By JEREMIAH MARQUEZ
AP Business Writer
HONG KONG — The fallout from Dubai's debt crisis rippled across the globe Friday, raising concerns of another wave of financial turmoil and showing how vulnerable the world economy remains despite signs of recovery.
As global stock, commodity and currency markets went into a tailspin, the possible spillover effects from Dubai surfaced from London to South Korea, with banks big and small drawing concern for any losses they could suffer as a result of their exposure to the massively debt-laden emirate.
A year after the global slump derailed Dubai's explosive growth, the city-state's main investment arm, Dubai World, revealed this week it was asking for at least a six-month delay on paying back its $60 billion debt. Major credit agencies responded by slashing debt ratings on Dubai's state companies, saying they might consider the plan a default.
In recent years, Dubai has expanded with ambitious, eye-catching projects like the Gulf's palm-shaped islands and the world's tallest skyscraper in hopes of becoming a tourist friendly and cosmopolitan Middle Eastern metropolis. In the process, however, the state-backed networks nicknamed Dubai Inc. have racked up $80 billion in red ink, and the emirate may now need another bailout from its oil-rich neighbor Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
Following a rout in Europe, Asia's stock markets tumbled Friday while the dollar hit a fresh 14-year low against the yen as investors piled into currencies perceived as safer. Crude oil at one point fell more than 6 percent.
With Dubai World hard pressed to pay its bills, banks could take the biggest hit, analysts said.
Heavyweight London-based lenders HSBC Holdings and Standard Chartered could face losses of $611 million and $177 million respectively, according to early estimates from analysts at Goldman Sachs. Both have substantial Middle East operations.
In Asia, Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, the country's No. 3 bank, could be exposed to Dubai World's indebted property arm to the tune of several hundred million dollars, according to a person familiar with the matter.
South Korea estimated the country's financial institutions have just $88 million exposure. Construction firms from Japan, Australia and South Korea behind Dubai's recent development boom also might be on the hook.
While most have the wherewithal to absorb any losses, Dubai's troubles could lead banks to reevaluate and scale back their lending.
That could make it more difficult for companies to borrow money and hold down a world economy still emerging from the throes of its deepest recession in decades, analysts said.
Equally unsettling for investors was the uncertainty over which companies were exposed and how much money they might actually lose. European banks alone have $87 billion at risk in the U.A.E.
"It touched investors' sensitive nerves," said Cai Junyi, an analyst for Shanghai Securities. "The world is watching whether that will have any substantial impact ... Dubai World is just like a small window that might reflect another financial tsunami."
Emerging markets in the Middle East and elsewhere have attracted massive amounts of capital in recent years amid investor enthusiasm for regions with rapid economic growth. This year, financial markets in Asia and Latin America have vastly outperformed ones in the U.S. and Europe. But Dubai's woes could bring a temporary end to the promiscuous buying behind the boom, analysts said.
"I think it will make investors realize they need to be more discriminating about emerging markets," said Arjuna Mahendran, head of Asian investment strategy at HSBC Private Bank in Singapore. "In the longer term we have no doubt that things are going to recover."
HSBC declined to comment. Calls to Standard Chartered representatives were not returned.
Among other companies with Dubai ties, South Korean construction firms have about 40 projects there whose remaining work is valued at as much as $3 billion. South Korea's government expected the problems to have minimal impact.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Rana, Headley travelled to Kerala
Rana, Headley travelled to Kerala to develop sleeper cells of 313 Brigade
The terror link
By Arun Lakshman in Thiruvananthapuram
Sources in the central agencies confirmed that more than a recce of these vital installations, the deadly duo had clear targets in Kochi and wanted to create sleeper cells, which are actively involved in social projects and which can be immersed in the Kerala society. Popular Front, a new version of the deadly Islamist organisation NDF, has of late been seen actively involved in the social projects conducted by the state government and sources told this correspondent that the central IB knows of the activities conducted by this organisation.
David Coleman Headley or Dawood Gilani and Tahawwur Hussain Rana would have reached Kochi to activate sleeper cells and to create new recruits in the deadly 313 Brigade led by Iliyas Kashmiri, a Pakistan army officer-turned mercenary. Sources in the central intelligence told Organiser that both had been in Kochi with Rana staying in Taj Residency while Headley, aka Gilani, choosing a private accommodation.
Interestingly, the state police and the central agencies like the IB and the NIA are on the heels to get the whereabouts of the dreaded criminal and Islamist CMA Basheer, who is considered to have played a major role in the Mumbai blasts in collusion with gangster Dawood Ibrahim.
Basheer, the former national president of the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), is on the run since the Mumbai blasts. Unfortunately, state police or other agencies do not have a photograph of the dreaded terrorist and sources in the central Intelligence Bureau told this reporter that he would have been in Kochi in disguise during Rana and Headley’s visit. While the Union Home Secretary Gopalkrishna Pillai has categorically denied the presence of Headley in Kochi, highly-placed sources in the IB told this correspondent that Headley was present in Kerala, Kochi included.
The NIA team, which is in Kochi on the trail of Rana, has found out that he conducted boating in the Arabian Sea along the Kochi coast for thirty minutes and took photographs of vital installations of the country including Cochin Port Trust, Cochin Shipyard and Vallarpadom Container Terminal. NIA in its investigation has found out that Rana did not use the boat of the five-star hotel but went for a private boat. Sources in the central IB told this correspondent that they are now on the trail of boat-providers in Kochi. It may be recalled that there were several cases registered against certain boat-makers of Munambam in Kochi for providing boats to LTTE during their hey days.
It may be recalled that Organiser recently carried out a story on the recent bonhomie between the Maoists and SIMI at the behest of the Chinese and that a secret meeting of top-level leaders of the two outfits was held in Bengaluru and a former Naxalite leader from Kerala was given the charge of the joint operations. Interestingly, the intelligence had much earlier confirmed over the close rapport between the Indian Maoists and SIMI and following the theory of one’s friend is the other’s friend, SIMI became-friends with LTTE and the boat used by Rana could have been provided by an LTTE contact.
Sources in the central agencies also confirmed that more than a recce of these vital installations, the deadly duo had clear targets in Kochi and wanted to create sleeper, cells, which are actively involved in social projects and which can be immersed in the Kerala society. Popular Front, the new version of the deadly Islamist organisation NDF, has of late been seen actively involved in the social projects conducted by the state government and sources told this correspondent that the central IB knows of the activities conducted by this organisation.
The facts that internationally-known terrorists are operating from the state and the state police is in a sleepy mood with the state DGP not clear as to what has happened in the intelligence arena bring the state police in poor light.
However, the police is also probing into the roles played by certain real estate lobbies in Kochi and the surrounding areas and whether they are using the money laundered by terror operatives in the state’s real estate market.
The terror link
By Arun Lakshman in Thiruvananthapuram
Sources in the central agencies confirmed that more than a recce of these vital installations, the deadly duo had clear targets in Kochi and wanted to create sleeper cells, which are actively involved in social projects and which can be immersed in the Kerala society. Popular Front, a new version of the deadly Islamist organisation NDF, has of late been seen actively involved in the social projects conducted by the state government and sources told this correspondent that the central IB knows of the activities conducted by this organisation.
David Coleman Headley or Dawood Gilani and Tahawwur Hussain Rana would have reached Kochi to activate sleeper cells and to create new recruits in the deadly 313 Brigade led by Iliyas Kashmiri, a Pakistan army officer-turned mercenary. Sources in the central intelligence told Organiser that both had been in Kochi with Rana staying in Taj Residency while Headley, aka Gilani, choosing a private accommodation.
Interestingly, the state police and the central agencies like the IB and the NIA are on the heels to get the whereabouts of the dreaded criminal and Islamist CMA Basheer, who is considered to have played a major role in the Mumbai blasts in collusion with gangster Dawood Ibrahim.
Basheer, the former national president of the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), is on the run since the Mumbai blasts. Unfortunately, state police or other agencies do not have a photograph of the dreaded terrorist and sources in the central Intelligence Bureau told this reporter that he would have been in Kochi in disguise during Rana and Headley’s visit. While the Union Home Secretary Gopalkrishna Pillai has categorically denied the presence of Headley in Kochi, highly-placed sources in the IB told this correspondent that Headley was present in Kerala, Kochi included.
The NIA team, which is in Kochi on the trail of Rana, has found out that he conducted boating in the Arabian Sea along the Kochi coast for thirty minutes and took photographs of vital installations of the country including Cochin Port Trust, Cochin Shipyard and Vallarpadom Container Terminal. NIA in its investigation has found out that Rana did not use the boat of the five-star hotel but went for a private boat. Sources in the central IB told this correspondent that they are now on the trail of boat-providers in Kochi. It may be recalled that there were several cases registered against certain boat-makers of Munambam in Kochi for providing boats to LTTE during their hey days.
It may be recalled that Organiser recently carried out a story on the recent bonhomie between the Maoists and SIMI at the behest of the Chinese and that a secret meeting of top-level leaders of the two outfits was held in Bengaluru and a former Naxalite leader from Kerala was given the charge of the joint operations. Interestingly, the intelligence had much earlier confirmed over the close rapport between the Indian Maoists and SIMI and following the theory of one’s friend is the other’s friend, SIMI became-friends with LTTE and the boat used by Rana could have been provided by an LTTE contact.
Sources in the central agencies also confirmed that more than a recce of these vital installations, the deadly duo had clear targets in Kochi and wanted to create sleeper, cells, which are actively involved in social projects and which can be immersed in the Kerala society. Popular Front, the new version of the deadly Islamist organisation NDF, has of late been seen actively involved in the social projects conducted by the state government and sources told this correspondent that the central IB knows of the activities conducted by this organisation.
The facts that internationally-known terrorists are operating from the state and the state police is in a sleepy mood with the state DGP not clear as to what has happened in the intelligence arena bring the state police in poor light.
However, the police is also probing into the roles played by certain real estate lobbies in Kochi and the surrounding areas and whether they are using the money laundered by terror operatives in the state’s real estate market.
