and taken on the rule of a lawyer who was assigned a certain brief and went on to collect evidence which suited that brief.

Endangered Demography Nature and impact of Demographic changes in West Bengal - 1951-2001: Bimal Pramanik

2008-10-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

A change in the demographic pattern in a country is an obvious resultant effect of migration which is as old as human civilization, but if the change is significantly high in a short span of time it is bound to cause a serious social concern for the country experiencing this phenomenon. No people of a country accept migratory people with open arms and when this migration of people belonging to a separate religion takes the shape of a design the question of acceptance almost vanishes giving rise to social unrest and tension. Significantly, however, there has been marked departure from this hypothesis so far as migration/infiltration from East Pakistan/Bangladesh to West Bengal is concerned. The Hindus who were uprooted from their hearth and home in East Pakistan due to religious persecution and measures or lack of them, taken by the successive Governments in Bangladesh after partition in 1947 were accepted as refugees by the Government of India and her people, not of course without grudge, and were given shelter, citizenship and were gradually absorbed in the mainstream of Indian people, particularly that of West Bengal. This was quite understandable. But what happened after the birth of Bangladesh w3hen it was the declared policy of the Government of India not to grant citizenship to any people (even if they were Hindus and were forced to leave Bangladesh as refugees after 1971? In what way the migratory trend post 1971 was different from the earlier trends? How were hordes of Muslims able to settle in the border districts of West Bengal without much notice and commotion? How was this silent demographic invasion possible? Was there any historical perspective behind this large scale infiltration or a well thought out design of our neighboring country? What change this invasion has brought up in the demographic pattern of border districts as well as interior districts of West Bengal? These are the queries I have tried to address here.

I would like to make it clear that no extraneous facts except that are borne out of the data available from the Census reports have been considered for determining the change in the demographic pattern and the author has been swayed by reason to spell out some of its fallouts and possible danger to the polity of West Bengal socio politically as well as economically. One does not have to be communal or for that matter secular in one’s attempt to pin point a social change which is part of history and history does not have any conscience of what is good or what is evil but its grand design provides some clues in finding out ways and means to mend our mistakes committed in the past in order to sustain a decent life for the present and the future, socio-politically and economically.

It is fair to affirm that the vast demographic changes in the eastern and north-eastern States of India are deniable. Yet there is ample scope for an analysis of facts and factors behind such demographic changes. Moreover, the nature, the pattern and even the motives are to be brought into proper focus, if one is to understand the totality of phenomenal demographic changes that have occurred. Migration from one country to another has been a persistent and significant socio-economic and socio-political phenomenon over the whole world. The concept of migration is not alien to the Indian people also. In fact, as an inevitable consequence of Partition of India in 1947, mass migration to West Bengal became ceaseless and large-scale. There was a continuous flow of the Hindu minority population from erstwhile East Bengal/East Pakistan, which was attributed mainly to the communal enmity of the Muslim majority population. The rate of this continuous migration from East Bengal to West Bengal, however, fluctuated, till 1971, depending on a multitude of socio-political and socio-religious factors.

A novel outcome of demographic pressures became more and more prominent over the years among the Bangladeshi migrants setting in India’s border region. Amazingly, this has gone largely unnoticed, even though it reflects significant changes in the daily life style and affects the very root of the civil society. We have gone into some details in this study of such unanticipated fallout of the demographic changes. I have tried to analyze the negative impact of gigantic immigration fro Bangladesh upon India’s attempts to preserve secular harmony as well as national security. We do not intend to overrate the military potential of Bangladesh while assessing the impact of Bangladeshi immigrants upon India’s national security in north eastern and eastern States, but we can hardly underrate the significance of their disturbing and distorting impact on the ethos of secular harmony that India stands for, and has been practicing unabatedly since independence, despite Partition on religious grounds.

The sordid impact of Bangladeshi immigration upon India is but a logical consequence of the stark failure of Bangladesh to evolve as a secular multicultural polity. The ruling circle of present day Bangladesh is determined not only to broaden and deepen the Islamisation of Bangladesh, but also to use Islam to incite separatist or secessionist forces in eastern/north-eastern India - by extensive support to a protracted arms struggle, if necessary. It is an open secret that in Bangladesh many international terrorist outfits with aggressive fundamentalist agendas are making all efforts to envelop Bangladesh’s socio-cultural fabrics with new Islamic prints and designs—though at the cost of the liberal tenets of Islam. The religio-cultural aspects of social harmony and the political-economic aspects of national security have been taken up in an integrated fashion in this study. This will enable us to assess truly the potential menace casting its shadow on the relations between India and Bangladesh. Following the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the eastern and north eastern region of India faced a novel political and social challenge. At one time, critics and analysts complacently characterized it to be a migration flow. But later on, a series of political events proved that this was nothing but a kind of infiltration flow. As a corollary, it is equally imperative to understand the changing responses of the political parties and their leaders in this great drama of incessant demographic change, creating a menace to social harmony and national security.

This threat to our national security and social harmony will not be clearly understood unless we analyze the role of Bangladesh in this regard. Since the days of Partition, the Muslim psyche in both the parts of Pakistan has been suffering from a sense of injury about losing half of Bengal and Assam. They have been ruthlessly pursuing the policy of ‘lebensraum’ since the days of partition. Acting, perhaps, on the philosophy of the great Italian, Machiavelli, who observed in the 16th century that “Sending immigrants is the most effective way to colonize countries because it is less offensive than to send military expeditions and much less expensive.” Bangladesh with a single minded devotion has been following this policy, and, t say the least, it has been quite successful in this endeavor.

