dabong1
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'India could revert to pre-1947 state'
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alamgir
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because he see past not futur
Indian Military Bases Abroad : An Introductory Critique
This post is in response to two articles which appeared in The Times of India, 17 July 2007, titled, "Indian forces get foothold in Central Asia" and "India closely watching energy interests" by Rajat Pandit.
The two articles talk of quiet efforts by the Indian state to acquire military bases in the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan. The story in focus mentions that, "...India is preparing to deploy at least one squadron of Mi-17 helicopters at the Ayni airbase in Tajikistan. This will be its 'first real military outpost' on foreign shores and give New Delhi 'strategic reach' in energy-rich Central Asia." Ayni military air field is 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of the country's capital, Dushanbe. Refer to the map below for the exact location, Ayni is more on the Afghan-Uzbekistan border rather far away from Pakistan.
Three reasons can be discerned from the articles as to why India should seek a military base in the region: 1. India has growing energy interests in the region; 2. Gives New Delhi 'strategic reach'; 3. To keep tabs on "any anti-Indian activity" in the terrorism-infested Pakistan-Afghanistan region. The article assesses the past prescribed policy of not seeking bases abroad due to a, "...conservatism that was part of the idealism...of the past" giving way now "...to a realism...driven both by...threats...needs of an emerging power." In the authors opinion "...this military outpost will be used for intelligence-gathering and surveillance operations".
Tajikistan acquires importance for India as only a narrow strip of Afghani land (Wakhan Corridor) separates Tajikistan from Pakistan. The Wakhan corridor, at places only about 10 kilometers wide, has an interesting history and owes its Afghan belonging to The Great Game era when three important powers (Czarist Russia, British Colonial India and the Chinese empire) competed for influence. The Wakhan corrridor was given to Afghanistan so as to create a buffer between the Russian colonial empire and British India.
And before we spill more milk than necessary it would be educative to take cognizances of the fact that the Tajik government has denied plans for an Indian base!
Rajat Pandit is an old hand in The Times of India and has been writing on military and strategic issues as long as I can remember. Pandit's writing makes this idea of a foreign base smack of an inferiority complex, a sort of devious (the article begins..."Quietly, very quietly...") bravado about the secret evil Indian desire, similar to a feeling of incredulity when such high politics is discussed over cups of tea in road side Indian tea stalls.
The issue of 'military out post' on foreign shores is an idea that appears abhorable, precisely because most foreign military forces are seen as occupying forces and whatever little good-will the nation might earn through softer policies (building roads, hospitals and such infrastructural links) translates into a disgust and a loathing that many American bases around the world are classical testimonies of.
Does Rajat Pandit have a short memory or is it us that suffer from selective amnesia? Do we forget that the gratitude with which the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was invited to Sri Lanka by the Lankan government to fight the Indian trained Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)? The result was a maiming and a ridiculous farce that has perhaps never been seen before nor repeated thereafter. The Indian trained Tamil Tiger Force routed and harassed the IPKF for most of its stay. That ambition of the Indian state was a direct result of the Indira Doctrine (Named after Indira Gandhi during whose time the doctrine was espoused and asserted New Delhi's regional overlordship which South Asia neighbors were expected to accept without demur).
We will consider what Pandit has to say regarding the utility of bases abroad:"... a full-fledged base in the future...will... give India the option to even rapidly 'insert' its special forces into nearby areas if its interests are threatened, as they were during the hijack of IC-814 to Kandahar in December 1999."
The expression of a 'military post at the moment' being turned into a full fledged base in the future is the stuff of the Indian strategists wet dreams and the construction of the sentence catches its improbability. Getting to firmer grounds, it would be note worthy if we actually conducted a thought experiment with regard to the Kandahar type situation and the rapid 'insertion' of special forces to 'protect' Indian interests. The 1999 hijacking of the Indian Airlines Kathmandu-Delhi flight made halts at Amritsar-Lahore-Dubai till it finally taxied in Kandahar, Afghanistan under a Taliban regime where the exchange of hostages and the prisoners took place.
Does Pandit think that special forces in Tajikistan using the base will be able to rescue such a flight! The flight first landed in Amritsar which is in India and being on the border with Pakistan is probably equipped with better security and in its own territory the Indian state failed to stop the plane and these dreamers talk of using special forces in a Kandahar type situation? Either we have our priorities grossly misplaced or Pandit is one of those analysts who sits and fantasizes about a more masculine and powerful India carrying a stick around to police the 'extended neighborhood' in his effort to dispel the boredom and lack of action a researcher is plagued with due to his profession.
The '... quiet sense of satisfaction...on part of the Defense Ministry and the IAF' that Pandit writes about is an ambition rooted in the western security discourse without taking in account the real and ideological cost to the Indian brand. The Indian state in its extended neighborhood enjoys a benign reputation, owing to the lack of hard power engagement with this area and also as a softer alternative to the growing Chinese military might. A lot of this good will in the extended neighborhood is earned out of cultural (Hindu/Buddhist in South East Asia; Islam in Central Asia) attractiveness. We only need to contrast Indian image in our immediate neighborhood (Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka) five years ago to actually realize the futility of naked force. Our soft power potential remains our crucial strength. Any application of hard power resources is going to boomerang on the influence we have.
It is important to bear in mind the lessons learnt from the experience of military bases in the past. Globally only the United States, France and Russia are the significant countries which actually have military bases abroad. The French are present in Francophone Africa on request of the ex-French colonies. The Russians are grudged and hated wherever they have a base. The Americans hold onto their bases only with the help of a pliant political system (Japan) or client regimes in Saudi Arabia and other locations. The Chinese deride and scorn the practice of military bases as a colonial idea and view it as occupation and hegemony. Significantly, the Chinese do not have bases and yet their influence (North East Asia-Central Asia) based on hard or soft resources only increases with the growth in national strength supported by interesting diplomacy.
The Costs
Bases create suspicion and resentment among local populations, much as the Soviet forces faced after liberating Eastern Europe in World War II. A recent example is the 9/11 attacks, partly due to the U.S. decision to leave behind bases in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states after the first Gulf War. Much as the Roman Empire tried to use its military power to buttress its weakening economic and political hold over its colonies, the uses of bases in our era is losing idea and a proposition that is slowly losing relevance. Another significant cost is the strategic over-reach this trajectory takes imposing heavy expenses on the protection and maintainence of these bases. One base is just a start, all regions in the world are significant and with increase in national power and interests (as power increases so does the area of core interest), the acquiring of bases promises to be a spiraling demand.
Conclusion
A foreign military outpost in the long run is more harmful than beneficial. Apart from the local and regional resentments it might give rise to, it would be important to also re-consider this dictum of 'great powers' need strategic reach being interpreted in physical terms. Even when it comes to securing Indian energy interests, it is a worth while question to pose that for how long and how many military bases do we require to get what we seek from nations? Is this the imaginative peak of our diplomacy? I do not mean to discredit or debunk the sheer power which flows out of such a military presence but my argument remains that we need to be more creative and think in more imaginative terms the future of Indian diplomacy as well our power projection!
Indians consistently tout the fact that India has never invaded and has only been invaded, we also emphasize our non-violent nature by advertising Gautam Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi in the same breath but when it comes to areas where we can actually make a difference, our fall back options are largely imitative of the previous era. It is important to understand that a Great Power is one which apart from the attributes of hard power also offers something new and different to the world, an ideological basis to its ambitions and claims. The Colonial era offered enlightenment and modernity (White Man's Burden) as its justifying ideology and the United States offers democracy, free enterprise. The Chinese have come to the centerstage with their own world view, of enlightened dictatorship (a Confucian tradition) and a non occupying, non military base seeking great power. Whether such claims are true or merely superficial is irrelevant but what is crucial is the ability to offer an alternative world view. The moral tone of Indian foreign policy for most of the existence of Modern India, offers us a viable alternative to chart that discourse as also practice it. The moral element in Indian foreign policy should not mean to let down defenses rather it would mean that salience on the use of force will be avoided and such appearances of great power status like 'military bases' will be avoided. And as an alternative to seeking a military presence, India ought to expand its influence through infrastructural activities.
http://satyabrat.blogspot.com/2007/07/indi...ses-abroad.html
This post is in response to two articles which appeared in The Times of India, 17 July 2007, titled, "Indian forces get foothold in Central Asia" and "India closely watching energy interests" by Rajat Pandit.
The two articles talk of quiet efforts by the Indian state to acquire military bases in the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan. The story in focus mentions that, "...India is preparing to deploy at least one squadron of Mi-17 helicopters at the Ayni airbase in Tajikistan. This will be its 'first real military outpost' on foreign shores and give New Delhi 'strategic reach' in energy-rich Central Asia." Ayni military air field is 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of the country's capital, Dushanbe. Refer to the map below for the exact location, Ayni is more on the Afghan-Uzbekistan border rather far away from Pakistan.
Three reasons can be discerned from the articles as to why India should seek a military base in the region: 1. India has growing energy interests in the region; 2. Gives New Delhi 'strategic reach'; 3. To keep tabs on "any anti-Indian activity" in the terrorism-infested Pakistan-Afghanistan region. The article assesses the past prescribed policy of not seeking bases abroad due to a, "...conservatism that was part of the idealism...of the past" giving way now "...to a realism...driven both by...threats...needs of an emerging power." In the authors opinion "...this military outpost will be used for intelligence-gathering and surveillance operations".
Tajikistan acquires importance for India as only a narrow strip of Afghani land (Wakhan Corridor) separates Tajikistan from Pakistan. The Wakhan corridor, at places only about 10 kilometers wide, has an interesting history and owes its Afghan belonging to The Great Game era when three important powers (Czarist Russia, British Colonial India and the Chinese empire) competed for influence. The Wakhan corrridor was given to Afghanistan so as to create a buffer between the Russian colonial empire and British India.
And before we spill more milk than necessary it would be educative to take cognizances of the fact that the Tajik government has denied plans for an Indian base!
Rajat Pandit is an old hand in The Times of India and has been writing on military and strategic issues as long as I can remember. Pandit's writing makes this idea of a foreign base smack of an inferiority complex, a sort of devious (the article begins..."Quietly, very quietly...") bravado about the secret evil Indian desire, similar to a feeling of incredulity when such high politics is discussed over cups of tea in road side Indian tea stalls.
The issue of 'military out post' on foreign shores is an idea that appears abhorable, precisely because most foreign military forces are seen as occupying forces and whatever little good-will the nation might earn through softer policies (building roads, hospitals and such infrastructural links) translates into a disgust and a loathing that many American bases around the world are classical testimonies of.
Does Rajat Pandit have a short memory or is it us that suffer from selective amnesia? Do we forget that the gratitude with which the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was invited to Sri Lanka by the Lankan government to fight the Indian trained Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)? The result was a maiming and a ridiculous farce that has perhaps never been seen before nor repeated thereafter. The Indian trained Tamil Tiger Force routed and harassed the IPKF for most of its stay. That ambition of the Indian state was a direct result of the Indira Doctrine (Named after Indira Gandhi during whose time the doctrine was espoused and asserted New Delhi's regional overlordship which South Asia neighbors were expected to accept without demur).
We will consider what Pandit has to say regarding the utility of bases abroad:"... a full-fledged base in the future...will... give India the option to even rapidly 'insert' its special forces into nearby areas if its interests are threatened, as they were during the hijack of IC-814 to Kandahar in December 1999."
The expression of a 'military post at the moment' being turned into a full fledged base in the future is the stuff of the Indian strategists wet dreams and the construction of the sentence catches its improbability. Getting to firmer grounds, it would be note worthy if we actually conducted a thought experiment with regard to the Kandahar type situation and the rapid 'insertion' of special forces to 'protect' Indian interests. The 1999 hijacking of the Indian Airlines Kathmandu-Delhi flight made halts at Amritsar-Lahore-Dubai till it finally taxied in Kandahar, Afghanistan under a Taliban regime where the exchange of hostages and the prisoners took place.
Does Pandit think that special forces in Tajikistan using the base will be able to rescue such a flight! The flight first landed in Amritsar which is in India and being on the border with Pakistan is probably equipped with better security and in its own territory the Indian state failed to stop the plane and these dreamers talk of using special forces in a Kandahar type situation? Either we have our priorities grossly misplaced or Pandit is one of those analysts who sits and fantasizes about a more masculine and powerful India carrying a stick around to police the 'extended neighborhood' in his effort to dispel the boredom and lack of action a researcher is plagued with due to his profession.