The politics of crorepatis and the media
Who runs this country? Who runs the states? If anybody believes that the Congress or the UPA runs them, they are deluding themselves. There is no Congress. There is no NCP either. They are mirages. In Maharashtra, for instance, the state is run by millionaires. We are told that each MLA in Maharashtra is worth on an average Rs. 40 million. Mind the words each MLA and that, too, if we treat their own affidavit declarations as genuine. And who says this? P. Sainath, a leading journalist with unchallengeable credentials. He is a senior member of the editorial staff of The Hindu. And his edit page article in the paper ( October 26) is worth its weigth in gold. In politics today, there is no space for aam aadmi. The number of crorepatis in the Maharashtra State Assembly has gone up by 70 per cent in the just-concluded election. There were 108 crorepati MLAs in 2004. Now there are 184. Nearly two thirds of the MLAs just elected in Maharashtra and close to three fourths of those in Haryana, are crorepatis. And don’t ask how they became rich. Or how did they get elected. Says Sainath: "Your chances of winning an election to the Maharashtra Assembly if you are worth over Rs. 100 million are 48 times greater than if you are worth just Rs one million, or less".
No doubt, they are all great patriots. Rich people always are. But in business-and elections are Big Business-it is money that counts. Your knowledge of government, of legislation, of social conditions prevailing in your state or your commitment to social service are all irrelevant. You may be a distinguished economist, an expert on a whole range of subjects concerning governance, but no matter. The only way to success is to have the right bank balance. Success automatically follows. That, however, is not the only thing to worry about. If you have the money, these days you can ‘buy’ news. Literally. And almost in any media, print, electronic, whatever. Writes Sainath: "Not all sections of the media were in this mould, but quite a few. New just small local outlets, but powerful newspapers and television channels, too".
A knowledgeable source is quoted as saying: "The media have been the biggest winners of the polls". Apparently their poll- period intake is estimated to be in hundreds of millions of rupees. In the past it used to be hinted that some journalists were available for purchase. That for a certain sum they could be persuaded to write a story, a positive story or stories, about a politician, extolling his virtues or damning his opponent. Now those days are over. The media management has taken over the business. As Sainath put it: "The game has moved from the petty personal corruption of a handful of journalists to the structured extraction of huge sums of money by media outfits". The smart, if corrupt journalist, does not matter any longer. It is the boss himself who rakes in the moolah. The journalist has just to obey orders. The management lays down how much to charge for publishing a profile of a candidate, or an interview with him, or even a trashing of his rival. For a mere four lakhs of rupees that a paper could charge the candidate, he could get not only his profile but "four news items" of his choice. Throw in a little extra, and the paper will even help the candidate to draft his news items. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what is called Freedom of the Press.
Some of our newspaper barons are not accountable to anybody-let alone the readers. China, as one does not have to remind anyone, has been in the news. And the Chinese media has been expectedly very critical of India. But just consider what China’s state-run People’s Daily Online has been writing, as reported by The Indian Express ( October 16). It reflects an interesting mindset that Indians must know, if they want to understand how the Chinese mind works. To quote from the Online: "Nobody can deny that today’s India is a power. In recent years, Indians have become more narrow-minded and intolerable of outside criticism as nationalist sentiment arises, with some of them even turning to hegemony. It can be proved by India’s recent provocation on border issues with China. Given the country’s history, hegemony is a hundred per cent result of British colonialism. Dating back to the era of British India, the country covered a vast territory including present day India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh as well as Nepal. India took it for granted that it could continue to rule the large area when Britain ended its colonialism in South Asia. A previous victim of colonialism and hegemony, started to dream about developing its own hegemony. Obssessed with such mentality, India turned a blind eye to the concessions China had repeatedly made over the disputed border issues, and refused to drop the pretentious airs when dealing with neighbours like Pakistan... Although the pursuit of being a superpower is justifiable, the dream of being a superpower held by Indians appears impetuous.... Throughout the history, India has constantly been under foreign rule. The essence for the rise of India lies in how to be an independent country, to learn to solve the complicated ethnic and religious issues... For India, the ease of tension with China and Pakistan is the only way to become a superpower...."
Where international affairs are concerned. It is often-one might say, always important to know what the other party thinks. India, especially, should know what China thinks of us. It is amusing to learn from People’s Daily Online that India is hegemonic and is trying to ape the British! One would have thought that it was China, with its newfound wealth, that is trying to be hegemonic. It is not true that in India’s long history that it has been "constantly" under foreign rule. But never mind that. India has no desire whatsoever to rule any other country. It had never wanted to do that in the past and one doesn’t know anybody who has such a dream for the future. All that India wants is to be left alone to develop its own economy and work for the general prosperity of all people that is reflected in the statement: sarve janaha sukhino bhavanatu. It is clear that China has a poor understanding of India. But one thing that Online says is relevant. "At present" it ends its comment, "China is pro-actively engaging in negotiations with India for the early settlement of border dispute and India should give a positive response". So, may we suggest, should China? It takes two to play a game.
No doubt, they are all great patriots. Rich people always are. But in business-and elections are Big Business-it is money that counts. Your knowledge of government, of legislation, of social conditions prevailing in your state or your commitment to social service are all irrelevant. You may be a distinguished economist, an expert on a whole range of subjects concerning governance, but no matter. The only way to success is to have the right bank balance. Success automatically follows. That, however, is not the only thing to worry about. If you have the money, these days you can ‘buy’ news. Literally. And almost in any media, print, electronic, whatever. Writes Sainath: "Not all sections of the media were in this mould, but quite a few. New just small local outlets, but powerful newspapers and television channels, too".
A knowledgeable source is quoted as saying: "The media have been the biggest winners of the polls". Apparently their poll- period intake is estimated to be in hundreds of millions of rupees. In the past it used to be hinted that some journalists were available for purchase. That for a certain sum they could be persuaded to write a story, a positive story or stories, about a politician, extolling his virtues or damning his opponent. Now those days are over. The media management has taken over the business. As Sainath put it: "The game has moved from the petty personal corruption of a handful of journalists to the structured extraction of huge sums of money by media outfits". The smart, if corrupt journalist, does not matter any longer. It is the boss himself who rakes in the moolah. The journalist has just to obey orders. The management lays down how much to charge for publishing a profile of a candidate, or an interview with him, or even a trashing of his rival. For a mere four lakhs of rupees that a paper could charge the candidate, he could get not only his profile but "four news items" of his choice. Throw in a little extra, and the paper will even help the candidate to draft his news items. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what is called Freedom of the Press.
Some of our newspaper barons are not accountable to anybody-let alone the readers. China, as one does not have to remind anyone, has been in the news. And the Chinese media has been expectedly very critical of India. But just consider what China’s state-run People’s Daily Online has been writing, as reported by The Indian Express ( October 16). It reflects an interesting mindset that Indians must know, if they want to understand how the Chinese mind works. To quote from the Online: "Nobody can deny that today’s India is a power. In recent years, Indians have become more narrow-minded and intolerable of outside criticism as nationalist sentiment arises, with some of them even turning to hegemony. It can be proved by India’s recent provocation on border issues with China. Given the country’s history, hegemony is a hundred per cent result of British colonialism. Dating back to the era of British India, the country covered a vast territory including present day India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh as well as Nepal. India took it for granted that it could continue to rule the large area when Britain ended its colonialism in South Asia. A previous victim of colonialism and hegemony, started to dream about developing its own hegemony. Obssessed with such mentality, India turned a blind eye to the concessions China had repeatedly made over the disputed border issues, and refused to drop the pretentious airs when dealing with neighbours like Pakistan... Although the pursuit of being a superpower is justifiable, the dream of being a superpower held by Indians appears impetuous.... Throughout the history, India has constantly been under foreign rule. The essence for the rise of India lies in how to be an independent country, to learn to solve the complicated ethnic and religious issues... For India, the ease of tension with China and Pakistan is the only way to become a superpower...."
Where international affairs are concerned. It is often-one might say, always important to know what the other party thinks. India, especially, should know what China thinks of us. It is amusing to learn from People’s Daily Online that India is hegemonic and is trying to ape the British! One would have thought that it was China, with its newfound wealth, that is trying to be hegemonic. It is not true that in India’s long history that it has been "constantly" under foreign rule. But never mind that. India has no desire whatsoever to rule any other country. It had never wanted to do that in the past and one doesn’t know anybody who has such a dream for the future. All that India wants is to be left alone to develop its own economy and work for the general prosperity of all people that is reflected in the statement: sarve janaha sukhino bhavanatu. It is clear that China has a poor understanding of India. But one thing that Online says is relevant. "At present" it ends its comment, "China is pro-actively engaging in negotiations with India for the early settlement of border dispute and India should give a positive response". So, may we suggest, should China? It takes two to play a game.
Ominous portents of Deoband politics
By Prafull Goradia
The 25 resolutions passed in Deoband add up to a fundamentalist manifesto for Muslims in India. They express a determination of the Ulema to mark time on values which were declared when Islam was founded 14 centuries ago.
Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind’s 25 resolutions passed on November 3 at Deoband are ominous for the country. The reason behind the portent is popularly unknown. The Jamiat does not recognise the Constitution of India as a national document to guide the governance of the country. Instead, in its own words, the Constitution represents a contract entered into by Muslims with the non-Muslims since Independence to establish a secular state. In Urdu language, such an agreement is called muahadah which, the Ulema contend, is similar to the one entered into during Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime between Muslims and the Jews of Medina.
It was specifically a ‘civic’ covenant, implying that it was unconnected with the political life of the city. The Muslims were free to rule without having to share power. Sure enough, before long the muahadah was violated and the Jews were either driven out or killed. Sir William Muir in The Life of Mahomet records: how a breach first occurred between the Quraish and the Jewish tribes who did not acknowledge Mohammad as Prophet. Since then no kafir or non-believer has been allowed to set foot in Medina or, for that matter, Mecca.
Another example of a muahadah was the 720 AD compact between Caliph Umer II and the Christian and Jewish leaders of Hejaz or inner Arabia whereby the latter had to agree to be zimmis or dhimmis. By virtue of the agreement, they became protected citizens, not required to fight for the state. In exchange, zimmis had to pay jaziya; they could carry no arms nor ride a horse in the presence of a Muslim nor live in a house taller than a Muslim neighbour’s and so on. A Christian had to have a blue label on his dress while a Jew a yellow one. This was the example with which the Taliban in Afghanistan compelled the Hindus and Sikhs to wear a yellow mark on their shirts!