There was, however, not much concern about Muslim infiltration from erstwhile East Pakistan to India in the pre-1971 period. For, an extensive migration of Hindu population into India was regarded as a natural fall-out of Partition. If we look back to the history of political development of East Pakistan, especially in the phase of 1966 to 1971, we can easily identify the new features and directions of the strong Bengali nationalist sentiment to encourage and enthuse Bengali masses, irrespective of religion, against the political leadership of the military junta of Pakistan. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was able to articulate step by step the aggrieved Bengali psyche by mooting an alternative scheme of sharing power at the center of Pakistan’s power structure. The central political power structure in Pakistan failed to comprehend anything beyond their selfish design of perpetuating the status of eastern Pakistan as a subservient region of the West Pakistani heartland. Obviously, on the other side of the barricade, Mujib’s Bengal started resenting a colonial treatment.

When Mujib and his Bengal were fast assuming a posture of defiance against Pakistan political leadership, the Muslim population in North-East and Eastern India regionally, and in India as a whole, were suffering from a kind of nervousness at any prospect of political weakening of Pakistan, in case Mujib could triumph, and thereby justify his complaint about Pakistani colonial domination over eastern Pakistan. Obviously, Hindus, by and large, whether in east Pakistan or outside, were increasingly amused and gradually enthused about a potential political metamorphosis of the Pakistani state. Mujib was not squarely ready at the strategic level for a resolution of his demand by even a sort of war, even if that was thrust upon him. On their part, the leadership of Pakistan started suffering from uncertainly about he fallout of a conflagration between Mujib’s Bengal and western Pakistan. This was what exactly occurred in December 1971, almost inevitably. The destiny of Pakistan from its historic origin was thus already blown off. The entire subcontinent was now on the verge of a new set of relations which were not intelligible, far less recognizable. Only one thing was discernible, and that was the fate of hapless and hopeless Hindus, whose sacrifice in the 1971 freedom struggle appeared to be negated by the assassination of Mujibur Rahman, and who started moving as an endless flock of people from Bangladesh to multiple directions into the land of India.

A new politics, a new economics and a new culture, taken together, started unraveling itself in India as a result of secularism, which aggravated the confusion of the exuberant and extravagant politics of secularism of the erstwhile radical nationalist and the radical left in India. Gradually, for the first time, the Hindu refugees were being treated at par with the Muslim infiltrators. This twin flow at the same time had introduced a new opportunity to show perversely that Bangladesh was as much secular as India. Politicians, who placed immediate electoral gain above national interest, could successfully equate Muslim infiltration with the Hindu refugee flow under the grand title of infinite and indefinite migration of Bangladeshis with nondescript faces through all conceivable manholes in the border region. A gunman, a smuggler and a family man have started working together only to mislead the border security forces, because the infiltrator is not easily distinguishable from a refugee. A new era has started, Leading Bangladeshi strategic analysts and intelligentsia introduced the theory of lebensraum in the 1980s. They claim that their right to settle in India’s eastern and north eastern States is to be considered as the natural course of overriding what is to them, an unacceptable political demarcation of the border. Growing population pressure and crippling poverty and pauperization of the marginal rural masses in Bangladesh encouraged, if not forced, them to put this agenda of migration as a life and death question, which no lock can resist. In the mean time, the consolidation of Islamic forces was already advanced. They adopted the agenda of a greater Islamic region as a grand political strategy. Although it was an emotional issue for Sheikh Mujib, later it became a political and strategic issue with the support of Pakistan. Population Movement or migration, internal or external, is a universal phenomenon of human society. Its nature, degree, direction and dimension, however, may vary from case to case. Numerous studies have been conducted to identify the attributes associated with migratory movements of people. Along with ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors, a variety of explanations are also available as the cause and effect of migration and consequent societal change. A change in the demographic pattern in any country is an obvious resultant effect of migration, which is as old as human civilization, but if the change is significantly high in a short span of time, it is bound to arouse a serious social concern in the country experiencing the phenomenon. No people of a country accept migratory people with open arms, and when this migration of people belonging to a separate ethnic group and religion appears to reveal an unholy political design, the question of acceptance almost vanishes, giving rise to social unrest and tension. The north eastern region of India, particularly Assam and West Bengal, are cases in point.

The change in the demographic pattern of the Eastern and North-Eastern States, particularly West Bengal during the last five decades, has been exhaustively dealt with in this book, and we can sum up the phenomenon in a few words. A new dimension in the political and social arena has emerged in this eastern and northeastern region of India after independence of Bangladesh in 1971. A novel phenomenon of demographic pressure—emanating from Bangladesh—started looming larger and larger in the border region. During the last three decades, illegal migration from Bangladesh to India is going on unabated. All the refugees who had been coming to West Bengal during Pakistan days were Hindus. In the Bangladesh era, Hindus are coming as usual like in the days of Pakistan due to religious persecution and political pressure, but a new feature also started emerging as people from the majority segment (Muslims), for different reasons and purposes, started coming to West Bengal. Both the Central and West Bengal governments were generally aware of this development, yet no great concern was visible before November 2002. In recent years, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister of the NDA Government, the Chief Minister of West Bengal and even the President of India have expressed their grave concern and agony on the issue of illegal Bangladeshi migration, and its implications for internal security issues. There is no state religion in secular India, which is obliged to protect all religious equally, but the Bangladesh Republic has to preserve religious peace and harmony under the shadow of its state religion, viz. Islam. The adoption of Islam as the state religion has utterly demoralized Hindus, and has reinforced their already powerful compulsions about migration to India. Significantly, a state religion cannot extend the minimum of socio-economic protection even to Muslims, who, instead of being satisfied with living in Islamic Bangladesh, have long been voting with their feet, and continuously leaving for secular India, especially Assam and West Bengal. Whereas this is a constant tribute to India’s secularism, this is also a threat to India’s socio-economic-political security. Unfortunately, authorities in India have displayed little alertness in preempting or coping with this threat. For more than three decades (1971-2005) there ahs been a ceaseless and significant demographic change in the districts of West Bengal, particularly districts adjoining Bangladesh. Now both sides of the Indo-Bangladesh border region are inhabited by a population which is ethnically, culturally, linguistically and religiously identical. Already, thus, it has taken the shape of a demographic invasion.