The '... quiet sense of satisfaction...on part of the Defense Ministry and the IAF' that Pandit writes about is an ambition rooted in the western security discourse without taking in account the real and ideological cost to the Indian brand. The Indian state in its extended neighborhood enjoys a benign reputation, owing to the lack of hard power engagement with this area and also as a softer alternative to the growing Chinese military might. A lot of this good will in the extended neighborhood is earned out of cultural (Hindu/Buddhist in South East Asia; Islam in Central Asia) attractiveness. We only need to contrast Indian image in our immediate neighborhood (Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka) five years ago to actually realize the futility of naked force. Our soft power potential remains our crucial strength. Any application of hard power resources is going to boomerang on the influence we have.
It is important to bear in mind the lessons learnt from the experience of military bases in the past. Globally only the United States, France and Russia are the significant countries which actually have military bases abroad. The French are present in Francophone Africa on request of the ex-French colonies. The Russians are grudged and hated wherever they have a base. The Americans hold onto their bases only with the help of a pliant political system (Japan) or client regimes in Saudi Arabia and other locations. The Chinese deride and scorn the practice of military bases as a colonial idea and view it as occupation and hegemony. Significantly, the Chinese do not have bases and yet their influence (North East Asia-Central Asia) based on hard or soft resources only increases with the growth in national strength supported by interesting diplomacy.
The Costs
Bases create suspicion and resentment among local populations, much as the Soviet forces faced after liberating Eastern Europe in World War II. A recent example is the 9/11 attacks, partly due to the U.S. decision to leave behind bases in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states after the first Gulf War. Much as the Roman Empire tried to use its military power to buttress its weakening economic and political hold over its colonies, the uses of bases in our era is losing idea and a proposition that is slowly losing relevance. Another significant cost is the strategic over-reach this trajectory takes imposing heavy expenses on the protection and maintainence of these bases. One base is just a start, all regions in the world are significant and with increase in national power and interests (as power increases so does the area of core interest), the acquiring of bases promises to be a spiraling demand.
Conclusion
A foreign military outpost in the long run is more harmful than beneficial. Apart from the local and regional resentments it might give rise to, it would be important to also re-consider this dictum of 'great powers' need strategic reach being interpreted in physical terms. Even when it comes to securing Indian energy interests, it is a worth while question to pose that for how long and how many military bases do we require to get what we seek from nations? Is this the imaginative peak of our diplomacy? I do not mean to discredit or debunk the sheer power which flows out of such a military presence but my argument remains that we need to be more creative and think in more imaginative terms the future of Indian diplomacy as well our power projection!
Indians consistently tout the fact that India has never invaded and has only been invaded, we also emphasize our non-violent nature by advertising Gautam Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi in the same breath but when it comes to areas where we can actually make a difference, our fall back options are largely imitative of the previous era. It is important to understand that a Great Power is one which apart from the attributes of hard power also offers something new and different to the world, an ideological basis to its ambitions and claims. The Colonial era offered enlightenment and modernity (White Man's Burden) as its justifying ideology and the United States offers democracy, free enterprise. The Chinese have come to the centerstage with their own world view, of enlightened dictatorship (a Confucian tradition) and a non occupying, non military base seeking great power. Whether such claims are true or merely superficial is irrelevant but what is crucial is the ability to offer an alternative world view. The moral tone of Indian foreign policy for most of the existence of Modern India, offers us a viable alternative to chart that discourse as also practice it. The moral element in Indian foreign policy should not mean to let down defenses rather it would mean that salience on the use of force will be avoided and such appearances of great power status like 'military bases' will be avoided. And as an alternative to seeking a military presence, India ought to expand its influence through infrastructural activities.
http://satyabrat.blogspot.com/2007/07/indi...ses-abroad.html
Indian Expansionism: Harmful for Peace in South Asia
Hari Bansha Dulal
The encroachment of Nepalese land in Susta VDC, Nawalparasi clearly demonstrates how India is trying to take advantage of current political mess in Nepal by encroaching Nepalese territory. While Indian embassy's staffers in Kathmandu keep themselves busy trying to paint India's friendly attitude by providing funds to build bridges and inaugurating school buildings in terai, their government in New Delhi makes Nepalese pay for the financial aid provided to Nepal by ripping off their national identity. However, what could be the better time than this to encroach a smaller state's territory? Political parties are wrestling with King to grab the power and king is flexing his muscle to maintain status quo. New Delhi does understand that neither political parties that are busy protesting in the street nor King residing in the Narayanhiti trying to garner India's support can afford to displease India by voicing their concern over Susta. As both the warring parties are trying their best to remain in good books of India, poor in Susta are forcibly getting converted into Indian citizens without much opposition from the government and political parties that are meant to fight for the citizens right. Citizens of Susta are the recent victims of bullish and oppressive policies of the Indian expansionists.
Nepal is not only the nation that is having a border dispute with India. India has an ongoing border dispute with China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Although, the areas in contention with China and Pakistan are among the largest existing land boundary disputes in the world. The Indo-Bangladeshi contention over New Moore/South Talpatty Island and Indo-Nepali dispute over Kalapani and Susta involve comparatively small area. But the point here is not how big or small the area of dispute is. It's about the India's attitude towards it neighbors in the region. With three-quarters of the landmass, population and economy of the region, India has developed a bullish and hegemonic attitude towards its neighbor. Even after having fought wars with China and a recent war (Kargil) over Kashmir with Pakistan, India has not acknowledged the importance of peaceful coexistence. In addition to the already existing issues such as Kalapani which has been forcibly occupied by the Indian army; the Laxmanpur Barrage that has resulted in the flooding of Nepalese villages; the Mahakali treaty that is unfairly loaded in favor of India, the recent Susta encroachment exhibits India's increasing lust over foreign territories. What New Delhi should understand is, national boundaries are symptomatic of wider bilateral relations and manifestations of national identity. They can be trip-wires of war. The seething anger of the people of China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal against the Indian expansionism may burst into the open any time in near future. The people of these countries in order to ascertain their self respect and nationalism can burst open and harm Indian interests and establishments in their respective countries and the region as they did during the Hritik Roshan Fiasco in Nepal.
The anti-Indian feeling in Nepal is at the highest level and the Nepalese citizens are bitter to the core. India should realize that relationship built on genuine equality and mutual respect, is the only guarantee for peace and development in South Asia.
Hari Bansha Dulal is a doctoral student of Environmental Science and Public Policy at George Mason University, Virginia, USA
http://www.globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=1272&cid=6&sid=20
Hari Bansha Dulal
The encroachment of Nepalese land in Susta VDC, Nawalparasi clearly demonstrates how India is trying to take advantage of current political mess in Nepal by encroaching Nepalese territory. While Indian embassy's staffers in Kathmandu keep themselves busy trying to paint India's friendly attitude by providing funds to build bridges and inaugurating school buildings in terai, their government in New Delhi makes Nepalese pay for the financial aid provided to Nepal by ripping off their national identity. However, what could be the better time than this to encroach a smaller state's territory? Political parties are wrestling with King to grab the power and king is flexing his muscle to maintain status quo. New Delhi does understand that neither political parties that are busy protesting in the street nor King residing in the Narayanhiti trying to garner India's support can afford to displease India by voicing their concern over Susta. As both the warring parties are trying their best to remain in good books of India, poor in Susta are forcibly getting converted into Indian citizens without much opposition from the government and political parties that are meant to fight for the citizens right. Citizens of Susta are the recent victims of bullish and oppressive policies of the Indian expansionists.
Nepal is not only the nation that is having a border dispute with India. India has an ongoing border dispute with China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Although, the areas in contention with China and Pakistan are among the largest existing land boundary disputes in the world. The Indo-Bangladeshi contention over New Moore/South Talpatty Island and Indo-Nepali dispute over Kalapani and Susta involve comparatively small area. But the point here is not how big or small the area of dispute is. It's about the India's attitude towards it neighbors in the region. With three-quarters of the landmass, population and economy of the region, India has developed a bullish and hegemonic attitude towards its neighbor. Even after having fought wars with China and a recent war (Kargil) over Kashmir with Pakistan, India has not acknowledged the importance of peaceful coexistence. In addition to the already existing issues such as Kalapani which has been forcibly occupied by the Indian army; the Laxmanpur Barrage that has resulted in the flooding of Nepalese villages; the Mahakali treaty that is unfairly loaded in favor of India, the recent Susta encroachment exhibits India's increasing lust over foreign territories. What New Delhi should understand is, national boundaries are symptomatic of wider bilateral relations and manifestations of national identity. They can be trip-wires of war. The seething anger of the people of China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal against the Indian expansionism may burst into the open any time in near future. The people of these countries in order to ascertain their self respect and nationalism can burst open and harm Indian interests and establishments in their respective countries and the region as they did during the Hritik Roshan Fiasco in Nepal.
The anti-Indian feeling in Nepal is at the highest level and the Nepalese citizens are bitter to the core. India should realize that relationship built on genuine equality and mutual respect, is the only guarantee for peace and development in South Asia.
Hari Bansha Dulal is a doctoral student of Environmental Science and Public Policy at George Mason University, Virginia, USA
http://www.globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=1272&cid=6&sid=20
Dalits, Humanism and Human Sacrifice
Babu Gogineni
A Day Charged with Humanism
The Leadership Training Camp for Dalits that was being organised in Suryapet town (14 and 15 July '07, Andhra Pradesh, India) through the International Humanist and Ethical Union's support was going on full-speed. Mr. Veeraswami the leader of Spoorthi, the local implementing organization, and Mr. V.B. Rawat, Director of the Social Development Foundation, the event's sponsor were participating as resource persons along with Hyderabad-based Dalit women's rights campaigner, the sociologist Sujatha. There were a hundred Dalit youth, men and women, eager to learn about modern science, about the situation of Dalits and that of women in the country, about superstitions, and about the plight of untouchables worldwide.
It was a day charged with Humanism, which the newspapers would report later as being the only alternative for Dalits. Amongst the participants there was a keen sense of involvement and a burning desire to change their lot - this was the first time I saw that participants stayed on in the meeting hall till well past midnight discussing and sharing information. Of course, during the day they had heard many ideas challenging long-held views. We had questioned whether they really thought they were Hindus, whether they needed to be part of the caste system, whether affirmative action was really benefiting them or diverting them from the real issue of emancipating themselves culturally and socially. This was also the first Humanist event in India where participants after their self-service lunch washed their own plates. It feels good to spend a few days amongst those who speak of the dignity of labor and who also practice it.
New Resolve
When at the end of a full day of discussions and lectures, Chandraiah the miracle-exposure activist that we had invited concluded his demonstration, many of the Dalit youth, several of them superstitious themselves, had a change of orientation. Some of them declared that they were now inspired to work against superstition in their community as they understood the tricks being played on them by charlatans, and as they now realised the harm it does to their fellow Dalits. Some others informed us that they heard of plans in their village to kill a suspected witchcraft practitioner, and that following the day's training they were now determined to prevent it by educating the villagers and also informing the local authorities. Veeraswami then clarified to us that the reason the next day's miracle-exposure programme was going to be held in Pasunur village of Tungathurthi Administrative region was because the Dalits in the village were traumatised and terrified - there has been talk of human sacrifice for some time there.
Killing of witches? Human sacrifice?
As what we heard sank in, I could feel goose pimples of disgust and horror all over me. We were just 6-hours away by car from Hyderabad - one of India's Hi-tech show piece cities - and how time rolls back a thousand years in this short distance!
Because the Gods Want it
"In the 60s whenever a rice mill or a new industrial unit was to be inaugurated in the region, one of the workers or a villager would mysteriously die in the factory premises. Everyone remained silent, but all knew that the gods wanted a sacrifice and they were now satisfied; the victim's family would get ten thousand rupees and all was forgotten," Chandraiah was talking to me and to V.B. Rawat about his experiences as a child who grew up in the region. In the other car were Veeraswami and other Dalit leaders from the region, along with a reporter from ETV, (one of most important TV channels in South India), who we woke up at 5.00 am to take with us. We had to urgently intervene.
On the way the situation was explained to us: the government had constructed an impressive school building at the expense of 3.5 million rupees, with wide, spacious and well-ventillated rooms: it was the pride of the region, yet, because the building was awaiting a sacrifice, no classes were being conducted one month into the new school year. It was the practice that goats or chicken were sacrificed at the time of a house warming, but this was a special case: a man 'possessed by God' had declared that the school building demanded 'aarambham' of 6 children before it could be inaugurated safely. Aarambham is the local code for human sacrifice.
Pasunur Village Dalit Colony
At the Dalit colony a welcome party was waiting; meeting banners were set up, and a man with a drum went around the village summoning everyone for the morning meeting. Quite agitated in mind, I asked the village president about this matter of aarambham. He denied it. When we asked the other villagers they denied any knowledge of the matter. V.B. Rawat said children always tell the truth - so we had a talk with the children and asked them why they were not going to school. When the children spoke, and this time to the TV cameras, the adults had no choice but to acknowledge that they were in fact terrified that their children might be sacrificed for the school inauguration and that was why they were not sending them to school. After all, who heard of upper caste children being sacrificed? If it were to happen, it would be theirs that would be the victims.