The Jamiat’s perception is : The Constitution of India, which the Muslim community’s elected representatives unanimously supported and to which they swore allegiance, represents this muahadah. The specially Islamic duty of the community within India now, in their eyes, is to keep loyalty to the Constitution and to work out within the national life, as an acknowledged minority within the larger society, such personal and social aspects of the total Islamic requirements. The question of political power and social organisation, so central to Islam, has in the past always been considered in yes-or-no terms. Muslims have either had political power or they have not. Never before have they shared it with others. To the question, "Can Muslims be fully Muslims without a state of their own?" both Indian and Pakistani Muslims said "No"-with resounding assurance, according to Wilfred Cantwell Smith in his Islam in Modern History. The Muslims of India in fact face what is a radically new and profound problem; namely, how to live with others as equals. This is unprecedented; it has never arisen before in the whole history of Islam. An Indian Muslim is both an Indian and a Muslim. The desperate attempt to deny or reject this duality has failed. An attempt to integrate the two has hardly yet been seriously put forward.
The 25 resolutions passed in Deoband add up to a fundamentalist manifesto for Muslims in India. They express a determination of the ulema to mark time on values which were declared when Islam was founded 14 centuries ago. They categorically wish to have no truck with modernity. They want to shun modern dress and today’s media including television and all. The question of the ulema allowing Muslims to join the Indian mainstream does not arise. They are prepared to coexist with non-Muslims provided their community remains separate and exclusive. In short, they plan to construct a darul Islam within a darul-Harb which some polite scholars call darul-Amn.
The Jamiat was established in 1919 by Dar ul-Uloom as a channel for its political ambitions. In deference to British goodwill Deoband had to repudiate rebel Mahmood ul-Hasan, the Uloom’s Arabian associate who had been politically active. Sayyid Abulala Mawdudi was then a young activist of the Jamiat. It was only after the Pakistan resolution of 1940 at Lahore did Mawdudi separate to form the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind in August 1941. Although the sentiments at Deoband were exclusivist, the organisation did not favour Partition for that would split the Indian ummah. Together, its leaders could manipulate, if not also influence, an undivided India. The Ulema were also put off by MA Jinnah being a Shia, a modern man and his speech to the Pakistan constituent assembly at Karachi on August 11, 1947 confirmed that he was also too secularistic to be a good Muslim. On the other hand, the Jamiat continued to be orthodox and promoted as many madarsas as possible. According to the Pakistani Minister of Religious Affairs, quoted by Charles Allen (in his God’s Terrorists, Little, Brown, Great Britain, 2006), there were 7000 Deobandi madarsas which taught 12 and a half million students. The training given to students in India is additional.
Ambedkar had the vision to foresee today’s times 69 years ago when he wrote his Thoughts of Pakistan on the morrow of the Muslim League passing the fateful resolution at Lahore in March 1940 : "Which is then better for the Hindus? Should the Musalmans be without and against or should they be within and against? If the question is asked of any prudent man, there will be only one answer, namely, that if the Musalmans are to be against the Hindus, it is better that they should be without and against, rather than within and against."
The 25 resolutions passed in Deoband add up to a fundamentalist manifesto for Muslims in India. They express a determination of the Ulema to mark time on values which were declared when Islam was founded 14 centuries ago.
Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind’s 25 resolutions passed on November 3 at Deoband are ominous for the country. The reason behind the portent is popularly unknown. The Jamiat does not recognise the Constitution of India as a national document to guide the governance of the country. Instead, in its own words, the Constitution represents a contract entered into by Muslims with the non-Muslims since Independence to establish a secular state. In Urdu language, such an agreement is called muahadah which, the Ulema contend, is similar to the one entered into during Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime between Muslims and the Jews of Medina.
It was specifically a ‘civic’ covenant, implying that it was unconnected with the political life of the city. The Muslims were free to rule without having to share power. Sure enough, before long the muahadah was violated and the Jews were either driven out or killed. Sir William Muir in The Life of Mahomet records: how a breach first occurred between the Quraish and the Jewish tribes who did not acknowledge Mohammad as Prophet. Since then no kafir or non-believer has been allowed to set foot in Medina or, for that matter, Mecca.
Another example of a muahadah was the 720 AD compact between Caliph Umer II and the Christian and Jewish leaders of Hejaz or inner Arabia whereby the latter had to agree to be zimmis or dhimmis. By virtue of the agreement, they became protected citizens, not required to fight for the state. In exchange, zimmis had to pay jaziya; they could carry no arms nor ride a horse in the presence of a Muslim nor live in a house taller than a Muslim neighbour’s and so on. A Christian had to have a blue label on his dress while a Jew a yellow one. This was the example with which the Taliban in Afghanistan compelled the Hindus and Sikhs to wear a yellow mark on their shirts!
The Jamiat’s perception is : The Constitution of India, which the Muslim community’s elected representatives unanimously supported and to which they swore allegiance, represents this muahadah. The specially Islamic duty of the community within India now, in their eyes, is to keep loyalty to the Constitution and to work out within the national life, as an acknowledged minority within the larger society, such personal and social aspects of the total Islamic requirements. The question of political power and social organisation, so central to Islam, has in the past always been considered in yes-or-no terms. Muslims have either had political power or they have not. Never before have they shared it with others. To the question, "Can Muslims be fully Muslims without a state of their own?" both Indian and Pakistani Muslims said "No"-with resounding assurance, according to Wilfred Cantwell Smith in his Islam in Modern History. The Muslims of India in fact face what is a radically new and profound problem; namely, how to live with others as equals. This is unprecedented; it has never arisen before in the whole history of Islam. An Indian Muslim is both an Indian and a Muslim. The desperate attempt to deny or reject this duality has failed. An attempt to integrate the two has hardly yet been seriously put forward.
The 25 resolutions passed in Deoband add up to a fundamentalist manifesto for Muslims in India. They express a determination of the ulema to mark time on values which were declared when Islam was founded 14 centuries ago. They categorically wish to have no truck with modernity. They want to shun modern dress and today’s media including television and all. The question of the ulema allowing Muslims to join the Indian mainstream does not arise. They are prepared to coexist with non-Muslims provided their community remains separate and exclusive. In short, they plan to construct a darul Islam within a darul-Harb which some polite scholars call darul-Amn.
The Jamiat was established in 1919 by Dar ul-Uloom as a channel for its political ambitions. In deference to British goodwill Deoband had to repudiate rebel Mahmood ul-Hasan, the Uloom’s Arabian associate who had been politically active. Sayyid Abulala Mawdudi was then a young activist of the Jamiat. It was only after the Pakistan resolution of 1940 at Lahore did Mawdudi separate to form the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind in August 1941. Although the sentiments at Deoband were exclusivist, the organisation did not favour Partition for that would split the Indian ummah. Together, its leaders could manipulate, if not also influence, an undivided India. The Ulema were also put off by MA Jinnah being a Shia, a modern man and his speech to the Pakistan constituent assembly at Karachi on August 11, 1947 confirmed that he was also too secularistic to be a good Muslim. On the other hand, the Jamiat continued to be orthodox and promoted as many madarsas as possible. According to the Pakistani Minister of Religious Affairs, quoted by Charles Allen (in his God’s Terrorists, Little, Brown, Great Britain, 2006), there were 7000 Deobandi madarsas which taught 12 and a half million students. The training given to students in India is additional.
Ambedkar had the vision to foresee today’s times 69 years ago when he wrote his Thoughts of Pakistan on the morrow of the Muslim League passing the fateful resolution at Lahore in March 1940 : "Which is then better for the Hindus? Should the Musalmans be without and against or should they be within and against? If the question is asked of any prudent man, there will be only one answer, namely, that if the Musalmans are to be against the Hindus, it is better that they should be without and against, rather than within and against."
Many shades of Hindu-bashing
By Dr Pravin Togadia
A few years back a wonderful movie had made a great splash. Many flocked to watch it and almost all liked it. It depicted an upright police officer in charge of busting jehadi terror modules in Bharat. While doing his duty he comes across a popular ghazal singer. The officer also happens to be very fond of ghazals and adores the singer who tells the officer that he was originally from Bharat but at the time of Partition he had to flee India. The singer also invites the officer to see his ancestors’ haveli on Bharat-Pakistan border near Jaisalmer. It so happens that the officer, in the process of investigating one of many terror attacks, reaches Jaisalmer. His deep investigations direct the trail to a spot where arms, ammunition and people to be supplied for such attacks are hidden. And this spot happens to be the same haveli of that popular ghazal singer. Shocked and saddened, the officer requests the singer to surrender. He not only refuses but creates a huge media campaign posing himself as a victim. The officer had to face a lot of social flak and governmental pressure, but does not give up the truth. Ultimately, the officer catches the singer and before the officer arrests him, the singer kills himself in front of many policemen confessing to the crime while blaming Bharat and glorifying Pakistan. The movie was Sarfarosh.
Yes, I know, this is a serious type of a column and not a movie story-telling forum.
But a somewhat similar situation is being enacted in Bharat these days and that too by film personalities who never wasted a single opportunity to hysterically yell and condemn all that is Hindu, who blamed entire Gujarat for 2002 riots and who blamed entire Bharat for Malegaon. They even blamed Bharat for jehadi attacks on Mumbai! The comment of a veteran film man then was that instead of blaming people like Kasab we should find out why these poor innocent youth get into such acts-if at all they have done it! He did not have the similar logic for Gujarat. The same man was seen on almost all TV channels demanding all to be put behind bars and immediately hanged whose names had figured in the phone calls list in Gujarat-then be it even a driver who might be daily confirming the time to report! But the same filmy man and his family forgot their logic of that time. Now when his son’s phone records, meeting records, pub-going records are all splashed with jehadi David Headley alias Dawood Gilani from Pakistan, he suddenly remembers the principle that unless proven otherwise everyone is innocent! He and the family are even throwing filmy dialogues and playing ‘me victim’, ‘me hero’ etc games. It is time that Bharat stands up and tells this filmy family that command over language and proficiency in acting are not proofs of innocence. This family even has the audacity to tell Bharat that its son is a hero because he himself went to police!
This is not being written to blame anyone in particular. But the point is celebrity syndrome of media and the society at large and the celebrity itch of a few celebrities to put themselves on a higher pedestal and keep on speaking on each and every issue on the same media. It is a hurdle in true justice. Highly-opinionated shrill voices, a very typical attitude siding a particular community and pronouncing judgments treating oneself as not only above judiciary but also above God are the characteristics of such a few celebrity groups. They are not like the common poor people on the streets who express their honest opinions on some TV shows. This group of the so-called celebrities has a specific agenda and that is to tom-tom greatly about only a particular community. This group vanishes when millions of Tamil Hindus get brutally attacked in Sri Lanka or in Malaysia or even in Assam! This means they are biased; they not only blah-blah on media all the time but also have an agenda against the majority of this nation. Their celebrity status gives them access to media. They even try to influence the judiciary through their blah-blah and their behind-the-screen activities- anyway most of them are expert in scripting and acting!