To sum up, callous local administration, limited scope for earning income in the incompetently managed economy of Bangladesh and religious vested interests may not always be meticulously working out anti-Indian designs, but from ground level data the impression is inescapable that they are so working. The most important fact to note is that the residual Hindu population in some border villages, still not insignificant, remains under a constant pressure to migrate from their traditional and ancestral places of habitation. Opinion makers and decision makers have not paid even the minimum of attention to available data on this significant subject. Such data, recorded and analyzed in the present study, deserve immediate attention from all those who are genuinely interested in national integration, internal security and social harmony in India.

2008-09-20T04:28:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it is the little things that matter. At a time when the flood situation in Bihar (thanks Prachanda) is getting grimmer by the day and the MSM is maintaining a complete blackout on the Nuclear deal (India is slowly but surely bartering away its National Interest for the sake of cronies) - the logo change for the Kendriya Vidyalaya schools may not seem very significant.The logo had been around for decades. It is implausible that the idea struck the HRD ministry all of a sudden. The actual reason is very simple - a group of very resolute individuals have embarked upon a mission of cleansing. Unless you go out hunting for Saffron with loads of resources, it is rather difficult to spot the innocuous Lotus flower in that logo.Funny that the world seems to have settled on the "Liberal Democratic Republic" as the final ultimate stable form for nation states. Not only that, they also claim that this is the most moral and ideal form of statehood. Incidentally, the sample size for this system is perhaps less than half a dozen and the idea has been around for only 60 - 100 years - a tiny blip in the history of modern humans. We don't have a problem with the "Liberal Democratic Republic" per se. We do have a problem with the fact that the arguments put forward in its support are essentially moral (in a dogmatic way) in nature. When it comes to religion, the proponents of this system make a complete volte face and reject dogma. Of course, only when it suits them.The system works well when it is derived from economic principles especially the value added concept and an inviolable socio-political contract known as the constitution. It also seems to work in a homogeneous population. It is only when you add things like secularism, liberalism and multiculturalism that the system comes under severe strain.The problem is that today there are very few nations where this fancy idea comes under any kind of stress test. So, what is your ideal of such a nation? Sweden? try again. Saudi Arabia? Oops, sorry, not a "Liberal Democratic Republic". Malaysia? Sri Lanka? Norway?Finally, after exhausting all the possibilities, you say Italy! and all hell breaks loose. Intellectuals have argued that when we finally arrive at that elusive ideal of a "Liberal Democratic Republic" (henceforth referred to as LDR), the notion of "our kind of people" will cease to exist. It is yet to be seen in practice. From Darfur to Georgia to Malaysia to Italy - people recognize a concept wholly external to the LDR ideals. Sometimes it is based on ethnic identity, sometimes it is religion.This unrecognized by intellectuals yet very real notion puts a great strain to the idea of LDR. As far as we can see, the resolution happens with the help of military or political might.One such strain occurred in a tribal district in Orissa, one of the poorest state in the Indian LDR.This resulted in MSM headlines such as "orphanage attacked, nun killed". The incident that lead to these headlines also happened to be an orphanage and a Sadhvi was killed. Reportedly a grenade was involved. But it was not until the second orphanage was set on fire that the incident made it to the headlines. Yet the MSM widely reported the first incident (as an insignificant footnote to the second) as "a VHP leader killed". No mention of orphanage or Sadhvi getting killed.Clearly, where a riotous mob of terrorists claim that "our Government is at the center" while they are murdering an 80 year old social worker, the idea of LDR is under strain. The LDR is also under strain when the news is not reported properly by the media.Of course, lies are implicit in the word liberal.

Kashmiri communalism in the aftermath of Amarnath

2008-09-13T21:46:00.000-07:00

By
Saurav Basu
Source: http://saurav-basu.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/07/kashmiri-communalism-in-the-aftermath-of-amarnath.htm

The surge of communal unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, over a minor issue of transfer of 40 acres of degraded forest land to the Amarnath shrine board in order to provide meagre facilities to lakhs of Hindu pilgrims has been rudely rejected by a large section of the local Muslim population along with those elements who choose to represent them, like the PDP, the Hurriyat and even the NC. Mindless violence on the streets has already claimed a few lives, injured scores of innocent pilgrims, driven off thousands of tourists and cost large scale damage to public property. In Hindu dominant Jammu, counter protests are gathering momentum. The Congress government, in a damage control exercise switched the governor who is officially the chairman of the Amarnath Shrine board so as to declare no claims would be made for the land on its behalf which effectively revokes the order. On the 1st of July, it finally revoked the order itself. Still protests continue unabated and showcase the acute anti-India sentiment prevailing in the valley which had been conscientiously obscured by sections of the media and the government for decades.