We soon realized that it was a 'skeptical' crowd that had gathered to listen to us, and to the local elected official. One woman loudly whispered "Are you going to give us money for coming to this meeting? Because of you our men are not going out today to work". It was a Sunday, but in the Dalit colony life is on a day-to-day basis and everyday one has to work to get some money after all in this period of India's vertiginous but jobless growth, the National Employment Guarantee Programme provides employment support for a mere 100 days per year per household - did not Charles, from the Dalit Social Forum tell us the previous day that Globalization was of no real use to the common, hungry, downtrodden Indian? When I was speaking, one of them shouted "You tell us what you know and we will tell you what we know". She, and her fellow villagers knew a lot about ghosts, and how they possess people. They were aware of how spirits kept a cloth dipped in water from becoming wet - their local godman had already demonstrated this. They knew about spontaneous roof fires, and they knew about getting healed through mantras or magical incantations.
Now, Chandraiah proceeded to create fire by pouring water on sand. He cut a lemon which dripped blood-red juice. He dipped a piece of cloth in water and it came out dry. He broke a coconut and out came blood-red water. He performed every feat the local charlatans performed, and then also explained the tricks behind what he had done. He over-turned a glass full of water but the water did not spill fall, supported by a paper - some said it was not science and tried to do it themselves. They soon got the trick - it was not a spirit that was holding the water up, it was atmospheric pressure. As the interaction continued, and when Chandraiah first played with a piece of burning camphor and then swallowed it and claimed it was tasty, the mood relaxed. When he made the children do the same, there was much excitement.
It was a quick thaw for a group of villagers who were till then terrified that their children might be sacrificed for the inauguration of the school building, and for those who feared that ghosts lived in the shadows and in the trees. The show continued to work its magic - and soon the children were shouting with Chandraiah "There are no ghosts! There are no miracles! We are not superstitious". Sujatha was mingling with the children and asking them about the talisman they were wearing and explaining how hygiene, rather than the talisman, was a better cure for diarrhea. Meanwhile, Chandraiah made an old woman feed milk to a statue of Ganesha, in imitation of a shameful hoax that fooled India for two full days over a decade ago.
Soon, some of the men came to us to say that they agreed with us, but that they still had some doubts. So I made bold and asked, "How many of you are ready to tackle the rascal who said that the new school building asked for human sacrifice and caused you so much of suffering?".
We Will Defend Ourselves
Several children came forward, as well as some ten men. Because it was not an entirely safe activity and as we had no security with us, we set out with just a few children and the adults. As we walked through the slush of the recent rains to confront Devudu Chandraiah the goat herd who claimed to receive divine messages (no relation to our own Chandraiah!) we encountered many who were going to the temple where Chandraiah was they were going to seek his blessings to cure infertility or to cure sick children. His weekly earnings were estimated to be about Rs. 10,000.
But word that we were coming reached him before we did, and he was nowhere to be seen. We had an altercation with his sister at the temple who we questioned about her brother's desire to see human blood. She denied it, but both children and adults who were witnesses to his pronouncements said they had heard him say this. There were angry confrontations and we threatened that we would get them all arrested. I cannot forget that the woman said to me that if people die at the time of an inauguration they are not responsible. She asked whether coconuts are not broken at a function? She did not dare say more, but we all understood the dangerous mindset of the people.
It was disgusting and alarming, but this was a good day for the TV reporter who could capture what was happening and turn it into a good news item and also turn it into a Crimewatch-style story.
The Relevance of the Humanist Approach
We went back to the village, determined to spread the word that a group of Dalits from the village decided to confront the charlatan who came from a higher caste and that he fled the scene or did not dare to come to the temple that he regularly haunted, because of us. We agreed that we would at the appropriate time print posters of the charlatan and display them widely so that his humiliation would be complete and the self-assertion of the Dalits would be announced to the world. Spoorthi also intends to file a police complaint for incitement to murder against him if they hear the mad ravings of this blood thirsty charlatan again. But it will be some time before he will recover from the disgrace. And we had to balance the educational elements and the confrontational elements of our campaign in the area.
We then moved to the school building itself where the reporter wanted to do a special interview. There we met with representatives of the well-known M.V. Foundation which was organizing a training program for literacy workers. We were cordially invited to join them, and to tell them about our work. But soon we were disappointed to find out that the idiom they were going to use to encourage the people to become literate was a religious one, and that their mobilization of the people would be on the lines of and in the context of Bonalu, a festival where animal sacrifice is called for, and where people swoon and get 'possessed' and speak on behalf of God. The MV Foundation officials are of course against superstition and animal sacrifice, and expect that literacy will drive away the bad practices they seem to ignore the counter evidence of the number of educated fools in the country who patronize cheats in religious garb and are willing to perform similar animal sacrifices. Sujatha found the use of the religious idiom inappropriate and specially this particular one - after all, the original demand for sacrifice of human lives was voiced during a bonalu like festival!
Reviewing the events of the past two days we found that this was one of the most satisfying of our activities in recent times. While the preparation and organization for putting in place these training and demonstration events took a few weeks, the Dalit leaders found what they were looking for a route out of the traditional religious thinking, and a forum where they could discuss these ideas as equals. They found a new determination and resolve to take their lives into their own hands.
And in one single magical morning from amongst a group of cowering, frightened and terrorized villagers we found enough number of people who were willing to challenge superstition and confront the source of their terror and deal with the problem. They do not need outsiders to defend themselves anymore, because most satisfyingly, they have found amongst their own colony members the resources and the strength to help themselves. At least in that area there will not be anymore witches or witch killings; and enough noise has been created to be sure that none will speak of human sacrifice or suggest it in that little pocket of Andhra Pradesh as the police and the local elected officials are all now alert to this danger. The disinfecting power of reason and the light of science and scientific temper made its first entry even if only through a narrow crack.
We will now have to nurture the new desire and ability to think critically which we kindled, so that a permanent defense can be created in their minds against medieval and barbaric practices and pave the way for a society of equals where modern values will prevail.
Babu Gogineni
International Director
International Humanist and Ethical Union
www.iheu.org
Babu Gogineni
A Day Charged with Humanism
The Leadership Training Camp for Dalits that was being organised in Suryapet town (14 and 15 July '07, Andhra Pradesh, India) through the International Humanist and Ethical Union's support was going on full-speed. Mr. Veeraswami the leader of Spoorthi, the local implementing organization, and Mr. V.B. Rawat, Director of the Social Development Foundation, the event's sponsor were participating as resource persons along with Hyderabad-based Dalit women's rights campaigner, the sociologist Sujatha. There were a hundred Dalit youth, men and women, eager to learn about modern science, about the situation of Dalits and that of women in the country, about superstitions, and about the plight of untouchables worldwide.
It was a day charged with Humanism, which the newspapers would report later as being the only alternative for Dalits. Amongst the participants there was a keen sense of involvement and a burning desire to change their lot - this was the first time I saw that participants stayed on in the meeting hall till well past midnight discussing and sharing information. Of course, during the day they had heard many ideas challenging long-held views. We had questioned whether they really thought they were Hindus, whether they needed to be part of the caste system, whether affirmative action was really benefiting them or diverting them from the real issue of emancipating themselves culturally and socially. This was also the first Humanist event in India where participants after their self-service lunch washed their own plates. It feels good to spend a few days amongst those who speak of the dignity of labor and who also practice it.
New Resolve
When at the end of a full day of discussions and lectures, Chandraiah the miracle-exposure activist that we had invited concluded his demonstration, many of the Dalit youth, several of them superstitious themselves, had a change of orientation. Some of them declared that they were now inspired to work against superstition in their community as they understood the tricks being played on them by charlatans, and as they now realised the harm it does to their fellow Dalits. Some others informed us that they heard of plans in their village to kill a suspected witchcraft practitioner, and that following the day's training they were now determined to prevent it by educating the villagers and also informing the local authorities. Veeraswami then clarified to us that the reason the next day's miracle-exposure programme was going to be held in Pasunur village of Tungathurthi Administrative region was because the Dalits in the village were traumatised and terrified - there has been talk of human sacrifice for some time there.
Killing of witches? Human sacrifice?
As what we heard sank in, I could feel goose pimples of disgust and horror all over me. We were just 6-hours away by car from Hyderabad - one of India's Hi-tech show piece cities - and how time rolls back a thousand years in this short distance!
Because the Gods Want it
"In the 60s whenever a rice mill or a new industrial unit was to be inaugurated in the region, one of the workers or a villager would mysteriously die in the factory premises. Everyone remained silent, but all knew that the gods wanted a sacrifice and they were now satisfied; the victim's family would get ten thousand rupees and all was forgotten," Chandraiah was talking to me and to V.B. Rawat about his experiences as a child who grew up in the region. In the other car were Veeraswami and other Dalit leaders from the region, along with a reporter from ETV, (one of most important TV channels in South India), who we woke up at 5.00 am to take with us. We had to urgently intervene.
On the way the situation was explained to us: the government had constructed an impressive school building at the expense of 3.5 million rupees, with wide, spacious and well-ventillated rooms: it was the pride of the region, yet, because the building was awaiting a sacrifice, no classes were being conducted one month into the new school year. It was the practice that goats or chicken were sacrificed at the time of a house warming, but this was a special case: a man 'possessed by God' had declared that the school building demanded 'aarambham' of 6 children before it could be inaugurated safely. Aarambham is the local code for human sacrifice.
Pasunur Village Dalit Colony
At the Dalit colony a welcome party was waiting; meeting banners were set up, and a man with a drum went around the village summoning everyone for the morning meeting. Quite agitated in mind, I asked the village president about this matter of aarambham. He denied it. When we asked the other villagers they denied any knowledge of the matter. V.B. Rawat said children always tell the truth - so we had a talk with the children and asked them why they were not going to school. When the children spoke, and this time to the TV cameras, the adults had no choice but to acknowledge that they were in fact terrified that their children might be sacrificed for the school inauguration and that was why they were not sending them to school. After all, who heard of upper caste children being sacrificed? If it were to happen, it would be theirs that would be the victims.
We soon realized that it was a 'skeptical' crowd that had gathered to listen to us, and to the local elected official. One woman loudly whispered "Are you going to give us money for coming to this meeting? Because of you our men are not going out today to work". It was a Sunday, but in the Dalit colony life is on a day-to-day basis and everyday one has to work to get some money after all in this period of India's vertiginous but jobless growth, the National Employment Guarantee Programme provides employment support for a mere 100 days per year per household - did not Charles, from the Dalit Social Forum tell us the previous day that Globalization was of no real use to the common, hungry, downtrodden Indian? When I was speaking, one of them shouted "You tell us what you know and we will tell you what we know". She, and her fellow villagers knew a lot about ghosts, and how they possess people. They were aware of how spirits kept a cloth dipped in water from becoming wet - their local godman had already demonstrated this. They knew about spontaneous roof fires, and they knew about getting healed through mantras or magical incantations.
Now, Chandraiah proceeded to create fire by pouring water on sand. He cut a lemon which dripped blood-red juice. He dipped a piece of cloth in water and it came out dry. He broke a coconut and out came blood-red water. He performed every feat the local charlatans performed, and then also explained the tricks behind what he had done. He over-turned a glass full of water but the water did not spill fall, supported by a paper - some said it was not science and tried to do it themselves. They soon got the trick - it was not a spirit that was holding the water up, it was atmospheric pressure. As the interaction continued, and when Chandraiah first played with a piece of burning camphor and then swallowed it and claimed it was tasty, the mood relaxed. When he made the children do the same, there was much excitement.
It was a quick thaw for a group of villagers who were till then terrified that their children might be sacrificed for the inauguration of the school building, and for those who feared that ghosts lived in the shadows and in the trees. The show continued to work its magic - and soon the children were shouting with Chandraiah "There are no ghosts! There are no miracles! We are not superstitious". Sujatha was mingling with the children and asking them about the talisman they were wearing and explaining how hygiene, rather than the talisman, was a better cure for diarrhea. Meanwhile, Chandraiah made an old woman feed milk to a statue of Ganesha, in imitation of a shameful hoax that fooled India for two full days over a decade ago.
Soon, some of the men came to us to say that they agreed with us, but that they still had some doubts. So I made bold and asked, "How many of you are ready to tackle the rascal who said that the new school building asked for human sacrifice and caused you so much of suffering?".
We Will Defend Ourselves
Several children came forward, as well as some ten men. Because it was not an entirely safe activity and as we had no security with us, we set out with just a few children and the adults. As we walked through the slush of the recent rains to confront Devudu Chandraiah the goat herd who claimed to receive divine messages (no relation to our own Chandraiah!) we encountered many who were going to the temple where Chandraiah was they were going to seek his blessings to cure infertility or to cure sick children. His weekly earnings were estimated to be about Rs. 10,000.