All famous people do not do this. All celebrities do not indulge in such gross misuse of their celebrity status. But those who do so are dangerous to the nation. Sometime back, a senior celebrity-cum-political leader went on the platform of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind and said, "Hamare aur Jamiat ke usul ek hai." After some time when Jamiat came out with frivolous fatwas, the same leader wasn’t even available for comments. This is the point. Preaching is okay when it does not touch them, but the moment what goes around comes around, the same celebrities start speaking of principles of justice or showing off glycerin tears!
The serious part of it is that a section of media gives in to their tactics, which affects the very basis of justice and influences the investigations. Some years back, a channel ran a story "Rapist Uncle" based on an FIR by a niece. Police kept on requesting the channel not to say so until investigations are done. But the channel continued. Socially and mentally hurt, that man and his wife committed suicide. A day after this, the police came to conclusion that he was innocent and even that niece confessed to a fake FIR. Many social celebrity activists said all sorts of things about that man on that channel. The celebrity itch and some media enamoured by them got a family killed in the process! One hopes the judiciary would take a suo moto note of such proxy killings by the celebrity itch and biased media trials. Most media in Bharat are balanced and try to give views of both sides. But a few with a specific agenda or revenue compulsions go beyond the social duty and that’s the fodder of such celebrities.
Investigating agencies, the judiciary and the common man have a socio-legal responsibility to stay balanced, not to get influenced by such celebrity itches or media trials and keep on doing impartial investigations and justice. Lately, there has been a fashion that some investigation agencies leak selective information to their media ‘friends’. Going beyond that some celebrities use this information to express their biased opinions and even pronounce the judgments even before the investigation begins! This not only jeopardizes the cases in question but also many people in the society have to undergo the worst type of social stigma and even sometimes undue police wrath.
Two days back an international political celebrity US Prez Barack Hussein Obama pronounced that Tibet is a part of China. Maybe. But while saying so, Prez Obama’s celebrity itch forgot to even verify as to what Indo-China accord between China and Pandit Nehru says. China ignored that accord and only expected Bharat to follow it! But international celebrity-hood of Prez Obama has over-ridden his balancing responsibility (or so to say even he has a specific agenda.). Such celebrities ill-affect even international relations while a few national celebrities ill-affect national social relations.
Bharat does not live on Page-3 of some English glossies. Bharat also does not live in the arm-chaired AC net magazines. Bharat enjoys watching movies, listening to good music, seeing great paintings and appreciating creativity. But when some celebrities in such fields, using their social status, hurt the very logic of justice, it is time that Bharat, its investigating agencies and the judiciary stand up and tell such people to focus on their fields and not to interfere and disturb social systems of Bharat. It has almost become a notion these days that freedom of expression is available only to such celebrities and so-called pseudo-social commentators. Before the celebrity itch virus spreads further, let’s start common man’s justice council to check such a menace, work towards preventing such ‘holier than thou’ attitudes and ensure that no partial favours are done by the governments to such celebrities and to their families or neither is there a hard view only because one is a celebrity. Let us ensure that there is a true justice for all.
(The writer is a renowned cancer surgeon and secretary general of VHP. He can be contacted at drtogadia@gmail.com)
A few years back a wonderful movie had made a great splash. Many flocked to watch it and almost all liked it. It depicted an upright police officer in charge of busting jehadi terror modules in Bharat. While doing his duty he comes across a popular ghazal singer. The officer also happens to be very fond of ghazals and adores the singer who tells the officer that he was originally from Bharat but at the time of Partition he had to flee India. The singer also invites the officer to see his ancestors’ haveli on Bharat-Pakistan border near Jaisalmer. It so happens that the officer, in the process of investigating one of many terror attacks, reaches Jaisalmer. His deep investigations direct the trail to a spot where arms, ammunition and people to be supplied for such attacks are hidden. And this spot happens to be the same haveli of that popular ghazal singer. Shocked and saddened, the officer requests the singer to surrender. He not only refuses but creates a huge media campaign posing himself as a victim. The officer had to face a lot of social flak and governmental pressure, but does not give up the truth. Ultimately, the officer catches the singer and before the officer arrests him, the singer kills himself in front of many policemen confessing to the crime while blaming Bharat and glorifying Pakistan. The movie was Sarfarosh.
Yes, I know, this is a serious type of a column and not a movie story-telling forum.
But a somewhat similar situation is being enacted in Bharat these days and that too by film personalities who never wasted a single opportunity to hysterically yell and condemn all that is Hindu, who blamed entire Gujarat for 2002 riots and who blamed entire Bharat for Malegaon. They even blamed Bharat for jehadi attacks on Mumbai! The comment of a veteran film man then was that instead of blaming people like Kasab we should find out why these poor innocent youth get into such acts-if at all they have done it! He did not have the similar logic for Gujarat. The same man was seen on almost all TV channels demanding all to be put behind bars and immediately hanged whose names had figured in the phone calls list in Gujarat-then be it even a driver who might be daily confirming the time to report! But the same filmy man and his family forgot their logic of that time. Now when his son’s phone records, meeting records, pub-going records are all splashed with jehadi David Headley alias Dawood Gilani from Pakistan, he suddenly remembers the principle that unless proven otherwise everyone is innocent! He and the family are even throwing filmy dialogues and playing ‘me victim’, ‘me hero’ etc games. It is time that Bharat stands up and tells this filmy family that command over language and proficiency in acting are not proofs of innocence. This family even has the audacity to tell Bharat that its son is a hero because he himself went to police!
This is not being written to blame anyone in particular. But the point is celebrity syndrome of media and the society at large and the celebrity itch of a few celebrities to put themselves on a higher pedestal and keep on speaking on each and every issue on the same media. It is a hurdle in true justice. Highly-opinionated shrill voices, a very typical attitude siding a particular community and pronouncing judgments treating oneself as not only above judiciary but also above God are the characteristics of such a few celebrity groups. They are not like the common poor people on the streets who express their honest opinions on some TV shows. This group of the so-called celebrities has a specific agenda and that is to tom-tom greatly about only a particular community. This group vanishes when millions of Tamil Hindus get brutally attacked in Sri Lanka or in Malaysia or even in Assam! This means they are biased; they not only blah-blah on media all the time but also have an agenda against the majority of this nation. Their celebrity status gives them access to media. They even try to influence the judiciary through their blah-blah and their behind-the-screen activities- anyway most of them are expert in scripting and acting!
All famous people do not do this. All celebrities do not indulge in such gross misuse of their celebrity status. But those who do so are dangerous to the nation. Sometime back, a senior celebrity-cum-political leader went on the platform of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind and said, "Hamare aur Jamiat ke usul ek hai." After some time when Jamiat came out with frivolous fatwas, the same leader wasn’t even available for comments. This is the point. Preaching is okay when it does not touch them, but the moment what goes around comes around, the same celebrities start speaking of principles of justice or showing off glycerin tears!
The serious part of it is that a section of media gives in to their tactics, which affects the very basis of justice and influences the investigations. Some years back, a channel ran a story "Rapist Uncle" based on an FIR by a niece. Police kept on requesting the channel not to say so until investigations are done. But the channel continued. Socially and mentally hurt, that man and his wife committed suicide. A day after this, the police came to conclusion that he was innocent and even that niece confessed to a fake FIR. Many social celebrity activists said all sorts of things about that man on that channel. The celebrity itch and some media enamoured by them got a family killed in the process! One hopes the judiciary would take a suo moto note of such proxy killings by the celebrity itch and biased media trials. Most media in Bharat are balanced and try to give views of both sides. But a few with a specific agenda or revenue compulsions go beyond the social duty and that’s the fodder of such celebrities.
Investigating agencies, the judiciary and the common man have a socio-legal responsibility to stay balanced, not to get influenced by such celebrity itches or media trials and keep on doing impartial investigations and justice. Lately, there has been a fashion that some investigation agencies leak selective information to their media ‘friends’. Going beyond that some celebrities use this information to express their biased opinions and even pronounce the judgments even before the investigation begins! This not only jeopardizes the cases in question but also many people in the society have to undergo the worst type of social stigma and even sometimes undue police wrath.
Two days back an international political celebrity US Prez Barack Hussein Obama pronounced that Tibet is a part of China. Maybe. But while saying so, Prez Obama’s celebrity itch forgot to even verify as to what Indo-China accord between China and Pandit Nehru says. China ignored that accord and only expected Bharat to follow it! But international celebrity-hood of Prez Obama has over-ridden his balancing responsibility (or so to say even he has a specific agenda.). Such celebrities ill-affect even international relations while a few national celebrities ill-affect national social relations.
Bharat does not live on Page-3 of some English glossies. Bharat also does not live in the arm-chaired AC net magazines. Bharat enjoys watching movies, listening to good music, seeing great paintings and appreciating creativity. But when some celebrities in such fields, using their social status, hurt the very logic of justice, it is time that Bharat, its investigating agencies and the judiciary stand up and tell such people to focus on their fields and not to interfere and disturb social systems of Bharat. It has almost become a notion these days that freedom of expression is available only to such celebrities and so-called pseudo-social commentators. Before the celebrity itch virus spreads further, let’s start common man’s justice council to check such a menace, work towards preventing such ‘holier than thou’ attitudes and ensure that no partial favours are done by the governments to such celebrities and to their families or neither is there a hard view only because one is a celebrity. Let us ensure that there is a true justice for all.
(The writer is a renowned cancer surgeon and secretary general of VHP. He can be contacted at drtogadia@gmail.com)
Barack Obama, us and the US
India will have to fight its own battles. It cannot expect the US to help us fight them, argues Tarun Vijay.
Two kinds of people are complaining about Barack Obama's Asia tour. One, those Americans who have been seeing America in the George W Bush mould for too long. They get depressed about a placid president and hence describing his Asia visit as 'timid' or too yielding to China.
They would have loved an Obama chiding the Chinese and demanding a human rights commission on Tibet. Obama didn't oblige them. He needed a facelift for the US and tried his best.