Who is to blame for the communalization of one of the most sacred Hindu pilgrimages, certainly at par with the Islamic Haj for which successive Indian governments bend over backwards to provide rebates in order to consolidate the Muslim vote bank. Till date, we have no case of any militant Hindu protest against sponsoring exclusively international Muslim pilgrimages out of public money. But when it comes to Hindus, even a minor concession transforms into a conflagration because of the heat of Muslim fundamentalists. Elements of the so called “secular” media were swift in pretending that sectarian politicians were to blame. While most blamed the communal approach of the PDP there were exceptions like the communist daily ‘the Hindu’ evening out the guilt by having the effrontery of claiming that the Amarnath Yatra has been hijacked by Hindu chauvinists for communal ends, for no criticism is countenanced of the provocative behaviour of pilgrims linked to Hinduvta groups. [1] The problem with such mischievously perverted argumentation is that you have no proof to augment your views since the Muslim group themselves have raised no objection on the yatra as such principally out of economic factors, although invention of such imaginary Islamic persecution may provoke the targeted audience sooner or later.

The PDP is a known anti-national organization. Mufti Mohammad had in fact invoked the idea of applying balm to dreaded militants with scores of army kills in order to soothe the Kashmiri psyche. He had also demanded autonomy for Kashmir, its complete demilitarization coupled with the repeal of Arms forces act. Over 15 years ago, some claim he had personally orchestrated the kidnapping of his daughter Rubaiya and the V P Singh led Indian government had shamelessly caved into the demand of JKLF to release terrorists in exchange. Their role in the current controversy is on similar lines, as they claim the sentiment of the common man has to be respected.

But why is the Kashmiri Muslim so paranoid about the government decision. If they are to be believed, the government is attempting to alter the demography of Kashmiri through this decision. This is inexplicable, since the easiest route for such an endeavour would be revoking the unconstitutional article 370. To imagine, that construction of temporary shelters for a period of 2 months would lead to demographic alteration is the height of paranoia. Moreover, it has been Muslims who have launched a demographic siege on the nation. Muslim population has officially increased 3 times since independence in India, while Hindu population in Bangladesh and Pakistan has been reduced 5-10 fold due to systematic genocide and terror. Yet, birth control measures are being consistently shunned by Muslims although the Prophet himself encouraged the only known contraceptive in his time, that of coitus interruptus. [2] Suhrawardy, the man who divided Bengal, had even assured the English governor Herbert that Muslims would soon dominate the population of Western Bengal because of their inexhaustible reproducing capabilities.

Some of our other secular critics and Hindu appeasers contend that environmental issues should dictate decisions, instead of religious ones. Such specious reasoning holds no water simply because those in the vanguard of violent protests have no objections on that count. For when three years ago, CM Mufti Mohammad Sayeed revived the Mughal road at a cost of massive destruction of environment in the Peer Panjal ranges, with destruction of over 10,000 trees, affecting 25 wildlife sanctuaries and endangered species including the Markhor goat, no one uttered a word of objection. Similarly, no hue and cry was raised when the Mufti government similarly transferred 5000 kanals of forest land to Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University at Rajouri. [3] Free land was also transferred to Islamic University at Awantipora in South Kashmir. Under the very noses of the government, a land mafia flourishes in cohorts with the corrupt district administration. Yet in an obviously anti Hindu move, the project for Sharda Peeth University was scuttled. [Sharda Peeth was set up by the 8th century Hindu sage, Shankara whose ruins lie somewhere in the region of POK.] Moreover, the entire area of 40 hectares constituted degraded forest land only. In addition, the shrine board has assured the government it would set up no permanent structures at the site and all environmental safeguards would be in place. It is hard not to sympathize with the view that the Muslim government in Kashmir, with virtually no Hindu representation (despite constituting more than 35% of the demographic population in J&K) has embarked on a cultural invasion which threatens to outlaw every instance of Hindu identity from the valley, with blessings from successive pseudo secular central governments.

There is another group of the politically correct crowd which sheds tears at the alienation of the Kashmiri Muslim because of the current imbroglio. They have been living in their own dream world of secular fancies which includes our English media who continue to propagate the myth of Hindu Muslim brotherhood in Kashmir when all empirical evidence is to the contrary. In order, to construct a secular identity, separatist agitations in Kashmir have been consistently facing media blackouts.
The fact of the matter is Hindu Muslim unrest in Kashmir spans a period of an entire millennium ever since the Turks captured power in the valley. A sustained period of Hindu persecution was met with respite under a couple of benevolent and enlightened Muslim rulers in the 15th century. Yet, in the 20th century, the Hindus had captured both power and administration and the Muslim population under Sheikh Abdullah was howling slogans of Islam in danger. [4] Some historians question that under such trying circumstances how come Kashmir remained free of communal violence? The answer lies in the fact that administration in Kashmir was completely in the hands of the Hindu government which was a big deterrent to Muslim fundamentalists. Similarly, Sindh was spared large scale violence because of the composite character of security and administrative agencies in place whose members were not given any option to serve either in India and Pakistan, thereby preventing the communalization of the services unlike what happened in Punjab. [5]