But word that we were coming reached him before we did, and he was nowhere to be seen. We had an altercation with his sister at the temple who we questioned about her brother's desire to see human blood. She denied it, but both children and adults who were witnesses to his pronouncements said they had heard him say this. There were angry confrontations and we threatened that we would get them all arrested. I cannot forget that the woman said to me that if people die at the time of an inauguration they are not responsible. She asked whether coconuts are not broken at a function? She did not dare say more, but we all understood the dangerous mindset of the people.
It was disgusting and alarming, but this was a good day for the TV reporter who could capture what was happening and turn it into a good news item and also turn it into a Crimewatch-style story.
The Relevance of the Humanist Approach
We went back to the village, determined to spread the word that a group of Dalits from the village decided to confront the charlatan who came from a higher caste and that he fled the scene or did not dare to come to the temple that he regularly haunted, because of us. We agreed that we would at the appropriate time print posters of the charlatan and display them widely so that his humiliation would be complete and the self-assertion of the Dalits would be announced to the world. Spoorthi also intends to file a police complaint for incitement to murder against him if they hear the mad ravings of this blood thirsty charlatan again. But it will be some time before he will recover from the disgrace. And we had to balance the educational elements and the confrontational elements of our campaign in the area.
We then moved to the school building itself where the reporter wanted to do a special interview. There we met with representatives of the well-known M.V. Foundation which was organizing a training program for literacy workers. We were cordially invited to join them, and to tell them about our work. But soon we were disappointed to find out that the idiom they were going to use to encourage the people to become literate was a religious one, and that their mobilization of the people would be on the lines of and in the context of Bonalu, a festival where animal sacrifice is called for, and where people swoon and get 'possessed' and speak on behalf of God. The MV Foundation officials are of course against superstition and animal sacrifice, and expect that literacy will drive away the bad practices they seem to ignore the counter evidence of the number of educated fools in the country who patronize cheats in religious garb and are willing to perform similar animal sacrifices. Sujatha found the use of the religious idiom inappropriate and specially this particular one - after all, the original demand for sacrifice of human lives was voiced during a bonalu like festival!
Reviewing the events of the past two days we found that this was one of the most satisfying of our activities in recent times. While the preparation and organization for putting in place these training and demonstration events took a few weeks, the Dalit leaders found what they were looking for a route out of the traditional religious thinking, and a forum where they could discuss these ideas as equals. They found a new determination and resolve to take their lives into their own hands.
And in one single magical morning from amongst a group of cowering, frightened and terrorized villagers we found enough number of people who were willing to challenge superstition and confront the source of their terror and deal with the problem. They do not need outsiders to defend themselves anymore, because most satisfyingly, they have found amongst their own colony members the resources and the strength to help themselves. At least in that area there will not be anymore witches or witch killings; and enough noise has been created to be sure that none will speak of human sacrifice or suggest it in that little pocket of Andhra Pradesh as the police and the local elected officials are all now alert to this danger. The disinfecting power of reason and the light of science and scientific temper made its first entry even if only through a narrow crack.
We will now have to nurture the new desire and ability to think critically which we kindled, so that a permanent defense can be created in their minds against medieval and barbaric practices and pave the way for a society of equals where modern values will prevail.
Babu Gogineni
International Director
International Humanist and Ethical Union
www.iheu.org
Do Not Cry For The Bombay Riot Victims!
By Subhash Gatade
("You have a big heart." Vilasrao Deshmukh is learnt to have told Balasaheb Thackeray. The Sena chief's response : " I have a big heart indeed, but people fail to understand this."
_ Indian Express, July 19, 2007)
(Mohite says, "All the while, the conversation was being interrupted by telephone calls the Sena chief was getting. He was talking on several phones at a time, and as I listened I realised that he was directing Sena activists to attack Muslims. 'Sarv landyana maroon taka,' he said. He told the callers to see that not a single Muslim lived to give evidence in court."..Mohite testified to the Srikrishna Commission on June 22, 1997.
Mid Day , January 13,2003)
It is difficult to say how many journos or politicos managed to have a look at the recent meeting between Mr Vilasrao Deshmukh, Chief Minister of Maharashtra ; his deputy Mr R.R. Patil, who also handles the home ministry and Bal Thackeray, the octogenarian leader of the Shiv Sena, at Matoshree, the house of the Thackerays.
It was reported that the Congress high command had specifically asked Mr Deshmukh to visit the Sena Supremo to thank him for his support to Ms Pratibha Patil in the Presidential election.As was expected the meeting went well. While the two sides formally maintained that not much should be read into their convergence of views over the Marathi Manushi's candidature for the august post, it was evident that a new chemistry was unfolding itself between the long time adversaries. At least one could gather it from the exchanges they had or the body language of the leaders. "You have a big heart." Vilasrao Deshmukh is learnt to have told Balasaheb Thackeray. The Sena chief's prompt reply was worth noting: " I have a big heart indeed, but people fail to understand this."( Indian Express, July 19, 2007)
One can understand the lack of interest or the indifference shown by the media towards this meeting, as one presumes that it was engaged in covering the Advani and Cos.highdecible tirade against Ms. Patil or the meekish response by the Congress towards the attacks.
It could be said to be a sheer coincidence that the day when the said meeting between the Sena Supremo and Mr Deshmukh took place, also happened to be the day when the designated TADA court looking into the Bombay bomb blasts in 1993 announced death sentence for two accused. It was the first death sentence in the Bomb blasts case. And as expected the media in B'bay was rather euphoric in reporting the judgement. Jyoti Punwani, a journalist and secular activist tells us the manner in which section of the media reported the news stigmatising a whole community in its vein.
It would be height of naivette to even think that the Deshmukh-Patil duo would have brooded over the observations of the SriKrishna Commission then - which looked into the infamous 92-93 riots after the demolition of Babri Mosque - to remind themselves about the role played by the 'man with a big heart' in aggravating the situation in those days or the manner in which it looked at the Bomb blasts :
In fact, Justice Srikrishna had said in his report: "One common link (between the riots and the bomb blasts) appears to be that the former appear to have been a causative factor for the latter. The serial bomb blasts were a reaction to the totality of events at Ayodhya and Bombay in December 1992 and January 1993. The resentment against the government and police among a large body of Muslim youth was exploited by Pakistan-aided anti-national elements. They were brainwashed into taking revenge and a conspiracy was hatched and implemented at the instance of Dawood Ibrahim."
But the most damning indictment was rather reserved for the Sena Supremo himself who according to Justice Srikrishna "..[l]ike a veteran General, commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised attacks against Muslims". The report of the commission plainly tells us :
From 8th January 1993 at least there is no doubt that the Shiv Sena and Shiv Sainiks took the lead in organizing attacks on Muslims and their properties under the guidance of several leaders of the Shiv Sena from the level of Shakha Pramukh to the Shiv Sena Pramukh Bal Thackeray who, like a veteran General, commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised attacks against Muslims. The communal violence and rioting triggered off by the Shiv Sena was hijacked by local criminal elements who saw in it an opportunity to make quick gains. By the time the Shiv Sena realized that enough had been done by way of "retaliation", the violence and rioting was beyond the control of its leaders who had to issue an appeal to put an end to it."
It does not forget to add
"Even after it became apparent that the leaders of the Shiv Sena were active in stoking the fire of the communal riots, the police dragged their feet on the facile and exaggerated assumption that if such leaders were arrested the communal situation would further flare up, or to put it in the words of then Chief Minister, Sudhakarrao Naik, "Bombay would burn"; not that Bombay did not even burn otherwise."
0 0
There is no doubt that neither Mr Deshmukh or Mr Patil - as custodians of law and order in the state - would like to revisit the not so recent period in the history of the city when 'the city that never sleeps' burnt for days together at the instigation of the 'veteran General' and the callous manner in which Deshmukh's predecessors reacted. As loyal soldiers of their respective parties who had been deputed to thank the 'man with the big heart' for his gesture, in future also they would see to it that the bond gets further strengthened, at least he is not put to any inconvenience.
But will it be so easy to obliterate the fact that officially close to 1,000 people were killed in those riots and 1,00,000 displaced during the organised mayhem which visited the city during December 2002 and January 2003. The continuous denial of justice to the riot victims was brought forth in an editorial in 'Outlook' ( 26 September 2006) last year. It had tried to couterpose the euphoria present among a section of the middle class over the verdict of the designated TADA court in the bomb blasts case and the conspiracy of silence about the Bombay riots.
It said :
"In all the euphoria of "getting the guilty" in each of the staggered verdicts in the '93 Bombay blasts case, the city's overlooked one thing: that the judgement, however just and overdue, addresses only one side of the violence attending the Babri Masjid demolition and leading to the blasts.
Even as the CBI, Mumbai police and governments pat themselves on the back, and citizens demand death penalty for all the Memonsfour of the family have been convicted, three acquittedthere has been no conviction in any of the thousands of cases registered during and after the post-Babri riots from December 7, 1992, to January 21, 1993.
Ironically, some riot victims are fighting cases fabricated against them by the police while perpetrators of the violence, whether men in uniform or in saffron, are walking free. Why, Sena chief Bal Thackeray, the 'mastermind of the riots', hasn't even been touched. "
Few months back the 'Combat Law' team had looked into the ( Combat Law June-July 2007) manner in which Srikrishna Commission report was ultimately dumped.It looked at the way in which no significant action had been taken against 31 police officers -right from the rank of the deputy commissioner of police to constables - indicted for their role by the commission. Accusing the police officers of being 'communally biased against Muslims' and demanding action against them it had even observed that the 'lapses in the investigations were not merely cases of negligence but deliberate attempts to suppress material evidence and sabotage the probe into violent incidents.'
The petitioner Shakeel Ahmad ( and Jyoti Punwani) who had filed a PIL in the Supreme Court to look into the actions taken against police officers found to their dismay that found that 'most of the officers against whom Justice Srikrishna passed severe strictures were in fact promoted. Many were granted anticipatory bail. All were released on bail with the public prosecutor often not arguing for their detention.' RD Tyagi, a joint-commissioner of police at the time of the riots, was, according to Srikrishna Commission, not at all justified in killing unarmed and innocent nine bakery workers on January 9, 1993; he 'merrily continued in service and retired as DIG. He has also been discharged from a case that was initiated against him. He was appointed to this high post by the Shiv Sena-BJP government at the instance of Bal Thackeray.'
0 0
Close watchers of the Indian polity would tell us that the conspiracy of silence over the Bombay riot victims is nothing new. They can present n number of examples from the history of post-independent India to buttress their point. At one level it would be difficult to disagree with their observations.
But at another level one would agree to differ and would like to underline that things have deteriorated further. Perhaps the situation as it is present before us is a marker of the growing rightward shift in our polity where one witnesses a lack of remorse after the communal frenzy is over. Gujarat has become a prime example where even five years after the genocide in 2002 at the hands of the Hindutva brigade, one rarely finds a sense of repentance among the civil society.
In fact, it would not be incorrect to state that today the whole debate around 'secular' versus 'communal' has started culminating in the debate around 'soft Hindutva' versus 'hard hindutva' only. One can say that the state of Maharashtra is today a new symbol of the synergy between 'soft' as well as 'hard' Hindutva. Few months back the elections to the municipal corporations and city councils in Maharashtra witnessed ex/old activists/leaders of Shiv Sena leading the campaigns of different parties - may it be the case of Narayan Rane, Chhagan Bhujbal or Raj Thakre, underlining this fact in a stark manner.
It is the same state where one witnessed participation of activists belonging to RSS/VHP/Bajrang Dal in the bomb blasts in Nanded, Parbhani, Jalna and many other places. But despite having a secular coalition at the helm of affairs the civil society itself saw to that the all such acts by Hindutva brigade people are underreported or cleverly silenced.
The conspiracy of silence over the Bombay riot victims is nothing surprising.
http://countercurrents.org/gatade070807.htm
By Subhash Gatade
("You have a big heart." Vilasrao Deshmukh is learnt to have told Balasaheb Thackeray. The Sena chief's response : " I have a big heart indeed, but people fail to understand this."
_ Indian Express, July 19, 2007)
(Mohite says, "All the while, the conversation was being interrupted by telephone calls the Sena chief was getting. He was talking on several phones at a time, and as I listened I realised that he was directing Sena activists to attack Muslims. 'Sarv landyana maroon taka,' he said. He told the callers to see that not a single Muslim lived to give evidence in court."..Mohite testified to the Srikrishna Commission on June 22, 1997.
Mid Day , January 13,2003)
It is difficult to say how many journos or politicos managed to have a look at the recent meeting between Mr Vilasrao Deshmukh, Chief Minister of Maharashtra ; his deputy Mr R.R. Patil, who also handles the home ministry and Bal Thackeray, the octogenarian leader of the Shiv Sena, at Matoshree, the house of the Thackerays.