In the second category of people, we stand out brightly. We like others to do our unfinished jobs. It is not amazing to see Indian cry babies complaining too much that Obama didn't do enough for us. We forget he is the president of the United States and his first and foremost duty is to serve her interest and not ours.
And he did well for the US in his first Asia tour that took him to Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea in nine days -- with the maximum time being spent in China, the Asian superpower who spoke to the White House with an erect spine and received a warm hug.
In fact, Obama is the first US president after a long time who presented the image of an amiable, friendly and accessible head of a superpower that had otherwise become synonymous with crude diplomacy laced with military adventurism during the Bush era.
In Japan Obama won a standing ovation when he presented his Pacific connection story -- a very personal and a touching one indeed. And in China his descent from Air Force One alone holding an umbrella amidst Shanghai's first rains won him instant fans.
If Obama has won another friend for Washington, why should we complain if our leaders are on a spree to lose all and bend backwards for an audience with a queen or an alien benefactor?
Americans are a patriotic people who elect leaders with a spine, never compromising national security and always honouring their security forces.
If we don't do that, should we be complaining about it to the White House? Or should we set our own house right?
Here is a nation that doesn't honour its soldiers and keeps negotiating with traitors. We are a State that doesn't care about its farmers till they block Delhi's [ Images ] roads. We get enmeshed in hot money pursuits stashed in places like Laos and Liberia, and no one believes the culprit will ever get punished.
Who knows if a Koda or a Reddy will get 20 plus MPs in the next election and be inducted as the Cabinet minister in charge of internal security?
We kow-tow disoriented before the most horrendous of jihad sponsors and keep inviting murderers for talks and talks and then again talks for decades without resolving the main issues of contention.
Then, one fine morning, when we see the leader of a strong nation discussing our problems with his counterpart, we feel oh, why has he not helped us solve our problems with China? And with Pakistan? And while we have signed a nuke deal, why should it put pressure on us to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty too?
The US did what it did because that is what it thought was good for it. Obama is not ruling the US to ensure India benefits. Is that clear?
And look how our leaders, the great, patriotic, democratic representatives of this land behave. Here is a 'certificate, which I quote from a national daily: 'Vice-chief of the Indian Air Force, Air Marshal P K Barbora, said, "Politicians cutting across party lines are upsetting armed forces modernisation and procurement programmes." He further added, "The fact remains that the IAF's fleet of fighter aircraft is getting depleted. The navy's submarine strength is dwindling and the army has not added a new gun to its heavy artillery in more than 20 years. The weapons, ammunition and systems with the armed forces are getting outdated faster than the government is able to replace them. Irresponsible politics over the years, sometimes when a party is in government or sometimes when it is in the Opposition -- it has all along been seen that whenever the government of the day clears something, the Opposition says no. This badly impinges (on the preparedness) of the defence (forces)," he said.'
Do we need more to complain to Obama?
Now that our prime minister is in the US, guess what the 'biggest' secret that the wizards of the PM's media advisors doled out just before Dr Singh left for the US was. Some gems from a news agency report: 'As the silence fuelled speculation, the White House finally broke the silence to let out the closely guarded secret saying that the dinner would be held under the massive tent instead of the ornate state dining room. The tent option has been picked up as the guest list mushroomed and instead of 120 which the ornate room can accommodate, the Obamas are inviting close to 400 people for their first state dinner on November 24.'
That's all we need. Khana peena aur ghoomna (food, drink and travel). Be happy that Obama is giving a lavish dinner to not just 120, but to 400 of all the important, leading Indian lights of American life. Is that a mean achievement?
The US and China know what they want. China made the US accept its significant role in Asia, turned India into an area to be watched, controlled and helped to stay calm while remaining friendliest with Pakistan.
Both the US and China do not recognise Kashmir as a part of India. They look at the area as an unsettled matter, help Pakistan with dollars and military help, turn a blind eye towards Pakistan using their arms and grants against us, have done nothing to help India post 26/11, have refrained to tell Islamabad to stop its patronage to anti-India elements.
One of them attacked India in 1962; the other had remained a silent spectator then. Even so our analysts and Washington watchers feel at least now the US should help us. Wow!
When we are left to our own, we do better.
Obama postponed his meeting with the Dalai Lama before his China visit. We stood firm and allowed the Dalai Lama to go to Arunachal Pradesh. We trusted the US, inked a controversial nuke deal and hence invited China's bitter reaction expressed through its Arunachal raga, almost reminding of a cold war. The US did not even smile as if this doesn't concern it. And naturally so. Why should our spondylitis make the US lie low?
We have got to deal with the US on our own strength and de-link relations with China from Washington and the Dalai Lama. If we have to save Arunachal, it would be done on the shoulders of leaders in Delhi who have a spine and a will to raise the military strength to a winnable level. Not that we have to increase the numbers of fighter jets and submarines and nuke bombs to what Beijing possess.
Wars are not won by exchanging lists, but by the fierce resolve to destroy the enemy with a first strike mental make-up.
As one American commentator put it succinctly, 'Overall, Obama's Asia policy has been largely driven by events and domestic priorities rather than by an over-arching strategic vision. The Obama team had to closely coordinate with China on financial matters in response to the financial crisis.'
Hence, Obama won't care about India's case on Kashmir or rescuing Aung San Suu Kyi, leave aside helping the Dalai Lama to get back to Tibet honourably. His priorities are different.
Feeling euphoric seeing Obama hiring a few Americans with Indian faces on his team make no sense. They would be overburdened to ensure nobody blames them emotionally helping India crossing lines of American interest.
After all, Washington didn't allow Indian intelligence officers to question David Coleman Headley arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on charges of plotting terror attacks in India though India had allowed the FBI to interrogate Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist held in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.
The US hasn't yet taken Indian companies, including the Indian Space and Research Organisation, off the blacklist prohibiting US agencies dealing with them. It is pressurising India to sign the CTBT without considering that we are surrounded by two nuke powers hostile to us.
The US didn't help us in 1962, bullied us in 1971, put hurdles in our way to punish Pakistan post Kargil, thus helping Islamabad's dictator, didn't take up our case post 26/11.
Washington -- or for that matter any superpower -- respects those who have strength and show an unyielding attitude.
Till we have such rulers who choose a date like 26/11 to be in Washington, rather than being in Mumbai comforting the nation, we can't stop greater powers meddling in our region and affairs.
Tarun Vijay is Director, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation
Two kinds of people are complaining about Barack Obama's Asia tour. One, those Americans who have been seeing America in the George W Bush mould for too long. They get depressed about a placid president and hence describing his Asia visit as 'timid' or too yielding to China.
They would have loved an Obama chiding the Chinese and demanding a human rights commission on Tibet. Obama didn't oblige them. He needed a facelift for the US and tried his best.
In the second category of people, we stand out brightly. We like others to do our unfinished jobs. It is not amazing to see Indian cry babies complaining too much that Obama didn't do enough for us. We forget he is the president of the United States and his first and foremost duty is to serve her interest and not ours.
And he did well for the US in his first Asia tour that took him to Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea in nine days -- with the maximum time being spent in China, the Asian superpower who spoke to the White House with an erect spine and received a warm hug.
In fact, Obama is the first US president after a long time who presented the image of an amiable, friendly and accessible head of a superpower that had otherwise become synonymous with crude diplomacy laced with military adventurism during the Bush era.
In Japan Obama won a standing ovation when he presented his Pacific connection story -- a very personal and a touching one indeed. And in China his descent from Air Force One alone holding an umbrella amidst Shanghai's first rains won him instant fans.
If Obama has won another friend for Washington, why should we complain if our leaders are on a spree to lose all and bend backwards for an audience with a queen or an alien benefactor?
Americans are a patriotic people who elect leaders with a spine, never compromising national security and always honouring their security forces.
If we don't do that, should we be complaining about it to the White House? Or should we set our own house right?
Here is a nation that doesn't honour its soldiers and keeps negotiating with traitors. We are a State that doesn't care about its farmers till they block Delhi's [ Images ] roads. We get enmeshed in hot money pursuits stashed in places like Laos and Liberia, and no one believes the culprit will ever get punished.
Who knows if a Koda or a Reddy will get 20 plus MPs in the next election and be inducted as the Cabinet minister in charge of internal security?
We kow-tow disoriented before the most horrendous of jihad sponsors and keep inviting murderers for talks and talks and then again talks for decades without resolving the main issues of contention.
Then, one fine morning, when we see the leader of a strong nation discussing our problems with his counterpart, we feel oh, why has he not helped us solve our problems with China? And with Pakistan? And while we have signed a nuke deal, why should it put pressure on us to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty too?
The US did what it did because that is what it thought was good for it. Obama is not ruling the US to ensure India benefits. Is that clear?
And look how our leaders, the great, patriotic, democratic representatives of this land behave. Here is a 'certificate, which I quote from a national daily: 'Vice-chief of the Indian Air Force, Air Marshal P K Barbora, said, "Politicians cutting across party lines are upsetting armed forces modernisation and procurement programmes." He further added, "The fact remains that the IAF's fleet of fighter aircraft is getting depleted. The navy's submarine strength is dwindling and the army has not added a new gun to its heavy artillery in more than 20 years. The weapons, ammunition and systems with the armed forces are getting outdated faster than the government is able to replace them. Irresponsible politics over the years, sometimes when a party is in government or sometimes when it is in the Opposition -- it has all along been seen that whenever the government of the day clears something, the Opposition says no. This badly impinges (on the preparedness) of the defence (forces)," he said.'
Do we need more to complain to Obama?
Now that our prime minister is in the US, guess what the 'biggest' secret that the wizards of the PM's media advisors doled out just before Dr Singh left for the US was. Some gems from a news agency report: 'As the silence fuelled speculation, the White House finally broke the silence to let out the closely guarded secret saying that the dinner would be held under the massive tent instead of the ornate state dining room. The tent option has been picked up as the guest list mushroomed and instead of 120 which the ornate room can accommodate, the Obamas are inviting close to 400 people for their first state dinner on November 24.'
That's all we need. Khana peena aur ghoomna (food, drink and travel). Be happy that Obama is giving a lavish dinner to not just 120, but to 400 of all the important, leading Indian lights of American life. Is that a mean achievement?
The US and China know what they want. China made the US accept its significant role in Asia, turned India into an area to be watched, controlled and helped to stay calm while remaining friendliest with Pakistan.