Prevalence of this anti Hindu sentiment could be perceived even by non political icons like the little master, Sunil Gavaskar. He recalls that in the summer of 1983, while playing the first one day international in Srinagar just after winning the world cup, the team was booed in the ground by sections of the crowd. “This was unbelievable. Here we were in India and being booted even before a ball had been bowled…..Moreover, there were many in the crowd shouting pro-Pakistan slogans which confounded us, because we were playing the West Indies and not Pakistan” [6] . What a cricketer could conceptualize, our political leaders could not. The situation kept on progressively deteriorating and terrorism was the next logical situation Kashmiri pundits had to face. Till date, more than 200 pundits have lost their lives due to Islamic terror, and 10,000 others been rendered refugees in their own nation. The casualty figures would have exponentially multiplied had the then governor, Jagmohan, a brilliant administrator in his own right, not shown the presence of mind to facilitate Kashmiri migration away from the valley. It is pathetic to find petty political commentators like Ram Puniyani or the self conferred ‘secular ‘fundamentalist in Mani Shankar Aiyar blaming Jagmohan for the exodus. In their opinion, the kashmiri pundits should have brazenly brushed aside bullets to prove their Kashmiriyat. However, in a refreshing manner of honesty, Omar Abdullah, the NC leader and grandson of Sheikh Abdullah has publicly confessed that Kashmiri Muslims are to blame for the Pundit exodus as he sadly recalls that “None of us was willing to stand up and be counted when it mattered. None of us grabbed the mikes in the mosques and said 'this is wrong and the Kashmiri Pundits had every right to continue living in the valley'," he said. "Our educated, well-to-do relatives and neighbours were spewing venom 24-hours a day and we were mute spectators either mute in agreement or mute in abject fear but mute nonetheless. “ [7].

Even more recently, in a telling commentary of the state of affairs and the mindset prevailing in the valley, the hardliner separatist leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani demanded the right to self determination in the valley amid pro-Pakistan and pro-freedom slogans. Quite conspicuously, the main attraction of the rally was flags of the terror outfits Lashkar-e-Toiyaba and Hizbul Mujahideen which were seen flying from different directions. [8] Perhaps, it was for this reason that the fanatical lawyer A G Noorani demanded the release of Afzal Guru, the mastermind of the attack of Parliament which resulted in killing of 4 security personnel only in order to appease the feelings of Kashmiri Muslims [9].

Quite unsuspectingly for the government, the Amarnath controversy has brought to national focus the nature of Kashmiri separatism which is evidently anti-India, if not Anti-Hindu. A sustained propaganda by pro Pakistani forces and media has accentuated the gravity of the situation. After all, in Kashmir, it is easier to access PTV than Doordarshan, and Pakistan Radio than AIR because of the callousness of those in charge. These events have also punctured the socio-historical myth that economic dependence keeps communal polarization in check since Kashmiri separatists are taking the damning of tourism and trade in their stride, perhaps believing that the material loss will be more than compensated by the spiritual gain. To sum it up, we believe it is high time the Indian government and the secular crowd wakes up from its slumber and stops fantasizing on both the magnitude and nature of the Islamic insurgence in the valley and the reasons for its popular support being anything other than religious.

REFERENCES
1. Sense Prevails in Kashmir, The Hindu, June 30, 2008
2. The Demographic Seige, Koenraad Elst, Voice of India, 1998
3. What Mughal Road didn’t that shrine land transfer plan did, Kavita Suri, The Statesman, June 30, 08 http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?clid=2&id=237467&usrsess=1
4. See Divided Kashmir, Mushtaqur Rahman , Lynne Rienner Pub, 1995; Although heavily biased in favour of Muslim separatism and partially untrue, it sheds good light on the prevailing separatist anti Hindu sentiment in the valley under Hindu rule
5. Understanding Partition, Yuvraj Krishan, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2002, Page 21
6. Runs ‘n Ruins, Sunil Gavaskar, Rupa, 1984, Page 62-63
7. Omar Abdullah blames Muslims for pandit exodus, Rediff.com, May 15, 2008 http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/may/15jk1.htm
8. The Statesman, Geelani foray into the valley, 23-4-2007,

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?date=2007-04-23&usrsess=1&clid=1&id=181747
9. The Hindustan Times, 24-10-2006, Popular feeling in Kashmir is valid ground to grant Afzal pardon.

Source: http://saurav-basu.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/07/kashmiri-communalism-in-the-aftermath-of-amarnath.htm

2008-07-08T21:57:00.000-07:00

This poem has been composed by a fourth generation, 24-year old career officer in the Indian Armed Forces, spurred by the report of the Sixth Pay Commission and an insensitive article written by a 'respectable' denizen of the country in a national daily on the armed forces and the pertinence of the Sixth Pay Commission therein. This free-flowing verse has not been edited; it's to ensure that the originality of the angst is maintained. After all, when you are in pain, the language of expression is the last thing in your mind.

'How you play with us, did you ever see?
At Seven, I had decided what I wanted to be;
I would serve you to the end,
All these boundaries I would defend.

Now you make me look like a fool,
When at Seventeen and just out of school;
Went to the place where they made 'men out of boys'
Lived a tough life sacrificed a few joys!

In those days, I would see my 'civilian' friends,
Living a life with the fashion trends;
Enjoying their so called 'College Days'
While I sweated and bled in the sun and haze.

But I never thought twice about what where or why
All I knew was when the time came, I'd be ready to do or die.
At 21 and with my commission in hand,
Under the glory of the parade and the band,
I took the oath to protect you over land, air or sea,
And make the supreme sacrifice when the need came to be.

I stood there with a sense of recognition,
But on that day I never had the premonition,
that when the time came to give me my due,
You'd just say,' What is so great that you do?'

Long back you promised a well to do life;
And when I'm away, take care of my wife.
You came and saw the hardships I live through,
And I saw you make a note or two.

And I hoped you would realise the worth of me;
but now I know you'll never be able to see,
Because you only see the glorified life of mine,
Did you see the place where death looms all the time?

Did you meet the man standing guard in the snow?
The name of his newborn he does not know...
Did you meet the man whose father breathed his last?
While the sailor patrolled our seas so vast!