It was reported that the Congress high command had specifically asked Mr Deshmukh to visit the Sena Supremo to thank him for his support to Ms Pratibha Patil in the Presidential election.As was expected the meeting went well. While the two sides formally maintained that not much should be read into their convergence of views over the Marathi Manushi's candidature for the august post, it was evident that a new chemistry was unfolding itself between the long time adversaries. At least one could gather it from the exchanges they had or the body language of the leaders. "You have a big heart." Vilasrao Deshmukh is learnt to have told Balasaheb Thackeray. The Sena chief's prompt reply was worth noting: " I have a big heart indeed, but people fail to understand this."( Indian Express, July 19, 2007)
One can understand the lack of interest or the indifference shown by the media towards this meeting, as one presumes that it was engaged in covering the Advani and Cos.highdecible tirade against Ms. Patil or the meekish response by the Congress towards the attacks.
It could be said to be a sheer coincidence that the day when the said meeting between the Sena Supremo and Mr Deshmukh took place, also happened to be the day when the designated TADA court looking into the Bombay bomb blasts in 1993 announced death sentence for two accused. It was the first death sentence in the Bomb blasts case. And as expected the media in B'bay was rather euphoric in reporting the judgement. Jyoti Punwani, a journalist and secular activist tells us the manner in which section of the media reported the news stigmatising a whole community in its vein.
It would be height of naivette to even think that the Deshmukh-Patil duo would have brooded over the observations of the SriKrishna Commission then - which looked into the infamous 92-93 riots after the demolition of Babri Mosque - to remind themselves about the role played by the 'man with a big heart' in aggravating the situation in those days or the manner in which it looked at the Bomb blasts :
In fact, Justice Srikrishna had said in his report: "One common link (between the riots and the bomb blasts) appears to be that the former appear to have been a causative factor for the latter. The serial bomb blasts were a reaction to the totality of events at Ayodhya and Bombay in December 1992 and January 1993. The resentment against the government and police among a large body of Muslim youth was exploited by Pakistan-aided anti-national elements. They were brainwashed into taking revenge and a conspiracy was hatched and implemented at the instance of Dawood Ibrahim."
But the most damning indictment was rather reserved for the Sena Supremo himself who according to Justice Srikrishna "..[l]ike a veteran General, commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised attacks against Muslims". The report of the commission plainly tells us :
From 8th January 1993 at least there is no doubt that the Shiv Sena and Shiv Sainiks took the lead in organizing attacks on Muslims and their properties under the guidance of several leaders of the Shiv Sena from the level of Shakha Pramukh to the Shiv Sena Pramukh Bal Thackeray who, like a veteran General, commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised attacks against Muslims. The communal violence and rioting triggered off by the Shiv Sena was hijacked by local criminal elements who saw in it an opportunity to make quick gains. By the time the Shiv Sena realized that enough had been done by way of "retaliation", the violence and rioting was beyond the control of its leaders who had to issue an appeal to put an end to it."
It does not forget to add
"Even after it became apparent that the leaders of the Shiv Sena were active in stoking the fire of the communal riots, the police dragged their feet on the facile and exaggerated assumption that if such leaders were arrested the communal situation would further flare up, or to put it in the words of then Chief Minister, Sudhakarrao Naik, "Bombay would burn"; not that Bombay did not even burn otherwise."
0 0
There is no doubt that neither Mr Deshmukh or Mr Patil - as custodians of law and order in the state - would like to revisit the not so recent period in the history of the city when 'the city that never sleeps' burnt for days together at the instigation of the 'veteran General' and the callous manner in which Deshmukh's predecessors reacted. As loyal soldiers of their respective parties who had been deputed to thank the 'man with the big heart' for his gesture, in future also they would see to it that the bond gets further strengthened, at least he is not put to any inconvenience.
But will it be so easy to obliterate the fact that officially close to 1,000 people were killed in those riots and 1,00,000 displaced during the organised mayhem which visited the city during December 2002 and January 2003. The continuous denial of justice to the riot victims was brought forth in an editorial in 'Outlook' ( 26 September 2006) last year. It had tried to couterpose the euphoria present among a section of the middle class over the verdict of the designated TADA court in the bomb blasts case and the conspiracy of silence about the Bombay riots.
It said :
"In all the euphoria of "getting the guilty" in each of the staggered verdicts in the '93 Bombay blasts case, the city's overlooked one thing: that the judgement, however just and overdue, addresses only one side of the violence attending the Babri Masjid demolition and leading to the blasts.
Even as the CBI, Mumbai police and governments pat themselves on the back, and citizens demand death penalty for all the Memonsfour of the family have been convicted, three acquittedthere has been no conviction in any of the thousands of cases registered during and after the post-Babri riots from December 7, 1992, to January 21, 1993.
Ironically, some riot victims are fighting cases fabricated against them by the police while perpetrators of the violence, whether men in uniform or in saffron, are walking free. Why, Sena chief Bal Thackeray, the 'mastermind of the riots', hasn't even been touched. "
Few months back the 'Combat Law' team had looked into the ( Combat Law June-July 2007) manner in which Srikrishna Commission report was ultimately dumped.It looked at the way in which no significant action had been taken against 31 police officers -right from the rank of the deputy commissioner of police to constables - indicted for their role by the commission. Accusing the police officers of being 'communally biased against Muslims' and demanding action against them it had even observed that the 'lapses in the investigations were not merely cases of negligence but deliberate attempts to suppress material evidence and sabotage the probe into violent incidents.'
The petitioner Shakeel Ahmad ( and Jyoti Punwani) who had filed a PIL in the Supreme Court to look into the actions taken against police officers found to their dismay that found that 'most of the officers against whom Justice Srikrishna passed severe strictures were in fact promoted. Many were granted anticipatory bail. All were released on bail with the public prosecutor often not arguing for their detention.' RD Tyagi, a joint-commissioner of police at the time of the riots, was, according to Srikrishna Commission, not at all justified in killing unarmed and innocent nine bakery workers on January 9, 1993; he 'merrily continued in service and retired as DIG. He has also been discharged from a case that was initiated against him. He was appointed to this high post by the Shiv Sena-BJP government at the instance of Bal Thackeray.'
0 0
Close watchers of the Indian polity would tell us that the conspiracy of silence over the Bombay riot victims is nothing new. They can present n number of examples from the history of post-independent India to buttress their point. At one level it would be difficult to disagree with their observations.
But at another level one would agree to differ and would like to underline that things have deteriorated further. Perhaps the situation as it is present before us is a marker of the growing rightward shift in our polity where one witnesses a lack of remorse after the communal frenzy is over. Gujarat has become a prime example where even five years after the genocide in 2002 at the hands of the Hindutva brigade, one rarely finds a sense of repentance among the civil society.
In fact, it would not be incorrect to state that today the whole debate around 'secular' versus 'communal' has started culminating in the debate around 'soft Hindutva' versus 'hard hindutva' only. One can say that the state of Maharashtra is today a new symbol of the synergy between 'soft' as well as 'hard' Hindutva. Few months back the elections to the municipal corporations and city councils in Maharashtra witnessed ex/old activists/leaders of Shiv Sena leading the campaigns of different parties - may it be the case of Narayan Rane, Chhagan Bhujbal or Raj Thakre, underlining this fact in a stark manner.
It is the same state where one witnessed participation of activists belonging to RSS/VHP/Bajrang Dal in the bomb blasts in Nanded, Parbhani, Jalna and many other places. But despite having a secular coalition at the helm of affairs the civil society itself saw to that the all such acts by Hindutva brigade people are underreported or cleverly silenced.
The conspiracy of silence over the Bombay riot victims is nothing surprising.
http://countercurrents.org/gatade070807.htm
Is not India anti-Muslim?
Any show of patriotism for money or other favors is ridiculous in principle as that displays hypocrisy. It has been the habit o India, leaders, media an etc, to make feel apologetic an inferior by resorting to the "patriotic" tactics. Of late there have been lot pseudo patriotic sentiments espoused in Indian media. A big chunk of foreign Indians living a very comfortable life abroad tent to enjoy patriotic rhetoric just as the school children do with patriotic rhymes. They join the Indian government, its media and others to pain Indian Muslims in dirty colors and no one is bothered to set things going one-way right. They decide what is patriotic and what is not, making the India news media very energetic in attacking Indian Muslims, already tormented with Indian terrorism rhetoric, for being less patriotic and more terroristic. In stead of imbibing money-based patriotism these patriots could better associate themselves with real value-bases selfless patriotism. In terms of real patriotism, neither Indian politicians cum-bureaucrats, nor media could pass even in third class. But they are very good at anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic in their writings and works, be it in politics or in administration. They thrive thanks to their skills in denouncing Islam and attacking Muslims.
What has been going on world-wide is an attempt by the governments to brand Muslims as terrorists and jail them for torture without court trails. Abdul Nasser Madani and Afzal are glaring examples of Indian attitude to Muslims. Unfortunately, the Constitution of 'democratic' India does not provide for punishment of governments when they commit crimes against individuals. State-sponsored terrorism has been thriving because of that. Though the verdict could be an indirect indictment on governments of Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as Central government for the wrongful confinement and mental torture of Abdul Madani, nothing could probably be done to punish the rulers and their associates. And Indian media cleverly diverted the attention of the plight of Madani and others in a country that is tilted against Muslim genuine interests.
It is known that the Muslims both bearded and clean-shaven are under serious threat in India. It fact Indian governments and their strong networks have made them literally on the run. It is said that India is a incredible country, may be because, the innocent Muslims are punished and terrorized in jails for decades without trials or any legal backing, while those anti-Islamic terrorists who attempted to murder Madani and others are still roaming about freely saying that it is their country and they are "patriots"! India is yet to seriously file cases against atrocities and murders committed against Muslims in the country. Those wanting the Muslims to be jailed forever should consider themselves in jails all alone just for 24 hours; they will know what life like in jails is.
The Indians comfortably living abroad both in Indian embassies and elsewhere think it their "patriotic duty" to trumpet about Indian greatness and "terrorist" Muslims living in India. There seems to be a valid point in Indian media not exposing the Indian authorities for supplying "explosive information" to Australia about Haneef being a "close associate" of the so-called al-Qaeda on the basis of the so-called intelligence reports that actually aided the Australian authorities to arrest and harass Haneef. The Indian media did underplay the government position in order to uphold the national prestige of aspiring India seeking to advance its special interests, and not as a primary journalistic duty for laying bare the facts before the people or their judgment, after all the voters also have to decide the future course of the nation. Later, however, like in films, both the government and media took credit for releasing Haneef from Australian jail and atrocities. But for the intervening of British intelligence, giving the Australian authroites critical evedence to prove innocence of Haneef, Haneef would have been in jail even now, being toruted endlessly.
Nearly for a decade the bearded Abdul Nasser Madani had been branded a terrorist though he did not supply weapon and counsel for the Coimbatore blast. It has become a practice in Tamil Nadu, in police stations, to insult a Muslim with a beard saying that he should also be sent to Coimbatore jail, meaning to shut him near Madani. In fact a bearded Muslim has been under serious threat not only in Tamil Nadu or Kerala but in the entire country. Judge K. Uthirapathy has indeed has delivered a bold verdict under circumstances that a Hindi film actor was convicted by Bombay Court and Madani could also be punished. May be the Haneef verdict might have assured the special judge of righteousness of the Madani case too. And the judge without budging the pressure groups delivered the bold verdict. Possibly, there could have been a lot pressure on the judge to deliver a verdict that does not tarnish the national prestige of majority India.
The general preaching in India as in the West is that the Muslims are "terrorists", whereas Hindus and others are not, the verdict was expected to project this thesis of the anti-Islamic forces and in line with the majority sentiments. The judge has in fact revised the verdict given nearly ten years ago by the anti-Islamic forces in India against Madani after they failed to kill him in a blast at his place in Kerala (Madani lost his leg in an anti-Islamic terrorist attack). These forces now argue that the release of Madani could have terrific consequences for the country and say that Madani should either be jailed permanently or be killed. Now that he is declared innocent, all other petty, politically motivated cases registered against him in Kerala have to be just thrown into the dust-bin of the courts where the cases are pending.
Muslims in India should be grateful to Madani for his suffering for his active involvement in defending Muslims and Islam when a decade ago the anti-Islamic forces in Kerala and elsewhere were on the rampage threatening their very existence. Basically a religious priest, he floated in Islamic service Organization and, when it was outlawed by Indian government on pressure from opposite camp, he dismantled it to start a political outfit with help of Hindus. Then came the attempt to kill him and implicate him in 1998 Coimbatore blast. Clearly there has been a conspiracy against Madani and, unless he is cautious, he might yet again find himself in dark cells. Madani seems to be a clear threat to those politicians who depend on "Muslim vote bank" in Kerala for their own existence and welfare.
