How Indians look at Taseer’s assassination

[ajtr]

How Indians look at Taseer’s assassination​

NEW DELHI: A popular cartoon strip in the Times of India on Thursday equated Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws with India’s statute against sedition. The widely loved children’s doctor Binayak Sen was recently given a life sentence under the law.

Writer Arundhati Roy is among others being investigated for sedition after they spoke up for Azadi for Kashmir.

The cartoon strip, crafted by the nationally applauded humorist Jug Suraiya, shows two women. The first says: “Salman Taseer has been shot dead because of Pakistan’s blasphemy law.” Her friend replies: “Binayak Sen has been jailed for life because of India’s blasphemy law.” “I didn’t know India had a blasphemy law,” says the first woman. “Sure, we do — it’s called sedition,” replies the second.

A few in the Indian media have found in the murder of Salman Taseer an opportunity to prescribe ways to Pakistan to fight religious terrorism, but a small news item in the Times of India on Thursday offered a clue to New Delhi’s own nervousness with home-grown terror.

The single-paragraph report did not have a dateline, but appeared to refer to a police advisory in Mumbai. It said: “Police have instructed private security agencies to check background details of guards they recruit, especially youths from Kashmir, as intelligence agencies suspect the Indian Mujahideen (IM) plans to use such people for terror strikes in the city.”

The IM, which some say has links with Lashkar-e-Taiba, has been blamed for a clutch of attacks across the country.

In an editorial titled ‘The slippery slope’, The Indian Express said Tuesday’s murder of Salman Taseer by one of his guards underlined the deepening structural crisis in the nation.

“The first major political assassination since the killing of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto a little over three years ago has brought into sharp relief the growing militant infiltration of the security forces, a weak civilian government that is unable to govern, an economy in shambles, and an all-powerful army leadership that appears to have lost the plot,” The Express said.

“The assassin has reportedly said his motivation was to avenge the governor’s support to changes in Pakistan’s notorious law against blasphemy that has victimised not only religious minorities but also mainstream Muslims,” the paper pointed out.

It said Pakistan’s leaders must comprehensively reject Ziaul Haq’s vision and turn back to a more moderate and democratic ideal of Pakistan, taking on extremist elements.

“Otherwise cracks in the polity will only deepen, and the worst losers will be the people of Pakistan.”

The Kolkata-based Telegraph said Taseer’s murder makes clear that Pakistan remains on the edge of the abyss.

“Thousands of lives, and billions of pounds, have been lost in an effort to defeat the insurgents who threaten to seize control of the nuclear-armed state. And it is becoming clear that the Pakistani state either isn’t willing, or isn’t able, to confront the Islamist movement that it has nurtured for decades — and which now threatens to turn the country into a burnt-out dystopia.”

Last month Ashok Singhal, leader of the neo-fascist Vishwa Hindu Parishad, had warned that Congress president Sonia Gandhi would meet the fate of her assassinated mother-in-law, former prime minister Indira Gandhi, if she persisted with an investigation into the alleged involvement of rightwing Hindu activists in sabotage and bomb attacks, including the fire-bombing of the Samjhota Express. Most Indian newspapers didn’t find the comments newsworthy.

 

[Ammyy]

Instead of reporting Dawn start new business ????

 

[mautkimaut]

No we dont look at the blasphemy law like that.Every country has sedition law ,Binayak Sen has been given life term but he can go to supreme court.
Where as Taseer wasnt blasphemous.He just wanted to correct if any wrong was done.

India hasnt killed Arundhati yet or have they?
IF we had such hardliners, Arundhati ray and other of her kin would be warming the earth.
But i believe and so do most other normal people that there should be tolerance of views eevn if it is hurtful

 

[marcos98]

SELF-DELETE

 

[Masterchief]

What happened to Sen is indeed very sad but people of India and the media are supporting him, the pressure is now on high court, but in late Salman Taseer case most people have supported the assasin,and this is really sad.

 

[StingRoy]

Atleast he is alive to fight the judgment.

btw.. Most Indians are against such a harsh judgment against him.

 

[ajtr]

Who are we dying to please?​

Jawed Naqvi
Yesterday
THE condolence message from Hillary Clinton notwithstanding, did Salman Taseer go down fighting a good fight against Muslim fanatics to win applause from the Americans or did he die for the survival of Pakistan?

The question should be posed to Rahul Gandhi in the neighbourhood. India`s Congress party scion had made a valid point about the threat to his country from Hindu extremists — just as Pakistan is being wrecked by Muslim bigots — but instead of telling his countrymen about it, he whispered his worry into the ears of the American ambassador in Delhi. Nothing could be as self-defeating as not trusting your very own in the battle to defend your core ideals.​

In a curious way, the fact that the young Gandhi mentioned the Hindutva threat to US ambassador Tim Roemer, in fact, added to his credibility. A public statement would in most likelihood be pounced upon by his detractors as a populist and a potentially communal ploy to curry favour with Muslims and so forth. That particular worry should, of course, be no reason to keep the nation oblivious of an ominous possibility.

Right-wing Hindus expectedly pooh-poohed Gandhi`s remarks to Roemer, which would probably never have surfaced but for the WikiLeaks` revelations. He contended that the Hindutva upsurge posed a greater threat to India than did Muslim extremism. The view appeared to be based on a simple and compelling logic. Muslim extremists threaten Pakistan because they are or were part of the state structures thanks to Gen Zia`s policies. Likewise, Hindutva and not so much Muslim bigots challenge Indian secularism.

The reason is not difficult to comprehend. Although homegrown Muslim fanatics in India, even those having links with Lashkar-i-Taiba from across the border, have a stake in destroying India`s secularism, they remain handicapped in their mission because of their total absence from the levers of state power.