Both the US and China do not recognise Kashmir as a part of India. They look at the area as an unsettled matter, help Pakistan with dollars and military help, turn a blind eye towards Pakistan using their arms and grants against us, have done nothing to help India post 26/11, have refrained to tell Islamabad to stop its patronage to anti-India elements.
One of them attacked India in 1962; the other had remained a silent spectator then. Even so our analysts and Washington watchers feel at least now the US should help us. Wow!
When we are left to our own, we do better.
Obama postponed his meeting with the Dalai Lama before his China visit. We stood firm and allowed the Dalai Lama to go to Arunachal Pradesh. We trusted the US, inked a controversial nuke deal and hence invited China's bitter reaction expressed through its Arunachal raga, almost reminding of a cold war. The US did not even smile as if this doesn't concern it. And naturally so. Why should our spondylitis make the US lie low?
We have got to deal with the US on our own strength and de-link relations with China from Washington and the Dalai Lama. If we have to save Arunachal, it would be done on the shoulders of leaders in Delhi who have a spine and a will to raise the military strength to a winnable level. Not that we have to increase the numbers of fighter jets and submarines and nuke bombs to what Beijing possess.
Wars are not won by exchanging lists, but by the fierce resolve to destroy the enemy with a first strike mental make-up.
As one American commentator put it succinctly, 'Overall, Obama's Asia policy has been largely driven by events and domestic priorities rather than by an over-arching strategic vision. The Obama team had to closely coordinate with China on financial matters in response to the financial crisis.'
Hence, Obama won't care about India's case on Kashmir or rescuing Aung San Suu Kyi, leave aside helping the Dalai Lama to get back to Tibet honourably. His priorities are different.
Feeling euphoric seeing Obama hiring a few Americans with Indian faces on his team make no sense. They would be overburdened to ensure nobody blames them emotionally helping India crossing lines of American interest.
After all, Washington didn't allow Indian intelligence officers to question David Coleman Headley arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on charges of plotting terror attacks in India though India had allowed the FBI to interrogate Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist held in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.
The US hasn't yet taken Indian companies, including the Indian Space and Research Organisation, off the blacklist prohibiting US agencies dealing with them. It is pressurising India to sign the CTBT without considering that we are surrounded by two nuke powers hostile to us.
The US didn't help us in 1962, bullied us in 1971, put hurdles in our way to punish Pakistan post Kargil, thus helping Islamabad's dictator, didn't take up our case post 26/11.
Washington -- or for that matter any superpower -- respects those who have strength and show an unyielding attitude.
Till we have such rulers who choose a date like 26/11 to be in Washington, rather than being in Mumbai comforting the nation, we can't stop greater powers meddling in our region and affairs.
Tarun Vijay is Director, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Dr Singh's State visit to Washington, DC may be disastrous.
Rajeev Srinivasan on why he fears Dr Singh's State visit to Washington, DC may be disastrous.
In the old black-and-white Frank Capra film Mr Smith Goes to Washington an idealistic small-town man played by James Stewart is elected to the US Congress, where he is appalled by corrupt politics; but in the end his innocence wins over the blase denizens of the capital.
In a sense, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's [ Images ] trip to the US in the near future is being portrayed in the same way, but the Indian is neither as idealistic nor as naive as the Jimmy Stuart character, nor is there likely to be a happy ending.
US President Barack Hussein Obama [ Images ] has just returned from a tour of Asia. And exactly where did he go? China and Japan [ Images ], and also Singapore and South Korea, but not India [ Images ]. This one fact speaks volumes about the mind-share India occupies in the American establishment: India is not important. (Nor is it part of Asia according to them, but we will not digress. However we can be quite sure that a future Obama trip to India, if any, will be bracketed with one to Pakistan. Welcome to re-hyphenation.)
Obama's joint statement with Chinese strongman Hu Jintao could well have been written by the Chinese, when it comes to its perspective of India: It referred to the India-Pakistan problem and suggested that China should intervene in it. The implication is that China is the master of Asia, and that lesser powers such as India and Pakistan (yes, hyphenation again) must listen to China.
Then there was the recent appointment of Robin Raphel to the Richard Holbrooke [ Images ] team dealing with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Raphel is well-known as one of the most virulent and vitriolic critics of India in the entire US Democratic set-up. She was, until August, a registered and paid lobbyist for Pakistan. She is infamous for insisting that the accession of Jammu and Kashmir [ Images ] to India is not final, and for asserting that Pakistan is the very epitome of a 'model, modern, and moderate Muslim nation'.
On top of this, rediff.com reported last week that Christine Fair, who had rubbed Indian officials the wrong way recently regarding Baluchistan, was offered a job as the 'South Asia' expert in the Obama administration, which apparently she turned down.
The indications, therefore, are that the Obama administration does not take India seriously. All of the latter's hollow pretensions to great-power-hood have been seen through by the Democrats, one might think.
But if they are so smart, why do Democrats persist in kow-towing to China and pouring money into Pakistan? It must be because it is standard Democratic Party policy. Despite the illusions many Indians harbour, Democratic administrations have been nastier towards India in general, notwithstanding the sterling counter-example of the Republican Nixon-Kissinger duo sending the 7th Fleet to the Bay of Bengal in 1971 to intimidate India.
Liberal-left types in the West, despite protestations to the contrary, are fascinated by totalitarians and fascists. They are impressed by Vietnamese who defeated them, and Chinese who fought them to a standstill in Korea.
On the other hand, they despise a weak and moralising nation like India (some of them have not yet forgotten V K Krishna Menon's marathon speech at the United Nations, nor all the hot air about non-alignment.
Obama is the only US president in recent years to have refused to meet the Dalai Lama [ Images ], as appeasing China is high on his agenda; similarly the Democratic fascination with Mohammedan tyrants as well.
Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Obama may well be following in Jimmy Carter's footsteps. Carter, of MEOW fame (moral equivalent of war), who groveled to Middle-Easterners, bringing upon himself the Iran hostage crisis that destroyed his presidency.
Obama is going down this path with his Af-Pak policy, which consists primarily of outsourcing the Afghan problem to Pakistan's Inter Services intelligence, to be followed by the United States declaring victory and leaving. He is ignoring the instructive example of Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler [ Images ].
Meanwhile the ISI cannot believe its good luck: Obama is showering billions on it on top of the $11 billion that Bush has already given them, with nothing to show.
On top of this, there is an entire generation of Cold-War-era non-proliferation ayatollahs, many of them Democrats with ties to Obama, who believe India has no business maintaining a nuclear arsenal. These people are on the ascendant, and strangely they have no problem with proliferation by China or Pakistan: The The Washington Post reported how the CIA merely stood by and watched when China delivered two full-fledged nuclear bombs to Pakistan in 1982.
Shortly thereafter, Pakistan, as part of the A Q Khan nuclear Wal-Mart, happily proliferated these to third parties.
Quite clearly, the non-proliferation ayatollahs have a rather interesting twist on semantics: for them, 'proliferation' is defined as India creating a minimum deterrent to defend itself from two nearby rogue States. Of course, these are the same people who created treaty after treaty -- Non-Proliferation Treaty, Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- whose prime intent was to contain the Indian nuclear deterrent.
The respected Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported recently that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is bigger than India's, and that they are growing it rapidly. India has no more than 60 to 80 warheads, Pakistan at least 70 to 90, and China 240.
Of course, India is also handicapped by not having a proven delivery vehicle like an intermediate-range ballistic missile that can reach Beijing [ Images ] (and also by having voluntarily declared a moratorium on nuclear testing). This should be enormous cause for concern for India, because it leaves India vulnerable to the blackmail of a first strike by Pakistan or China, neither of which has ever said they will not indulge in a first strike. India cannot deter them because the threat of a second strike is meaningless if the others's arsenals and delivery systems are bigger and more reliable.
On the political side, here is another fear -- about what Manmohan Singh may concede in Washington. His recent trips have left a trail of wreckage as far as India's foreign policy is concerned. This leads one to wonder whether the foreign ministry lacks the resources to brief the prime minister.
Look at what the PM has said on previous trips abroad:
In Britain in 2005, while receiving an honorary degree from Oxford, Singh said that colonialism had done India good. He claimed that India benefited from 'meeting the dominant empire of the day'. He omitted to mention that the dominant empire had stolen roughly $10 trillion, and left hitherto prosperous India poverty-stricken.
In Havana at the Non-Aligned Meet in 2006, Singh informed a delighted General Pervez Musharraf [ Images ] that Pakistan was also a victim of terrorism, just like India, and absolved the Pakistani State of involvement in acts of terrorism. This, almost immediately after the Mumbai [ Images ] blasts in July of that year.
In the US in 2008, with George Bush [ Images ] a lame duck and the Democrats rampant, Singh assured Bush: 'The people of India deeply love you'. Exactly how did Singh arrive at this conclusion? And how exactly did he think this would be received by the severely anti-Bush Democrats, who were likely to win?
In Sharm-al-Sheikh, Egypt [ Images ], in July 2009, Singh gratuitously introduced Balochistan into the Indo-Pakistan dialog and promised a delinking of talks from terrorism. The grateful Pakistanis are now using Balochistan as a major card in their propaganda claiming Indian malfeasance there. They have also concluded that the 26/11 Mumbai siege has now been forgotten by India -- that is, Pakistan can proceed with further acts of terrorism with no untoward consequences.
Aren't there people who know how to craft diplomatic verbiage that serves the usual purpose -- to obfuscate and mystify while sounding pious -- instead of having the PM say things that then require substantial damage control?
What might the PM agree to in Washington this time? One grim possibility looms. There is a lot of talk about the G-2 from people like Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former Cold Warrior and eminence grise extraordinaire (who can forget he was an admirer of Osama bin Laden [ Images ] in the old days?). The G-2, that is, the US and China, is to divide the world up among them: the Atlantic and the Eastern Pacific to the US, while the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean Rim belong to China.
China is delighted to go with this prescription, which is reminiscent of Spain and Portugal dividing up the world between them with the Vatican's blessings some centuries ago. A few months ago, a Chinese admiral suggested precisely such an outcome: They would look after the Western Pacific, he kindly offered the Americans the eastern part of the Pacific.