One does not know what has really happened in the story about Haneef in Australia, but the India Media took special care not to offend the sentiments of foreign Indians and hence did not reveal the whole truth about the hidden agenda behind Haneef's arrest and harassment. It needs no illustration about India ill-treating Muslims in India and abroad. When no Hindu leader could be jailed for nearly ten long years, Abdul Nasser Madani was tortured in Jails in Kerala and Tamil Nadu without trial and legal sanction. Since the attitude of Police and court toward Muslim is a foregone conclusion and the government think they can do anything and judges will understand" the government's predicament and do justice" in favor of the government. Some how Madan's life and torture were spared after nearly a decade when the Judge declared at long last that Madani and others are innocent and not involved in the so-called Coimbatore terrorist attack of 1998.This historic judgment came to be rude shock to the government, media, the " patriotic" foreign Indians and other "interested networking personnel. What they are not able to digest is the fact that Indian Muslims are not "terrorists".
Considering the course of events about Haneefs jail in Australia, it is apparent that Australia began witch-hunting on the request of Indian government by giving evidence of Haneefs involvement in al-Qaeda activities. Then it goes without saying that Indias efforts to get Haneef release is high-drama enacted to boost the so-called patriotic image of Indians, especially abroad.
This writer has written in details about how a Kashmiri Afzal was hooked by Indian government by playing with his freedom seeking sentiments and implicated in the so-called parliament attack and he was not delivered justice by keeping the frame of reference to the records supplied by the government side. The former President Kalam to whom the matter was referred for his mercy is still pending in the Rashtrpati Bhawan (RB), as Kalam was not allowed to interfere in the Islamic terrorism case.
It is definitely extremely difficult to distinguish between genuine patriotism from pseudo one currently displayed through Indian media. Whether or not the general masses would be allowed to see through the game plan of Indian governments and media, the truth about "terrorism" is out now and who is doing what. What intrigues most is the fact Indian Muslims, like world Muslims because of a strategy by the USA-led nations, have been systematically made feel apologetical about things with which they have no links. India governments-cum-media do it quite consciously in order to keep the Muslims out of resources gained from national development.
Torturing and killing of Muslims the world over under garb of terrorism, threats and suspicions have to stop. Indian parliament must immediately pass a law not to detain the Muslims without court sanction and without sufficient proof. And generally Muslims should not be detained in police custody for more than 24 hours (unless the court is on holiday) and within that time the culprits including the terrorists must be produced before the court of Justice for the settlement of the suspicion case, Muslims cannot remain suspected for decades together as it has happened in the case of innocent Abdul Nasser Madani and many others.
Whether or not the general masses would be allowed to see through the game plan of Indian governments and media, the truth about "terrorism" is out now and who is doing what. The UK government got the release of its terrorist citizens in 2005, but none from the Middle East came forward to get justice for their own justice and the Arabs dont think they are ashamed of their cowardice. The US detention camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba type torture camps without legal sanctions should be allowed to spread world wide. It is, however, still too early to write about Indo-USA terrorism.
DR.ABDUL RUFF Colachal is a Freelance writer from India. E Mail :abdulruff_jnu@yahoo.com
http://bangladesh-web.com/view.php?hidDate=2007-08-14&hidType=OPT&hidRecord=0000000000000000168703
Any show of patriotism for money or other favors is ridiculous in principle as that displays hypocrisy. It has been the habit o India, leaders, media an etc, to make feel apologetic an inferior by resorting to the "patriotic" tactics. Of late there have been lot pseudo patriotic sentiments espoused in Indian media. A big chunk of foreign Indians living a very comfortable life abroad tent to enjoy patriotic rhetoric just as the school children do with patriotic rhymes. They join the Indian government, its media and others to pain Indian Muslims in dirty colors and no one is bothered to set things going one-way right. They decide what is patriotic and what is not, making the India news media very energetic in attacking Indian Muslims, already tormented with Indian terrorism rhetoric, for being less patriotic and more terroristic. In stead of imbibing money-based patriotism these patriots could better associate themselves with real value-bases selfless patriotism. In terms of real patriotism, neither Indian politicians cum-bureaucrats, nor media could pass even in third class. But they are very good at anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic in their writings and works, be it in politics or in administration. They thrive thanks to their skills in denouncing Islam and attacking Muslims.
What has been going on world-wide is an attempt by the governments to brand Muslims as terrorists and jail them for torture without court trails. Abdul Nasser Madani and Afzal are glaring examples of Indian attitude to Muslims. Unfortunately, the Constitution of 'democratic' India does not provide for punishment of governments when they commit crimes against individuals. State-sponsored terrorism has been thriving because of that. Though the verdict could be an indirect indictment on governments of Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as Central government for the wrongful confinement and mental torture of Abdul Madani, nothing could probably be done to punish the rulers and their associates. And Indian media cleverly diverted the attention of the plight of Madani and others in a country that is tilted against Muslim genuine interests.
It is known that the Muslims both bearded and clean-shaven are under serious threat in India. It fact Indian governments and their strong networks have made them literally on the run. It is said that India is a incredible country, may be because, the innocent Muslims are punished and terrorized in jails for decades without trials or any legal backing, while those anti-Islamic terrorists who attempted to murder Madani and others are still roaming about freely saying that it is their country and they are "patriots"! India is yet to seriously file cases against atrocities and murders committed against Muslims in the country. Those wanting the Muslims to be jailed forever should consider themselves in jails all alone just for 24 hours; they will know what life like in jails is.
The Indians comfortably living abroad both in Indian embassies and elsewhere think it their "patriotic duty" to trumpet about Indian greatness and "terrorist" Muslims living in India. There seems to be a valid point in Indian media not exposing the Indian authorities for supplying "explosive information" to Australia about Haneef being a "close associate" of the so-called al-Qaeda on the basis of the so-called intelligence reports that actually aided the Australian authorities to arrest and harass Haneef. The Indian media did underplay the government position in order to uphold the national prestige of aspiring India seeking to advance its special interests, and not as a primary journalistic duty for laying bare the facts before the people or their judgment, after all the voters also have to decide the future course of the nation. Later, however, like in films, both the government and media took credit for releasing Haneef from Australian jail and atrocities. But for the intervening of British intelligence, giving the Australian authroites critical evedence to prove innocence of Haneef, Haneef would have been in jail even now, being toruted endlessly.
Nearly for a decade the bearded Abdul Nasser Madani had been branded a terrorist though he did not supply weapon and counsel for the Coimbatore blast. It has become a practice in Tamil Nadu, in police stations, to insult a Muslim with a beard saying that he should also be sent to Coimbatore jail, meaning to shut him near Madani. In fact a bearded Muslim has been under serious threat not only in Tamil Nadu or Kerala but in the entire country. Judge K. Uthirapathy has indeed has delivered a bold verdict under circumstances that a Hindi film actor was convicted by Bombay Court and Madani could also be punished. May be the Haneef verdict might have assured the special judge of righteousness of the Madani case too. And the judge without budging the pressure groups delivered the bold verdict. Possibly, there could have been a lot pressure on the judge to deliver a verdict that does not tarnish the national prestige of majority India.
The general preaching in India as in the West is that the Muslims are "terrorists", whereas Hindus and others are not, the verdict was expected to project this thesis of the anti-Islamic forces and in line with the majority sentiments. The judge has in fact revised the verdict given nearly ten years ago by the anti-Islamic forces in India against Madani after they failed to kill him in a blast at his place in Kerala (Madani lost his leg in an anti-Islamic terrorist attack). These forces now argue that the release of Madani could have terrific consequences for the country and say that Madani should either be jailed permanently or be killed. Now that he is declared innocent, all other petty, politically motivated cases registered against him in Kerala have to be just thrown into the dust-bin of the courts where the cases are pending.
Muslims in India should be grateful to Madani for his suffering for his active involvement in defending Muslims and Islam when a decade ago the anti-Islamic forces in Kerala and elsewhere were on the rampage threatening their very existence. Basically a religious priest, he floated in Islamic service Organization and, when it was outlawed by Indian government on pressure from opposite camp, he dismantled it to start a political outfit with help of Hindus. Then came the attempt to kill him and implicate him in 1998 Coimbatore blast. Clearly there has been a conspiracy against Madani and, unless he is cautious, he might yet again find himself in dark cells. Madani seems to be a clear threat to those politicians who depend on "Muslim vote bank" in Kerala for their own existence and welfare.
One does not know what has really happened in the story about Haneef in Australia, but the India Media took special care not to offend the sentiments of foreign Indians and hence did not reveal the whole truth about the hidden agenda behind Haneef's arrest and harassment. It needs no illustration about India ill-treating Muslims in India and abroad. When no Hindu leader could be jailed for nearly ten long years, Abdul Nasser Madani was tortured in Jails in Kerala and Tamil Nadu without trial and legal sanction. Since the attitude of Police and court toward Muslim is a foregone conclusion and the government think they can do anything and judges will understand" the government's predicament and do justice" in favor of the government. Some how Madan's life and torture were spared after nearly a decade when the Judge declared at long last that Madani and others are innocent and not involved in the so-called Coimbatore terrorist attack of 1998.This historic judgment came to be rude shock to the government, media, the " patriotic" foreign Indians and other "interested networking personnel. What they are not able to digest is the fact that Indian Muslims are not "terrorists".
Considering the course of events about Haneefs jail in Australia, it is apparent that Australia began witch-hunting on the request of Indian government by giving evidence of Haneefs involvement in al-Qaeda activities. Then it goes without saying that Indias efforts to get Haneef release is high-drama enacted to boost the so-called patriotic image of Indians, especially abroad.
This writer has written in details about how a Kashmiri Afzal was hooked by Indian government by playing with his freedom seeking sentiments and implicated in the so-called parliament attack and he was not delivered justice by keeping the frame of reference to the records supplied by the government side. The former President Kalam to whom the matter was referred for his mercy is still pending in the Rashtrpati Bhawan (RB), as Kalam was not allowed to interfere in the Islamic terrorism case.
It is definitely extremely difficult to distinguish between genuine patriotism from pseudo one currently displayed through Indian media. Whether or not the general masses would be allowed to see through the game plan of Indian governments and media, the truth about "terrorism" is out now and who is doing what. What intrigues most is the fact Indian Muslims, like world Muslims because of a strategy by the USA-led nations, have been systematically made feel apologetical about things with which they have no links. India governments-cum-media do it quite consciously in order to keep the Muslims out of resources gained from national development.
Torturing and killing of Muslims the world over under garb of terrorism, threats and suspicions have to stop. Indian parliament must immediately pass a law not to detain the Muslims without court sanction and without sufficient proof. And generally Muslims should not be detained in police custody for more than 24 hours (unless the court is on holiday) and within that time the culprits including the terrorists must be produced before the court of Justice for the settlement of the suspicion case, Muslims cannot remain suspected for decades together as it has happened in the case of innocent Abdul Nasser Madani and many others.
Whether or not the general masses would be allowed to see through the game plan of Indian governments and media, the truth about "terrorism" is out now and who is doing what. The UK government got the release of its terrorist citizens in 2005, but none from the Middle East came forward to get justice for their own justice and the Arabs dont think they are ashamed of their cowardice. The US detention camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba type torture camps without legal sanctions should be allowed to spread world wide. It is, however, still too early to write about Indo-USA terrorism.
DR.ABDUL RUFF Colachal is a Freelance writer from India. E Mail :abdulruff_jnu@yahoo.com
http://bangladesh-web.com/view.php?hidDate=2007-08-14&hidType=OPT&hidRecord=0000000000000000168703
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Incase if you were too busy copy pasting articles...
Dear Friends,
We want to share a few ideas of ours that we have accumulated with several years on the internet. The primary issue we want to tackle here is something that's been noticed to be on the rise is of spamming.
We encourage hot heated debates and for that matter we've said over n over that all topics of political debates are welcome here. In fact we see no difference with a topic criticizing Pakistan with one criticizing America, Israel or China. Religious criticism is the only thing we encourage that our members use appropriate terminology, but nonetheless, you have open rights to find faults with Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Confucianism, etc.
In all cases you must be prepared to meet a heated debate from the opposing side.
Posting criticism is not an issue that we constitute as spamming.
There are mainly 2 things we'll term as spam.
The less offensive but more damaging one of the two is of posting rampant articles that don't lead to anywhere other than become a large database of criticism of some person or some country. This is not only discouraged, in the longer run it can be forcefully disallowed as by definition, we are a 'forum' not a database. What I mean is we discuss and debate things not maintain records. We would strongly urge that when you post a big article always provide a summary and always give your own analysis, and your own opinion on the matter.