You still know I'll not be the one to raise my voice
I will stand tall and protect you in Punjab Himachal and Thois.
But that's just me you have in the sun and rain,
For now at Twenty Four, you make me think again;
About the decision I made, Seven years back;

Should I have chosen another life, some other track?
Will I tell my son to follow my lead?
Will I tell my son, you'll get all that you need?
This is the country you will serve,
This country will give you all that you deserve?
I heard you tell the world ' India is shining',
I told my men, that's a reason for us to be smiling

This is the India you and I will defend!
But tell me how long will you be able to pretend?
You go on promise all that you may,
But it's the souls of your own men you betray.

Did you read how some of our eminent citizens
Write about me and ridicule my very existence?
I ask you to please come and see what I do,
Come and have a look at what I go through.

Live my life just for a day
Maybe you'll have something else to say?
I will still risk my life without a sigh
To keep your flag flying high
But today I ask myself a question or two
Oh India, Why do I still serve you?

2008-07-05T01:14:00.000-07:00

If you have to die, do so around Delhi or Mumbai.

The passing away of the only Indian to be appointed Field Marshal when in active service has been remarkable for the warmth of the ordinary men and women, who queued up to say meebeenamet to the adorable dikra who put his life on the line for them.

It has also been remarkable for the complete lack of grace and gratitude, civility and courtesy, decency and decorum on the part of the bold-faced names rapaciously grazing the lawns of power in Delhi and elsewhere, for the brain behind India's only decisive military victory.

Sam, the Bahadur, had been unwell for a while now. From about 1000 hours on June 26, reports of his being "critically ill" had appeared in the media. Yet, when the "expected tocsin" sounded at 0030 hours till the guns were fired in salute around 1500 hours on June 27, "civil society" chose to show its incivility.

- Pratibha Patil , the commander-in- chief of the armed forces with all the time in the world: Absent

- Hamid Ansari: Vice-president releasing books and writing reviews of books by fellow-travellers: Absent.

- Manmohan Singh , the prime minister who could do with a bit of the field marshal's charisma and heroism: Absent

- Sonia Gandhi : daughter-in- law of the woman the field marshal called "sweetie": Absent

- L K Advani: prime minister in waiting of the party which would like to do to Pakistan what Manekshaw did: Absent

- M Karunanidhi and Surjit Singh Barnala: chief minister and governor of the state which Manekshaw had made his home for 35 years: Absent.

Politicians may have their reasons. They always do. Maybe, there are issues like protocol. Maybe, this is one way in which 'civil India' shows the armed forces its place. Maybe, this is why we are not as militaristic as Pakistan. Maybe, the knees are just too old to climb the hills.

But what about the armed forces itself?

· A K Antony: the defence minister 'now behaving like the chairman of the confederation of the armed forces' trade unions: absent 'due to prior political engagements'.

· The chief of army staff: absent (away in Russia )

· The chief of navy staff: absent

· The chief of air staff: absent

The fact that the defence minister was represented by his deputy Pallam Raju, the fact that the navy and air staff sent two-star general rank officers, shows that however high or mighty, however rich or powerful, civilian or military, if you should die as you must, you should do so somewhere in the vicinity of New Delhi - or Bombay.

Or else, they must have some use for you. Or else, too bad…

As he rightly surmised once: "I wonder whether those of our political masters who have been put in charge of the defence of the country can distinguish a mortar from a motor; a gun from a howitzer; a guerrilla from a gorilla -- although a great many of them in the past have resembled the latter."

The contrast couldn't be starker:

· When Amitabh Bachchan was ill after being socked in the stomach during the shooting of Coolie, Indira Gandhi flew down to Bombay to show her concern.

· When Dhirubhai Ambani died, L K Advani cut short his Gujarat tour to pay his respects to an 'embodiment of initiative, enterprise and determination'.

· When Pramod Mahajan was shot dead by his brother, Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekawat had the time to attend the funeral.

Our VIPs and VVIPs have time for dead and dying celebrities, charlatans, fixers. Not for a field marshal?

In his biography, K M Cariappa, the only other field marshal India has had (and who too died at age 94), writes of his father's cremation in May 1993:

"Honouring him in death as they did in life were Field Marshal Manekshaw, the three service chiefs all of whom belonged to the same course and at whose passing out parade from the joint services wing father had presided, the gracious chief minister M Veerappa Moily and C K Jaffer Sharief, Minister for Railways representing the President as the supreme commanded of the armed forces."

Somebody should have told the geniuses in Delhi that Sam, the Bahadur, passed away in Wellington, Ooty, not Wellington, New Zealand. The nearest civil airport is Coimbatore, just 80 km away.

If this is how we say goodbye to Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, any wonder why Rang de Basanti could successfully tap into the angst of an entire generation?

With Love from Patriots Forum - Letter to Director, NCERT

2008-07-01T09:16:00.000-07:00

To
Prof. Krishna Kumar
Director,
National Council of Educational Research & Training (NCERT)
Ministry of Human Resource Development,
N.I.E. Campus, Sri Aurobindo Marg,
New Delhi -110016

Sub: Request for refraining from including the questionable findings of Sachar Committee Report, already challenged in Delhi High Court, in the books of School children - the matter being sub judice.

Sir,

This is with best compliments from the Patriots’ Forum.

To introduce ourselves briefly, the Patriots’ Forum is a voluntary orgnisation of like-minded people pledged towards upholding India’s civilisation ethos and identity. A brief note on the Forum is attached. More details could be found in our website www.patriotsforum.org.