It is entirely possible that, given the trial balloon of the Sino-US statement on China's role in South Asia, the Americans will convince Manmohan Singh to endorse the idea of the G-2. There will be the usual round of 'clarifications' and 'retractions' and howls about 'misquotes', but at the end of the day, it would be plain as daylight that India had publicly accepted banana-republic-dom in the Asian Century.
We have to be prepared for such an eventuality. And that is why the US does not respect India as a potential ally. India is only a source of raw materials and a market, just as the imperialists saw it. India does not deserve any respect, either. A wimpy India -- which cannot deter even a failed state like Pakistan -- is merely an extra in the big scheme of things.
A nation that has no long-term strategic intent, and whose leaders can be easily manipulated through flattery, is a banana republic. Unlike China, which intends to rule the world, India, which can only imagine itself as a second-rate power, will remain one. Welcome to realpolitik.
In the old black-and-white Frank Capra film Mr Smith Goes to Washington an idealistic small-town man played by James Stewart is elected to the US Congress, where he is appalled by corrupt politics; but in the end his innocence wins over the blase denizens of the capital.
In a sense, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's [ Images ] trip to the US in the near future is being portrayed in the same way, but the Indian is neither as idealistic nor as naive as the Jimmy Stuart character, nor is there likely to be a happy ending.
US President Barack Hussein Obama [ Images ] has just returned from a tour of Asia. And exactly where did he go? China and Japan [ Images ], and also Singapore and South Korea, but not India [ Images ]. This one fact speaks volumes about the mind-share India occupies in the American establishment: India is not important. (Nor is it part of Asia according to them, but we will not digress. However we can be quite sure that a future Obama trip to India, if any, will be bracketed with one to Pakistan. Welcome to re-hyphenation.)
Obama's joint statement with Chinese strongman Hu Jintao could well have been written by the Chinese, when it comes to its perspective of India: It referred to the India-Pakistan problem and suggested that China should intervene in it. The implication is that China is the master of Asia, and that lesser powers such as India and Pakistan (yes, hyphenation again) must listen to China.
Then there was the recent appointment of Robin Raphel to the Richard Holbrooke [ Images ] team dealing with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Raphel is well-known as one of the most virulent and vitriolic critics of India in the entire US Democratic set-up. She was, until August, a registered and paid lobbyist for Pakistan. She is infamous for insisting that the accession of Jammu and Kashmir [ Images ] to India is not final, and for asserting that Pakistan is the very epitome of a 'model, modern, and moderate Muslim nation'.
On top of this, rediff.com reported last week that Christine Fair, who had rubbed Indian officials the wrong way recently regarding Baluchistan, was offered a job as the 'South Asia' expert in the Obama administration, which apparently she turned down.
The indications, therefore, are that the Obama administration does not take India seriously. All of the latter's hollow pretensions to great-power-hood have been seen through by the Democrats, one might think.
But if they are so smart, why do Democrats persist in kow-towing to China and pouring money into Pakistan? It must be because it is standard Democratic Party policy. Despite the illusions many Indians harbour, Democratic administrations have been nastier towards India in general, notwithstanding the sterling counter-example of the Republican Nixon-Kissinger duo sending the 7th Fleet to the Bay of Bengal in 1971 to intimidate India.
Liberal-left types in the West, despite protestations to the contrary, are fascinated by totalitarians and fascists. They are impressed by Vietnamese who defeated them, and Chinese who fought them to a standstill in Korea.
On the other hand, they despise a weak and moralising nation like India (some of them have not yet forgotten V K Krishna Menon's marathon speech at the United Nations, nor all the hot air about non-alignment.
Obama is the only US president in recent years to have refused to meet the Dalai Lama [ Images ], as appeasing China is high on his agenda; similarly the Democratic fascination with Mohammedan tyrants as well.
Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Obama may well be following in Jimmy Carter's footsteps. Carter, of MEOW fame (moral equivalent of war), who groveled to Middle-Easterners, bringing upon himself the Iran hostage crisis that destroyed his presidency.
Obama is going down this path with his Af-Pak policy, which consists primarily of outsourcing the Afghan problem to Pakistan's Inter Services intelligence, to be followed by the United States declaring victory and leaving. He is ignoring the instructive example of Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler [ Images ].
Meanwhile the ISI cannot believe its good luck: Obama is showering billions on it on top of the $11 billion that Bush has already given them, with nothing to show.
On top of this, there is an entire generation of Cold-War-era non-proliferation ayatollahs, many of them Democrats with ties to Obama, who believe India has no business maintaining a nuclear arsenal. These people are on the ascendant, and strangely they have no problem with proliferation by China or Pakistan: The The Washington Post reported how the CIA merely stood by and watched when China delivered two full-fledged nuclear bombs to Pakistan in 1982.
Shortly thereafter, Pakistan, as part of the A Q Khan nuclear Wal-Mart, happily proliferated these to third parties.
Quite clearly, the non-proliferation ayatollahs have a rather interesting twist on semantics: for them, 'proliferation' is defined as India creating a minimum deterrent to defend itself from two nearby rogue States. Of course, these are the same people who created treaty after treaty -- Non-Proliferation Treaty, Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- whose prime intent was to contain the Indian nuclear deterrent.
The respected Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported recently that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is bigger than India's, and that they are growing it rapidly. India has no more than 60 to 80 warheads, Pakistan at least 70 to 90, and China 240.
Of course, India is also handicapped by not having a proven delivery vehicle like an intermediate-range ballistic missile that can reach Beijing [ Images ] (and also by having voluntarily declared a moratorium on nuclear testing). This should be enormous cause for concern for India, because it leaves India vulnerable to the blackmail of a first strike by Pakistan or China, neither of which has ever said they will not indulge in a first strike. India cannot deter them because the threat of a second strike is meaningless if the others's arsenals and delivery systems are bigger and more reliable.
On the political side, here is another fear -- about what Manmohan Singh may concede in Washington. His recent trips have left a trail of wreckage as far as India's foreign policy is concerned. This leads one to wonder whether the foreign ministry lacks the resources to brief the prime minister.
Look at what the PM has said on previous trips abroad:
In Britain in 2005, while receiving an honorary degree from Oxford, Singh said that colonialism had done India good. He claimed that India benefited from 'meeting the dominant empire of the day'. He omitted to mention that the dominant empire had stolen roughly $10 trillion, and left hitherto prosperous India poverty-stricken.
In Havana at the Non-Aligned Meet in 2006, Singh informed a delighted General Pervez Musharraf [ Images ] that Pakistan was also a victim of terrorism, just like India, and absolved the Pakistani State of involvement in acts of terrorism. This, almost immediately after the Mumbai [ Images ] blasts in July of that year.
In the US in 2008, with George Bush [ Images ] a lame duck and the Democrats rampant, Singh assured Bush: 'The people of India deeply love you'. Exactly how did Singh arrive at this conclusion? And how exactly did he think this would be received by the severely anti-Bush Democrats, who were likely to win?
In Sharm-al-Sheikh, Egypt [ Images ], in July 2009, Singh gratuitously introduced Balochistan into the Indo-Pakistan dialog and promised a delinking of talks from terrorism. The grateful Pakistanis are now using Balochistan as a major card in their propaganda claiming Indian malfeasance there. They have also concluded that the 26/11 Mumbai siege has now been forgotten by India -- that is, Pakistan can proceed with further acts of terrorism with no untoward consequences.
Aren't there people who know how to craft diplomatic verbiage that serves the usual purpose -- to obfuscate and mystify while sounding pious -- instead of having the PM say things that then require substantial damage control?
What might the PM agree to in Washington this time? One grim possibility looms. There is a lot of talk about the G-2 from people like Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former Cold Warrior and eminence grise extraordinaire (who can forget he was an admirer of Osama bin Laden [ Images ] in the old days?). The G-2, that is, the US and China, is to divide the world up among them: the Atlantic and the Eastern Pacific to the US, while the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean Rim belong to China.
China is delighted to go with this prescription, which is reminiscent of Spain and Portugal dividing up the world between them with the Vatican's blessings some centuries ago. A few months ago, a Chinese admiral suggested precisely such an outcome: They would look after the Western Pacific, he kindly offered the Americans the eastern part of the Pacific.
It is entirely possible that, given the trial balloon of the Sino-US statement on China's role in South Asia, the Americans will convince Manmohan Singh to endorse the idea of the G-2. There will be the usual round of 'clarifications' and 'retractions' and howls about 'misquotes', but at the end of the day, it would be plain as daylight that India had publicly accepted banana-republic-dom in the Asian Century.
We have to be prepared for such an eventuality. And that is why the US does not respect India as a potential ally. India is only a source of raw materials and a market, just as the imperialists saw it. India does not deserve any respect, either. A wimpy India -- which cannot deter even a failed state like Pakistan -- is merely an extra in the big scheme of things.
A nation that has no long-term strategic intent, and whose leaders can be easily manipulated through flattery, is a banana republic. Unlike China, which intends to rule the world, India, which can only imagine itself as a second-rate power, will remain one. Welcome to realpolitik.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The unpardonable mistakes of Indira Gandhi
By Dr Jay Dubashi
Smt Indira Gandhi not only brought violence but also corruption. Twenty-five years after her death, we are still trying to cope with both. The Naxalites are a direct end-product of the Emergency. If it is not wrong to use violence to put down your political enemies-which is what the Emergency was all about-why is it wrong to use violence against those who have stolen your lands and your livelihood and are now busy stealing your homes in the name of progress?
"Had she lived on, she would have been 92 years old this year," wrote an old colleague of Indira Gandhi on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of her violent death. He was wrong. Had she not been killed by her bodyguards, she would have been killed by someone else. She was destined for violent death, like Charles I of Britain and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan.
Mrs Gandhi was not a nice person to know or work for. I doubt if she had any friends. There was a twist in her temperament that kept her away from the rest of the society. I once watched her at a public ceremony over which she presided. A man, a foreigner, wanted to speak to her; so he sent her a note. Mrs Gandhi nodded and the man approached her and was with her for three or four minutes. But not once did Mrs Gandhi look at him, let alone shake hands with him. He left a note on the chair next to her and walked away.
Mrs Gandhi was at odds with every one, or almost every one, in her circle-her husband, her aunts, her cousins and almost her entire cabinet. She was not on speaking terms with any of them. She walked out on her husband, or maybe her husband walked out on her, within five years of getting married. She hated her aunt, Vijayalakshmi Pandit so much that she would have sent her to jail to keep company with two other women she disliked, Rajmata of Gwalior and Maharani of Jaipur, had some friends not intervened. These two ladies were sent to Tihar Jail out of personal pique. If they were maharanis, Mrs Gandhi was an empress in her own right. And the only way to show them their place was to put them behind bars.