People maintaining this simple decorum within a professional forum are usually the most respected and the most honored.
The second one which is more likely to get you into trouble is pertaining to the way you might dismiss someone's argument by a one-liner or worse, dismiss the person who posted it and even worse start with his or her character assassination. Granted sometimes one-liners are needed and do serve the purpose but that's just sometimes and do not make it a habit of it. But on the other hand if your personal comments are not likely to be taken in a friendly manner, NEVER make them. If they complain, you will be held responsible and questioned.
So please take care and support us in all the upliftings we intend to do with the forum. Wish you all the best and a happy 14th of August!
-- PFF Moderator team.
Dear Friends,
We want to share a few ideas of ours that we have accumulated with several years on the internet. The primary issue we want to tackle here is something that's been noticed to be on the rise is of spamming.
We encourage hot heated debates and for that matter we've said over n over that all topics of political debates are welcome here. In fact we see no difference with a topic criticizing Pakistan with one criticizing America, Israel or China. Religious criticism is the only thing we encourage that our members use appropriate terminology, but nonetheless, you have open rights to find faults with Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Confucianism, etc.
In all cases you must be prepared to meet a heated debate from the opposing side.
Posting criticism is not an issue that we constitute as spamming.
There are mainly 2 things we'll term as spam.
The less offensive but more damaging one of the two is of posting rampant articles that don't lead to anywhere other than become a large database of criticism of some person or some country. This is not only discouraged, in the longer run it can be forcefully disallowed as by definition, we are a 'forum' not a database. What I mean is we discuss and debate things not maintain records. We would strongly urge that when you post a big article always provide a summary and always give your own analysis, and your own opinion on the matter.
People maintaining this simple decorum within a professional forum are usually the most respected and the most honored.
The second one which is more likely to get you into trouble is pertaining to the way you might dismiss someone's argument by a one-liner or worse, dismiss the person who posted it and even worse start with his or her character assassination. Granted sometimes one-liners are needed and do serve the purpose but that's just sometimes and do not make it a habit of it. But on the other hand if your personal comments are not likely to be taken in a friendly manner, NEVER make them. If they complain, you will be held responsible and questioned.
So please take care and support us in all the upliftings we intend to do with the forum. Wish you all the best and a happy 14th of August!
-- PFF Moderator team.
Why do Indian Muslims lag behind?
By Soutik Biswas BBC News
Muslims make up India's largest religious minority As historians tell it, during India's first election in 1952, Jawaharlal Nehru was already worrying about the feeble representation of Muslims in the country's positions of authority. Many more Muslims had stayed back in India than the millions who migrated to newly-born Pakistan after the partition just five years ago. India's first prime minister's concerns about the country's second largest religious group and the largest religious minority were eminently justified.
"There were hardly any Muslims left in the defence service, and not many in the secretariat," says historian Ramachandra Guha.
Little change
Next year, in 1953, a group of intellectuals met to discuss forming a political party for the Muslims and spoke about the low representation of Muslims in political positions and bureaucracy. More than half century later, on India's 60th anniversary of independence, very little has changed. Indian Muslims) carry a double burden of being labelled as 'anti-national' and as being 'appeased' at the same time
Staying behind in India
Today, at over 138 million, Muslims constitute over 13% of India 's billion-strong population, and in sheer numbers are exceeded only by Indonesia's and Pakistan's Muslim community.
The country has had three Muslim presidents - a largely ceremonial role. Bollywood and cricket, two secular pan-Indian obsessions, continue to have their fair share of Muslim stars - the ruling heroes in Mumbai films are Shah Rukh, Aamir and Salman Khan, and the star of India's current English cricket tour is pace bowler Zaheer Khan. Not long ago, the national team was led by the stylish Mohammed Azharuddin.
That's where the good news essentially ends.
Muslims are a 'vulnerable' community Muslims comprise only 5% of employees in India's big government, a recent study found. The figure for Indian Railways, the country's biggest employer, is only 4.5%.
The community continues to have a paltry representation in the bureaucracy and police - 3% in the powerful Indian Civil Service, 1.8% in foreign service and only 4% in the Indian Police Service. And Muslims account for only 7.8% of the people working in the judiciary.
Indian Muslims are also largely illiterate and poor.
At just under 60%, the community's literacy rate is lower than the national average of 65%. Only half of Muslim women can read and write. As many as a quarter of Muslim children in the age-group 6-14 have either never attended school or dropped out. They are also poor - 31% of Muslims are below the country's poverty line, just a notch above the lowest castes and tribes who remain the poorest of the poor.
Identity card
To add to the community's woes are myriad problems relating to, as one expert says, "identity, security and equity".
"They carry a double burden of being labelled as 'anti-national' and as being 'appeased' at the same time," says a recent report on the state of Indian Muslims. Historians say it is ironic that many Indians bought the Hindu nationalist bogey of 'Muslim appeasement' when it had not translated into any major socio-economic gain for the community. So why has the lot of Indian Muslims remained miserable after six decades of independence?
Half of Muslim women in India cannot read or write For one, it is the sheer apathy and ineptitude of the Indian state which has failed to provide equality of opportunity in health, education and employment.
This has hurt the poor - including the Muslim poor who comprise the majority of the community - most.
There is also the relatively recent trend of political bias against the community when Hindu nationalist governments have ruled in Delhi and the states. Also, the lack of credible middle class leadership among the Muslims has hobbled the community's vision and progress. Consequently, rabble rousers claiming to represent the community have thrust themselves to the fore.
To be true, mass migration during partition robbed the community of potential leaders - most Muslim civil servants, teachers, doctors and professionals crossed over. But the failure to throw up credible leaders has meant low community participation in the political processes and government - of the 543 MPs in India's lower house of parliament, only 36 are Muslims.
Also, as Ramachandra Guha says, the "vicissitudes of India-Pakistan relations and Pakistan's treatment of its minorities" ensured that Muslims remained a "vulnerable" community.
Regional disparities
The plight of Indian Muslims also has a lot to do with the appalling quality of governance, unequal social order and lack of equality of opportunity in northern India where most of the community lives.
Populous Uttar Pradesh is home to nearly a fifth of Muslims (31 million) living in India, while Bihar has more than 10 million community members.
"Southern India is a different picture. Larger cultural and social movements have made education more accessible and self employment more lucrative benefiting a large number of Muslims," says historian Mahesh Rangarajan. In Andhra Pradesh state, for example, 68% of Muslims are literate, higher than the state and national average. School enrolment rates for Muslim children are above 90% in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Mahesh Rangarajan says poverty and "absence of ameliorative policies" has hurt India's Muslims most.
If India was to be "a secular, stable and strong state," Nehru once said, "then our first consideration must be to give absolute fair play to our minority".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6938090.stm
By Soutik Biswas BBC News
Muslims make up India's largest religious minority As historians tell it, during India's first election in 1952, Jawaharlal Nehru was already worrying about the feeble representation of Muslims in the country's positions of authority. Many more Muslims had stayed back in India than the millions who migrated to newly-born Pakistan after the partition just five years ago. India's first prime minister's concerns about the country's second largest religious group and the largest religious minority were eminently justified.
"There were hardly any Muslims left in the defence service, and not many in the secretariat," says historian Ramachandra Guha.
Little change
Next year, in 1953, a group of intellectuals met to discuss forming a political party for the Muslims and spoke about the low representation of Muslims in political positions and bureaucracy. More than half century later, on India's 60th anniversary of independence, very little has changed. Indian Muslims) carry a double burden of being labelled as 'anti-national' and as being 'appeased' at the same time
Staying behind in India
Today, at over 138 million, Muslims constitute over 13% of India 's billion-strong population, and in sheer numbers are exceeded only by Indonesia's and Pakistan's Muslim community.
The country has had three Muslim presidents - a largely ceremonial role. Bollywood and cricket, two secular pan-Indian obsessions, continue to have their fair share of Muslim stars - the ruling heroes in Mumbai films are Shah Rukh, Aamir and Salman Khan, and the star of India's current English cricket tour is pace bowler Zaheer Khan. Not long ago, the national team was led by the stylish Mohammed Azharuddin.
That's where the good news essentially ends.
Muslims are a 'vulnerable' community Muslims comprise only 5% of employees in India's big government, a recent study found. The figure for Indian Railways, the country's biggest employer, is only 4.5%.
The community continues to have a paltry representation in the bureaucracy and police - 3% in the powerful Indian Civil Service, 1.8% in foreign service and only 4% in the Indian Police Service. And Muslims account for only 7.8% of the people working in the judiciary.
Indian Muslims are also largely illiterate and poor.
At just under 60%, the community's literacy rate is lower than the national average of 65%. Only half of Muslim women can read and write. As many as a quarter of Muslim children in the age-group 6-14 have either never attended school or dropped out. They are also poor - 31% of Muslims are below the country's poverty line, just a notch above the lowest castes and tribes who remain the poorest of the poor.
Identity card
To add to the community's woes are myriad problems relating to, as one expert says, "identity, security and equity".
"They carry a double burden of being labelled as 'anti-national' and as being 'appeased' at the same time," says a recent report on the state of Indian Muslims. Historians say it is ironic that many Indians bought the Hindu nationalist bogey of 'Muslim appeasement' when it had not translated into any major socio-economic gain for the community. So why has the lot of Indian Muslims remained miserable after six decades of independence?
Half of Muslim women in India cannot read or write For one, it is the sheer apathy and ineptitude of the Indian state which has failed to provide equality of opportunity in health, education and employment.
This has hurt the poor - including the Muslim poor who comprise the majority of the community - most.
There is also the relatively recent trend of political bias against the community when Hindu nationalist governments have ruled in Delhi and the states. Also, the lack of credible middle class leadership among the Muslims has hobbled the community's vision and progress. Consequently, rabble rousers claiming to represent the community have thrust themselves to the fore.
To be true, mass migration during partition robbed the community of potential leaders - most Muslim civil servants, teachers, doctors and professionals crossed over. But the failure to throw up credible leaders has meant low community participation in the political processes and government - of the 543 MPs in India's lower house of parliament, only 36 are Muslims.
Also, as Ramachandra Guha says, the "vicissitudes of India-Pakistan relations and Pakistan's treatment of its minorities" ensured that Muslims remained a "vulnerable" community.
Regional disparities
The plight of Indian Muslims also has a lot to do with the appalling quality of governance, unequal social order and lack of equality of opportunity in northern India where most of the community lives.
Populous Uttar Pradesh is home to nearly a fifth of Muslims (31 million) living in India, while Bihar has more than 10 million community members.
"Southern India is a different picture. Larger cultural and social movements have made education more accessible and self employment more lucrative benefiting a large number of Muslims," says historian Mahesh Rangarajan. In Andhra Pradesh state, for example, 68% of Muslims are literate, higher than the state and national average. School enrolment rates for Muslim children are above 90% in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Mahesh Rangarajan says poverty and "absence of ameliorative policies" has hurt India's Muslims most.
If India was to be "a secular, stable and strong state," Nehru once said, "then our first consideration must be to give absolute fair play to our minority".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6938090.stm
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Guys please post your own opinions along with these long articles.
We are more interested in hearing your analytical views and opinions rather than reading a news item.
Read this thread: https://defence.pk/forums/showthread.php?t=6794
We are more interested in hearing your analytical views and opinions rather than reading a news item.
Read this thread: https://defence.pk/forums/showthread.php?t=6794
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The average Indian Muslim wants room to survive
Dr Arjun Appadurai, anthropologist
It is not always that an academic book published by a university press gets national attention across America, and leads its writer to speak on National Public Radio and appear on several well-regarded television shows.
Unless, of course, the author is Mumbai-born Arjun Appadurai, whose book Fear of Small Numbers discusses why, in the age of globalisation, there has been a proliferation of violence and of ethnic cleansing on the one hand and extreme forms of political violence against civilian population on the other.
Dr Appadurai, John Dewy Professor in Social Sciences at New School University in New York, tells Rediff India Abroad Managing Editor (Features) Arthur J Pais that there seems to be an increasing and irrational fear of the minorities around the world and minorities, including in India, confront greater hostilities than ever before.
Your book has an intriguing title. Could you discuss its significance?
Minorities throughout the world are, somehow, the subject of anxiety. And in the last decade, despite the opening of markets, the free flow of capital and liberal ideas, minorities in many countries including India are facing greater hostilities than ever before, and in some cases, they face genocide.
There seems to be an increasing and irrational fear of the minorities. I have been interested in census statistics, how populations are actually enumerated. Apart from the question of being weak or subordinate, official enumeration is one of the ways minorities are created in the modern world.
The point here is that the idea of minority and majority was not always a part of human society. Human societies always had different groups; some were larger and some smaller; but the twin categories of minority and majority are modern phenomena.