We have had the occasion to see a news report appearing in the Delhi edition of the Hindustan Times on May 29, 2008, with the title “Sachar Chapter on Muslims in syllabus” It has been stated interalia in the newsitem:

Quote (.)
Sachar Chapter on Muslims in syllabus

In a move that can cause political ruffling, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has included a chapter in class VIII social science text book on Muslims not benefiting from country’s social and economic development.

The chapter refers extensively to the Sachar Panel report on marginalisation of Muslims in India. …………………

It is apparently for the first time that a chapter on marginalisation of a particular caste or a religious group has been included in NCERT text books taught in thousands of CBSE schools in India.
(.) Unquote.

A copy of the newsitem is also attached for ready reference.

As it would be seen from the copy of the ‘Rejoinder’ referred to in the attached note, the Forum found the findings of the Sachar Committee, reportedly referred to in NCERT’s new text books, to be seriously flawed, even to the extent of not acknowledging facts on the ground. The Sachar Committee in particular did not, in spite of the Forum pointing out, take into consideration the following important facts:

i) That in 4 globally recognized human development indicators, namely, Infant Mortality, Child Mortality, Degree of Urbanisation and Life Expectancy at Birth, Muslims are far better placed than the Hindus.

ii) That the real reasons for lower per capita income of Muslims are two. First, according to Census 2001, every Muslim woman is giving birth to at least one more child than her Hindu / Christian counterparts due to which the dependency burden on Muslim households / breadwinners is much higher. Second, due to diktats of Mullahs and religious leaders of the community. The work participation of Muslim women, as per Census 2001, is nearly 50 percent lower than the work participation of Hindu and Christian women - the ratios being 14.1% for Muslim women, 27.5% for Hindu women and 28% for Christian women. It further reduces the total income of Muslim household.

iii) Instead of advising the Muslim community and their leaders to opt for small family norm and allow their womenfolk to come out of burka (i.e., veil) for participating in productive activity and nation building, the Sachar Committee has taken recourse to making recommendations for giving them totally unmerited benefits outside the purview of the laws of the land and the Constitution of India as such.

iv) In an important Seminar held in the prestigious Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi, Prof. Sanjay Kumar of Centre For Study of Developing Societies, had established on the basis of a survey that there was no, repeat no, difference in the economic and educational status of Hindus and Muslims. He further, concluded that available data further proved that the proportion of the “very poor” persons was higher in the Hindu community than among Muslims.

Not finding any way out, as again explained in the attached note, the Forum filed before the Delhi High Court a PIL against the implementation of the recommendations of the Sachar Committee Report. The Honourable High Court of Delhi has taken due note of our submission and has posted the matter for hearing on August 21, 2008. A detailed update on the PIL has also been attached to the note. It deserves to be highlighted that apart from pointing out serious flaws in the recommendations of the Sachar Committee, it has also been pointed out in the PIL that the constitution of a religion specific committee, i.e., for the Muslim Community alone, was a flagrant violation of Article 15 of the Constitution which expressly forbids any discrimination on ground of religion or gender. The Honourable Bench of the Delhi High Court has apparently taken due note of the contents of the PIL, as you may like to see from the observations of the Bench, as quoted in the attached update on the PIL.

In any case, the entire matter of the Sachar Committee is now subjudice. You are, therefore, requested to kindly refrain from including any reference to recommendations of the Sachar Committee in school text books of NCERT, as reported in the press, till the decision in respect of the PIL. The Forum will be grateful to know that its submission has reached you and in order due consideration.

We do hope you will treat the matter with the serious it deserves.

Thanking you,

Yours sincerely,

(D.C. Nath)

I wish it was said by Indian Prime Minister

2008-06-28T10:03:00.000-07:00

The then Prime Minister, John Howard - Australia said thus .... A detailed report

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia , as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks. Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques.

Quote:

'IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali , we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians.

This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom' 'We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society . Learn the language!'

'Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.' 'We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.'

'This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, 'THE RIGHT TO LEAVE'.' 'If you aren't happy here then LEAVE. We didn't force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted.'

Maybe if we circulate this amongst ourselves, Indian citizens will find the backbone to start speaking and voicing the same truths.

Andhra Pradesh: Rules set for Christian yatra

2008-06-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

Reference: http://www.christia naggression. org/item_ display.php?

www.crusadewatch. org

It is unfortunate that in a state where peoplecannot even afford square meals a day, the Government headed by aChristian fundamentalist chief minister is misusing people's money topay each Christian pilgrim to visit Jerusalem. The amount paid to each Christian visitor is enough to feed a poor child for 2 years) source: Deccan Chronicle, June 15, 2008Hyderabad, June 14.

State government is finalising the guidelines to Holy Land Yatra to Israel for Christians on the lines of Haj Pilgrimage. Only white card holders are to be made eligible under the scheme forwhich government earlier gave the nod for financial assistence.

The Minorities Welfare Department will be soon coming out with the guidelines afterconsultation with AP Federation of Churches sources said. Christiansholding white cards will be given preference on first cum first servebasis and those who are above 50 years will be given financialassistance.Church authorities and lay groups asked the government to sanction Rs20,000 to each pilgrim on par with Haj Pilgrims. As per the schedule thepilgrimage covers Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Jordan River, placesaround dead sea and Sea of Galilee and several other places connected to Christian faith. A group of 50 to 100 pilgrims will be visiting the HolyLand."Mainly the tour is for a week and charges would be around Rs 55,000 toRs 65,000 depending on accommodation and facilities provided by travelagent. It is proposed to limit the period to five days in Israelexcluding the travel to reduce the cost to Rs 45,000 in which governmentwill bear Rs 20,000 and the rest will be borne by the pilgrims," Fr TAnthony Raj, Executive Secretary of AP Federation of Churches, said.The state government already sanctioned Rs 2 crore and at least 1000pilgrims will be benefited.