Hindutva forces, on the other hand, like their counterparts in Pakistan, have penetrated nearly all the sectors of state that matter. Parliament is the only place where so far they cannot carry out subversion. Of course, it may not take long before they are emboldened to contemplate doing just that. Hindustan Times

Even as I write, a front-page report in the says that investigators are probing the proximity between the Hindu revivalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Swami Aseemanand, the main suspect in the bombing of the Samjhota Express and a clutch of other outrages for which Muslims were blamed.

Also, Digvijay Singh, a close advisor to Rahul Gandhi, has been in the news for suggesting that the anti-terror police chief of Mumbai, Hemant Karkare, faced a threat from Hindutva groups before he was killed in an ambush during the November 2008 attack on Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists.

This week Singh produced telephone records of his conversation with Karkare hours before he was killed in which he had expressed apprehension about Hindu extremists. There has been speculation that Hindutva groups may have used the chaos unleashed by the terrorists to settle scores with Karkare as he was closing in on their own terror links across the country.

The fact that Punjab Governor Salman Taseer had opposed Pakistan`s notorious blasphemy laws has emerged as a key factor in his murder by a religiously driven security guard. This poses a huge but not insurmountable challenge to a bill moved by former information minister Sherry Rehman to repeal the mediaeval law. It is in any case a fight that India can do well to learn from and Rahul Gandhi has done well to grasp the point. But what can he do to avert a situation that Pakistan`s poet Fahmida Riaz had noted a while ago? Tum bilkul hum jaise nikle ab tak kahaa`n chhupe thay bhai? Wo ghaamadpan, wo jaahilpan jisme humney sadi ga`nwaaee — ab pahonchi hai dwaar tumharey? Aray badhaee, bahot badhaee

Fahmida Riaz recited her poem in Delhi when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in power and wreaking havoc in Gujarat. “!” (And so you too turned out like us, brother? How well you masked your bigotry. The easy ignorance, the rabid delinquency we nurtured for decades [in Pakistan], is knocking on your doors. Well done my friend, what else can I say?)

Of course, any claim such as the one made by Rahul Gandhi (and played down by his party not the least because it is crawling with closet Hindutva acolytes) would not be taken too seriously by India`s mainstream media. In any case, goes the argument, the BJP, which is the most likely political vehicle to usher full-blooded religious fascism in India has never secured more than a third of the active votes. This is a fallacy. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The story of how Hitler became a dictator — , by William Shirer, gives a good account of it — may hold a lesson.

In the presidential election held on March 13, 1932, there were four candidates: the incumbent, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler and two minor candidates, Ernst Thaelmann and Theodore Duesterberg. The results were: Hindenburg 49.6 per cent; Hitler 30.1 per cent; Thaelmann 13.2 per cent; Duesterberg 6.8 per cent. In other words, almost 70 per cent of the German people voted against Hitler, causing his supporter Joseph Goebbels, who would later become Hitler`s minister of propaganda, to lament in his journal, “We`re beaten; terrible outlook. Party circles badly depressed and dejected.”

How it turned into an overwhelming majority for Hitler, not without deft manoeuvres to eliminate key opponents, are elements that Indian polity is only too easily exposed to.

The other route to power, which is being attempted in Pakistan, is through religious terrorism. That is what the remaining 70 per cent Indians have to be inoculated against. And that particular vaccine will come from India`s native strength, not from the American embassy in Delhi. Ditto for Pakistan.

Moreover, Rahul Gandhi should realise that his chosen interlocutors have a dubious history of courting rather than challenging religious bigotry, be it in India or Pakistan and practically everywhere in the world.

The writer is `s correspondent in Delhi.

Dawn jawednaqvi@gmail.com

 

[justanobserver]

^^
Oh please, don't bring this "we're equal you're equal, Pakistan is radicalized India is even more radicalized" trash
This might make you guys feel better, but deep down you do know the reality

Atleast he is alive to fight the judgment.

btw.. Most Indians are against such a harsh judgment against him.

But he didn't say anything blasphemous! It was his actions not some mere words.

The guy is/was a Maoist sympathizer

 

[SpArK]

Sedition by no means is catagorised on the basis of language/race/religion/region.. Its just that it has got a "funny" name here..

People voicing openly against the nation which can lead to volatile situations and suggests separation or disintegration are dealt with same law everywhere in the world.. be it India or Turkey or China or Uganda....

Guess its publicity times for Mrs Roy alike s.

 

[IND151]

many people supported assassin of taseer. it is shocking.his death is is a ringing bell for those who oppose Islamic hardliners and have sympathy for minorities in Pakistan. extremists have shown that they wont hesitate to kill those people who want corrections in blasphemy law.

 

[Nalwa]

^^^^Another BS piece by Jawed Naqvi. He's always too eager to please his newspaper employers with stories of Hindu extremism in India.

 

[LaBong]

But he didn't say anything blasphemous! It was his actions not some mere words.

The guy is/was a Maoist sympathizer

Putting a guy behind the bar just because he is sympathetic to an ideology(while denouncing the violent means Maoists adopt unequivocally) is comparable to Blasphemy law.

The only argument you can give that Maoists aren't lovey-dovey bunch. But then again, Dr Sen isn't a page 3 activist as well.

 

[Ammyy]

These type of thread show mindset of thread started


Some days before ajtr make a thread which shows one Hindu ( Later find out Muslim) caught on terror plot in England


I dnt know why people like ajtr not warned by admin or mod to post this type of threads ????

 

[subject17]

I'm still wondering why ajtr why has 2 Indian flag under his name? anyone care to explain?

 

[brahmastra]

^^ may be he do not like his flag!