The idea of majority and minority are intimately connected. The two arise together. And in the book, I observe that the idea of majority and minority in India emerges out of a procedural consideration having to do with minority opinions in key administrative committees under British rule. The idea of minority opinion did not arise in the first place out of national enumeration of population, but from this other administrative and procedural root.
But soon after this administrative concept came into play, the idea of minority and majority began to apply to core social groups and began to be institutionalised in the census.
How does the recent serial bomb blasts in Mumbai play into your broader theme?
The Mumbai blasts are part of a history that clearly involves several factors. One is the worldwide illicit arms trade that underlies everything from the Mumbai blasts to Hezbollah's rocket capacities in Lebanon, and has strengthened many other groups like the Basques and the Tamil Tigers that have nothing to do with Islam.
We should remember that it is not the Muslims only that are the beneficiaries of worldwide deregulated arms trade.
Second, in the South Asian story we have the bitterness of Partition. Especially in North India, and especially among Hindu nationalist groups, Partition is a wound and insult to the integrity of India, which created a perennial enemy, the state of Pakistan, and its supporters and sympathisers in Kashmir and in the rest of India.
That story could have been forgotten -- but it is never forgotten; it is kept alive and kept active by politicians, by religious leaders, by party ideologues and by parts of the media.
Thirdly, in Pakistan you have a society that is in fact theocratic, and there is no question that Pakistan as a State has pursued a variety of official, unofficial and individual activities calculated to unsettle India. However open-minded one is, one has to recognise it. It is also true that India has done its part to keep up the competition with Pakistan, to outdo its military capacities, to exceed its nuclear capabilities and to limit Pakistan's influence in Asia as a whole.
But there is no denying that as a theocratic State under military rule, Pakistan has pursued anti-democratic policies at many levels, and has been unable to free itself from using Kashmir as a distraction from its own internal crises as a civil society and a buffer state in the Great Game of Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia and the United States.
Some secularists find it difficult to accept that in certain areas of India where the Muslims are dominant, they can create a feeling of terror among the Hindus. Do you share those reservations?
We have to accept that reality, and the fact that violence for political and religious gains is not confined only to the Hindu Right. We must also acknowledge that Pakistan is not something invented by the imagination of the Hindu Right. It is real. It is authoritarian. It is theocratic. And Pakistani civil society has moved closer to the Islamic right.
In India, there are some Muslims who sympathise with Pakistan. It is hard to tell whether it is the product of their being driven out of India, mentally speaking, or whether they had a prior affiliation to Pakistan. The more you are pushed out, the more you are going to identify with some place where you might be a first class citizen.
And yet, I believe that the radical, terrorist voices one hears in the Muslim communities in India are few and small. The average Muslim in India today has this request to the majority community: Give us the room to survive. Muslims in rural and urban India are not thinking of taking over India, but are asking whether they can live there at all.
Sure, there is a rise in the anti-Muslim sentiments across India. What has been especially worrisome is that this anger has been adopted by the middle class, the educated and the professionals across India. The very classes and groups who would have been ashamed to express strong radical religious sentiments in the 1950s and 1960s are proudly pro-Hindu today.
How did that transformation come about?
We must not just ask what Hindutva is about, you must also ask the question how it has changed in the last few decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, many middle class, educated professionals talked as if India's secularism belonged to everyone, and was not a favour handed out by Hindus to other groups.
In the 30 to 40 years since the high period of Nehru's secularism, the other trend in Indian politics, the pro-Hindu strand has become prominent. For me as an anthropologist, it is painfully obvious that it has become culturally respectable to run down and suspect the Muslim community.
You can now publicly question the political loyalty of the minorities, you can publicly question Muslims at all times, Christians at various times and Sikhs intensely in the 1980s, as you recall. Fortunately, the tide of anti-Sikh sentiments has turned, and their loyalty is not questioned now.
There seems some evidence to suggest that at least in some instances, minorities triggered the violence...
In that case, the state agencies can look into the problem. But when mobs take the law into their own hand and unleash violence, terrible things unfold. Study after study has shown that the retaliatory violence against the minorities is hugely disproportionate to the alleged crimes attributed to them.
http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/aug/29appachat.htm
Dr Arjun Appadurai, anthropologist
It is not always that an academic book published by a university press gets national attention across America, and leads its writer to speak on National Public Radio and appear on several well-regarded television shows.
Unless, of course, the author is Mumbai-born Arjun Appadurai, whose book Fear of Small Numbers discusses why, in the age of globalisation, there has been a proliferation of violence and of ethnic cleansing on the one hand and extreme forms of political violence against civilian population on the other.
Dr Appadurai, John Dewy Professor in Social Sciences at New School University in New York, tells Rediff India Abroad Managing Editor (Features) Arthur J Pais that there seems to be an increasing and irrational fear of the minorities around the world and minorities, including in India, confront greater hostilities than ever before.
Your book has an intriguing title. Could you discuss its significance?
Minorities throughout the world are, somehow, the subject of anxiety. And in the last decade, despite the opening of markets, the free flow of capital and liberal ideas, minorities in many countries including India are facing greater hostilities than ever before, and in some cases, they face genocide.
There seems to be an increasing and irrational fear of the minorities. I have been interested in census statistics, how populations are actually enumerated. Apart from the question of being weak or subordinate, official enumeration is one of the ways minorities are created in the modern world.
The point here is that the idea of minority and majority was not always a part of human society. Human societies always had different groups; some were larger and some smaller; but the twin categories of minority and majority are modern phenomena.
The idea of majority and minority are intimately connected. The two arise together. And in the book, I observe that the idea of majority and minority in India emerges out of a procedural consideration having to do with minority opinions in key administrative committees under British rule. The idea of minority opinion did not arise in the first place out of national enumeration of population, but from this other administrative and procedural root.
But soon after this administrative concept came into play, the idea of minority and majority began to apply to core social groups and began to be institutionalised in the census.
How does the recent serial bomb blasts in Mumbai play into your broader theme?
The Mumbai blasts are part of a history that clearly involves several factors. One is the worldwide illicit arms trade that underlies everything from the Mumbai blasts to Hezbollah's rocket capacities in Lebanon, and has strengthened many other groups like the Basques and the Tamil Tigers that have nothing to do with Islam.
We should remember that it is not the Muslims only that are the beneficiaries of worldwide deregulated arms trade.
Second, in the South Asian story we have the bitterness of Partition. Especially in North India, and especially among Hindu nationalist groups, Partition is a wound and insult to the integrity of India, which created a perennial enemy, the state of Pakistan, and its supporters and sympathisers in Kashmir and in the rest of India.
That story could have been forgotten -- but it is never forgotten; it is kept alive and kept active by politicians, by religious leaders, by party ideologues and by parts of the media.
Thirdly, in Pakistan you have a society that is in fact theocratic, and there is no question that Pakistan as a State has pursued a variety of official, unofficial and individual activities calculated to unsettle India. However open-minded one is, one has to recognise it. It is also true that India has done its part to keep up the competition with Pakistan, to outdo its military capacities, to exceed its nuclear capabilities and to limit Pakistan's influence in Asia as a whole.
But there is no denying that as a theocratic State under military rule, Pakistan has pursued anti-democratic policies at many levels, and has been unable to free itself from using Kashmir as a distraction from its own internal crises as a civil society and a buffer state in the Great Game of Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia and the United States.
Some secularists find it difficult to accept that in certain areas of India where the Muslims are dominant, they can create a feeling of terror among the Hindus. Do you share those reservations?
We have to accept that reality, and the fact that violence for political and religious gains is not confined only to the Hindu Right. We must also acknowledge that Pakistan is not something invented by the imagination of the Hindu Right. It is real. It is authoritarian. It is theocratic. And Pakistani civil society has moved closer to the Islamic right.
In India, there are some Muslims who sympathise with Pakistan. It is hard to tell whether it is the product of their being driven out of India, mentally speaking, or whether they had a prior affiliation to Pakistan. The more you are pushed out, the more you are going to identify with some place where you might be a first class citizen.
And yet, I believe that the radical, terrorist voices one hears in the Muslim communities in India are few and small. The average Muslim in India today has this request to the majority community: Give us the room to survive. Muslims in rural and urban India are not thinking of taking over India, but are asking whether they can live there at all.
Sure, there is a rise in the anti-Muslim sentiments across India. What has been especially worrisome is that this anger has been adopted by the middle class, the educated and the professionals across India. The very classes and groups who would have been ashamed to express strong radical religious sentiments in the 1950s and 1960s are proudly pro-Hindu today.
How did that transformation come about?
We must not just ask what Hindutva is about, you must also ask the question how it has changed in the last few decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, many middle class, educated professionals talked as if India's secularism belonged to everyone, and was not a favour handed out by Hindus to other groups.
In the 30 to 40 years since the high period of Nehru's secularism, the other trend in Indian politics, the pro-Hindu strand has become prominent. For me as an anthropologist, it is painfully obvious that it has become culturally respectable to run down and suspect the Muslim community.
You can now publicly question the political loyalty of the minorities, you can publicly question Muslims at all times, Christians at various times and Sikhs intensely in the 1980s, as you recall. Fortunately, the tide of anti-Sikh sentiments has turned, and their loyalty is not questioned now.
There seems some evidence to suggest that at least in some instances, minorities triggered the violence...
In that case, the state agencies can look into the problem. But when mobs take the law into their own hand and unleash violence, terrible things unfold. Study after study has shown that the retaliatory violence against the minorities is hugely disproportionate to the alleged crimes attributed to them.
http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/aug/29appachat.htm
Hindu hardliners attack magazine
Hardline Hindus have ransacked the office of an Indian news magazine in protest over an article that described their leader as a villain, police say. An accompanying Outlook cartoon showed Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray dressed as German war leader Adolf Hitler.
Some 12 members of the Shiv Sena party attacked the offices of the Outlook magazine in the financial centre of Mumbai (Bombay), police said. They smashed windows and damaged computers but no-one was hurt.
Mr Thackeray has spoken approvingly of Hitler in the past. Outlook editor Vinod Mehta said that six men - who said they belonged to the Hindu nationalist party - carried out the attack.
Bal Thackeray is revered by many Shiv Sena supporters
"It's a clear and blatant attack on the freedom of the press. It was an ugly scene. The men broke windows and intimidated and threatened staff," Mr Mehta told the AP news agency. He said that the chief minister of Maharashtra, Vilasrao Deshmukh, has promised to take action against the attackers. "The staff is traumatised because these guys threatened to come back. We have demanded police action, not just against these foot soldiers but against the person who masterminded the attack," he said.
'Wrong'
The magazine quoted speeches made by Mr Thackeray against India's minority Muslim community to justify its description of him as a villain in its latest Independence Day issue.
Other people on the list included Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi; Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Sikh separatist leader; underworld leader Dawood Ibrahim; and Narendra Modi, a right-wing leader accused of ignoring mob violence in the Western state of Gujarat in 2002.
Mumbai-based Shiv Sena leader Vinayak Raut defended the office attack, but said his party was investigating to see who was responsible. "The cartoon is wrong. Some Shiv Sainiks may have reacted to it. But we are still getting information to see if the men were actually from Shiv Sena," he told AP. Police said they were investigating the complaint.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6946430.stm
Hardline Hindus have ransacked the office of an Indian news magazine in protest over an article that described their leader as a villain, police say. An accompanying Outlook cartoon showed Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray dressed as German war leader Adolf Hitler.
Some 12 members of the Shiv Sena party attacked the offices of the Outlook magazine in the financial centre of Mumbai (Bombay), police said. They smashed windows and damaged computers but no-one was hurt.
Mr Thackeray has spoken approvingly of Hitler in the past. Outlook editor Vinod Mehta said that six men - who said they belonged to the Hindu nationalist party - carried out the attack.
Bal Thackeray is revered by many Shiv Sena supporters
"It's a clear and blatant attack on the freedom of the press. It was an ugly scene. The men broke windows and intimidated and threatened staff," Mr Mehta told the AP news agency. He said that the chief minister of Maharashtra, Vilasrao Deshmukh, has promised to take action against the attackers. "The staff is traumatised because these guys threatened to come back. We have demanded police action, not just against these foot soldiers but against the person who masterminded the attack," he said.
'Wrong'
The magazine quoted speeches made by Mr Thackeray against India's minority Muslim community to justify its description of him as a villain in its latest Independence Day issue.
Other people on the list included Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi; Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Sikh separatist leader; underworld leader Dawood Ibrahim; and Narendra Modi, a right-wing leader accused of ignoring mob violence in the Western state of Gujarat in 2002.
Mumbai-based Shiv Sena leader Vinayak Raut defended the office attack, but said his party was investigating to see who was responsible. "The cartoon is wrong. Some Shiv Sainiks may have reacted to it. But we are still getting information to see if the men were actually from Shiv Sena," he told AP. Police said they were investigating the complaint.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6946430.stm
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