Advisor to the Government and former South Central Railway, GM Mr T. Stanley Babu, is also part of the team finalising the guidelines. An official of Minorities Welfare Department said "The pilgrim shallproduced SSC certificate which shows that he is a Christian. Even theMRO certificate stating that the person is a bonafide Christian willalso be valid. The applicants should possess a valid passport with aminimum validity period of two years at the time of applying." Ascreening committee with five members including officials from MinorityWelfare Department, AP State Minorities Commission, AP MinoritiesFinance Corporation and representative from the church bodies.

About Patriots’ Forum

2008-06-25T01:15:00.000-07:00

Feeling alarmed at the fast changing religious composition of the Indian society, as revealed in the Government of India’s Census Report of 2001, a few like-minded individuals got together and registered themselves as a nonprofit, Charitable Thrust on March 28, 2006. A voluntary study-group emerged with representations from a cross section of the people, including retired civil servants, army officers, social scientists and other sections of intelligentsia. Soon a core group started working with the primary and immediate objective of making all Indian citizens, irrespective of caste, creed or community, aware of the ground realities, especially relating to demographic changes, that the members of the Forum felt will adversely affect the multicultural, secular and age-old pluralistic society of India as also the integrity of the Indian civilization as a whole. Following are the office bearer of the Forum –

Mr. D. C. Nath President: dcnath@patriotsforum.org
Mr. R. K. Ohri Secy. General: rkohri@patriotsforum.org
Lt. Gen. Prem Sagar Vice President: premsagar@patriotsforum.org
Mr. D. K. Mittal Hony. Treasurer: dkmittal@patriotsforum.org
Mr. Hari Kak Member: greengold@airtelbroadband.in
Mr. J.P. Sharma Member: sharmajp@gmail.com
Mr. Ranvijay Shanker Member: ranvijayshankar@gmail.com
Mr. Kailash Chandra Member: drkailashchandra@rediffmail.com

The Forum has chosen to remain apolitical, non-communal and nationalist in all its activities.

The announcement of the setting up of the Sachar Committee, the selection of its members and formulation of the terms of reference by the Government of India alerted the Forum to the possibility of another step by the Government in furtherance of its policy to garner minority votes by providing religion based concessions. The Forum, therefore, took up the issue with the Sachar Committee by filing a formal petition, requesting to be invited for further presentation in person as per the terms of the government’s notification.

Not getting any response from the Sachar Committee, the Forum submitted a further “Rejoinder” to the Committee, with copies to all members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha as also senior government functionaries like the Prime Minister, Union Home Minister and others. None however took any note. A copy of the ‘Rejoinder’ is attached. After further waiting for government’s action on the Sachar Committee Report submitted to the Lok Sabha, the Forum finally filed a PIL before the Delhi High Court in January 2008 against the proposed implementation of the recommendations of this Report. A detailed update on the progress of the PIL is attached.

Update on Patriots’ Forum’s PIL against Implementation of Sachar Report

2008-06-25T00:47:00.000-07:00

The PIL, filed by the Patriots’ Forum in Delhi High Court in the first week of January 2008 against the implementation of Sachar Committee Report, was transferred on 27 March 2008 by the Hon’ble CJ to a Bench comprising Justices TS Thakur and Siddhartha Mridul. The case came up for hearing before this Bench on May 12, 2008. Senior Advocate Shri P.N. Lekhi, appeared both for Patriots’ Forum and Rashtriya Mukti Morcha on whose behalf another PIL was filed by Shri Ravindra Kumar. The Government was represented by Additional Solicitor general PP Malhotra.

Shri Lekhi argued that the Sachar Committee Report was a blatant violation of the Constitution. He dubbed it as an extension of the Pakistan Resolution which had led to partition of the country.

Addressing the Respondent, the Bench commented "You are trying to please one community. Poverty is the common enemy. You should fight against poverty rather than saying that you would fight against poverty for one community only. This is where the rot lies."

"You are saying that more money to be spent for one minority community. Should it not cut across the caste and religion? Does the Sachar Committee say that facilities are available to other communities?" the Bench asked, adding "such issues should not be decided on the basis of emotions".

The Bench further observed, "Does it mean that drinking water facilities are available to the majority community and no person from it lives in slums?" "Under the Constitution, can a welfare state say that it would focus on a particular area because the minority community reside there? Can it say that it would spend more money in that area?" the Bench asked.

The government counsel contended that the PIL was a politically- motivated one and the Court should refrain from deciding these issues. “This is a political issue which cannot be decided in the Court. It is to be decided by the people in election. The High Court had earlier imposed a cost of Rs 50,000 for filing frivolous petition."

Senior advocate P N Lekhi, counsel for the petitioners, objected to the government's contention and said there was nothing called minority community in the Constitution. "The Constitution of India does not recognise any minority or subordinate segment of Indian society as identifiably separate or a sociological group...They (Muslims) cannot be labelled as a minority in the sense of a subordinate group,"

After hearing the contention of both the parties, the Bench was about to issue notice to the Centre but the move was strongly opposed by Malhotra. The Bench, however, objected to the stand of the government saying "it is a serious matter. The area is grey and needs a proper debate." The Court finally passed the following order;

“Post the writ Petition for admission on 21st August 2008 along with the application for intervention filed by Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha.”