She had no friends, only hangers-on, and she made sure they knew their place. One of the toadies was Khushwant Singh, who went out of his way to defend the Emergency-he was not the only one; there were other toadies too-hoping to earn her favours, but he fell foul of her when he started boosting her daughter-in-law, a Sardarni.
Another toady was PN Haksar, a communist, who had managed to get into the foreign service with postings around the world, but not in the US. Haksar was related to the Kauls of old Delhi, whose daughter had married Jawaharlal Nehru. The Kauls and the Haksars were also neighbours. Haksar later became Mrs Gandhi's principal secretary-so did another Kashmiri, PN Dhar-and as a good communist, did whatever the commies wanted him to do, including abolishing private purses and nationalising banks.
But as happens to toadies everywhere, Haksar fell foul of the empress and was shifted to the Planning Commission, a useless posting meant for pensioners. One day, I went to see him at his house on Race Course Road, Haksar sat alone in his vast dark drawing room with curtains drawn at the height of winter, wondering what he had done to draw Mrs Gandhi's ire.
Haksar's uncle had a big showroom in Connaught Place, known to every shopper as Pandit Brothers. It is, I think, still there. There was also another showroom in Chandni Chowk. One day, Mrs Gandhi's police or may be Sanjay Gandhi's goons descended on the two showrooms and sealed them. For good effect, they hauled Haksar's uncle to jail to keep company with other traders. Haksar had nowhere to turn to, for all his relations-which means Mrs Gandhi's relations-were either in jail or had decamped to places far from Delhi to escape the clutches of Mrs Gandhi's favourite son. I do not know what Haksar did to escape the net, but he died a broken man.
There was also a strong streak of violence in Mrs Gandhi's character. In fact, I should say that she injected violence into the Indian political system. We shall always remember her for the dismemberment of East Pakistan-her and India's finest hour-for I doubt if any other Prime Minister would have done what she did. She never believed in the nonsense about non-violence--and also about truth-and absolutely had no compunction about using force where force was necessary. Nehru would have dilly-dallied and talked about Hindi-Paki bhai bhai. For Mrs Gandhi, there were no bhais. Violence had to be answered by violence, gun by gun, for at stake was the very existence of a nation under her charge.
It was perhaps her exaggerated faith in violence that undid her. She asked the army to enter the Golden Temple and that very day signed her own death warrant. But she did it with her eyes open.
What I do not forgive her are the ranks of riff-raff she gathered around her, men and women of no substance, whose only job was to feather their own nests and draw a veil over the dark goings-on at the heart of the administration. Mrs Gandhi not only brought violence but also corruption. Twenty-five years after her death, we are still trying to cope with both.
The Naxalites are a direct end-product of the Emergency. If it is not wrong to use violence to put down your political enemies-which is what the Emergency was all about-why is it wrong to use violence against those who have stolen your lands and your livelihood and are now busy stealing your homes in the name of progress? The Emergency too was supposed to have been imposed in the name of progress and growth. Didn't the Emergency-wallas claim that the trains ran on time? So, what is wrong in using force in clearing your lands and your homes of marauders who are arriving from thousands of miles away in search of your minerals, your water, in fact, your very life itself? And it was Mrs Gandhi who started the rot in the name of the Emergency, with her friends in the media egging her on, the same friends who are asking to put down the Naxalites and the others, also in the name of law and order-and, of course, discipline with capital 'D'.
Why did she do it? As I said, there was a kink in her character which ultimately took hold of her and those around her and perverted the very foundation of the republic. This is why we shall never forgive her. For all that she did in Bangladesh, there is a big black mark in her copybook, which time cannot erase. The legacy of violence, which is her special gift to the nation, has wiped out all the good she did or tried to do. This is a pity, but the riff-raff she surrounded herself with are partly responsible for it. Some of them are still active, now singing a new tune of secularism under a new conductor, who now speaks with a foreign accent!
Smt Indira Gandhi not only brought violence but also corruption. Twenty-five years after her death, we are still trying to cope with both. The Naxalites are a direct end-product of the Emergency. If it is not wrong to use violence to put down your political enemies-which is what the Emergency was all about-why is it wrong to use violence against those who have stolen your lands and your livelihood and are now busy stealing your homes in the name of progress?
"Had she lived on, she would have been 92 years old this year," wrote an old colleague of Indira Gandhi on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of her violent death. He was wrong. Had she not been killed by her bodyguards, she would have been killed by someone else. She was destined for violent death, like Charles I of Britain and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan.
Mrs Gandhi was not a nice person to know or work for. I doubt if she had any friends. There was a twist in her temperament that kept her away from the rest of the society. I once watched her at a public ceremony over which she presided. A man, a foreigner, wanted to speak to her; so he sent her a note. Mrs Gandhi nodded and the man approached her and was with her for three or four minutes. But not once did Mrs Gandhi look at him, let alone shake hands with him. He left a note on the chair next to her and walked away.
Mrs Gandhi was at odds with every one, or almost every one, in her circle-her husband, her aunts, her cousins and almost her entire cabinet. She was not on speaking terms with any of them. She walked out on her husband, or maybe her husband walked out on her, within five years of getting married. She hated her aunt, Vijayalakshmi Pandit so much that she would have sent her to jail to keep company with two other women she disliked, Rajmata of Gwalior and Maharani of Jaipur, had some friends not intervened. These two ladies were sent to Tihar Jail out of personal pique. If they were maharanis, Mrs Gandhi was an empress in her own right. And the only way to show them their place was to put them behind bars.
She had no friends, only hangers-on, and she made sure they knew their place. One of the toadies was Khushwant Singh, who went out of his way to defend the Emergency-he was not the only one; there were other toadies too-hoping to earn her favours, but he fell foul of her when he started boosting her daughter-in-law, a Sardarni.
Another toady was PN Haksar, a communist, who had managed to get into the foreign service with postings around the world, but not in the US. Haksar was related to the Kauls of old Delhi, whose daughter had married Jawaharlal Nehru. The Kauls and the Haksars were also neighbours. Haksar later became Mrs Gandhi's principal secretary-so did another Kashmiri, PN Dhar-and as a good communist, did whatever the commies wanted him to do, including abolishing private purses and nationalising banks.
But as happens to toadies everywhere, Haksar fell foul of the empress and was shifted to the Planning Commission, a useless posting meant for pensioners. One day, I went to see him at his house on Race Course Road, Haksar sat alone in his vast dark drawing room with curtains drawn at the height of winter, wondering what he had done to draw Mrs Gandhi's ire.
Haksar's uncle had a big showroom in Connaught Place, known to every shopper as Pandit Brothers. It is, I think, still there. There was also another showroom in Chandni Chowk. One day, Mrs Gandhi's police or may be Sanjay Gandhi's goons descended on the two showrooms and sealed them. For good effect, they hauled Haksar's uncle to jail to keep company with other traders. Haksar had nowhere to turn to, for all his relations-which means Mrs Gandhi's relations-were either in jail or had decamped to places far from Delhi to escape the clutches of Mrs Gandhi's favourite son. I do not know what Haksar did to escape the net, but he died a broken man.
There was also a strong streak of violence in Mrs Gandhi's character. In fact, I should say that she injected violence into the Indian political system. We shall always remember her for the dismemberment of East Pakistan-her and India's finest hour-for I doubt if any other Prime Minister would have done what she did. She never believed in the nonsense about non-violence--and also about truth-and absolutely had no compunction about using force where force was necessary. Nehru would have dilly-dallied and talked about Hindi-Paki bhai bhai. For Mrs Gandhi, there were no bhais. Violence had to be answered by violence, gun by gun, for at stake was the very existence of a nation under her charge.
It was perhaps her exaggerated faith in violence that undid her. She asked the army to enter the Golden Temple and that very day signed her own death warrant. But she did it with her eyes open.
What I do not forgive her are the ranks of riff-raff she gathered around her, men and women of no substance, whose only job was to feather their own nests and draw a veil over the dark goings-on at the heart of the administration. Mrs Gandhi not only brought violence but also corruption. Twenty-five years after her death, we are still trying to cope with both.
The Naxalites are a direct end-product of the Emergency. If it is not wrong to use violence to put down your political enemies-which is what the Emergency was all about-why is it wrong to use violence against those who have stolen your lands and your livelihood and are now busy stealing your homes in the name of progress? The Emergency too was supposed to have been imposed in the name of progress and growth. Didn't the Emergency-wallas claim that the trains ran on time? So, what is wrong in using force in clearing your lands and your homes of marauders who are arriving from thousands of miles away in search of your minerals, your water, in fact, your very life itself? And it was Mrs Gandhi who started the rot in the name of the Emergency, with her friends in the media egging her on, the same friends who are asking to put down the Naxalites and the others, also in the name of law and order-and, of course, discipline with capital 'D'.
Why did she do it? As I said, there was a kink in her character which ultimately took hold of her and those around her and perverted the very foundation of the republic. This is why we shall never forgive her. For all that she did in Bangladesh, there is a big black mark in her copybook, which time cannot erase. The legacy of violence, which is her special gift to the nation, has wiped out all the good she did or tried to do. This is a pity, but the riff-raff she surrounded herself with are partly responsible for it. Some of them are still active, now singing a new tune of secularism under a new conductor, who now speaks with a foreign accent!
Friday, November 13, 2009
Hindu Muslim marriages: NO!
By Kuru from Mumbai
Hindu-Muslim marriages are extremely offensive for the reason that the Muslim groom imagines himself to be a "conqueror" of one of the kafirs in the way of his ongoing personal jehad against kufr. Thus these marriages are, therefore, a provocation to all the Kafirs (HIndus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians, Jews and so on) on earth. NB: Hindus are described as kafirs in Koran which is word of God for the Muslims. Collectively, the Muslims are committed to degrade, subdue, subjugate, enslave, convert, even kill, a kafir (non Muslim) who refuses to convert. millions of Hindus paid with their lives, often in the most brutal manner like Guru Tegh Bahadur, the two little sons of Guru Gobind Singhji and the brave boy Hakikat Rai. Hindus escaping from Pakistan and Bangladesh know this at their cost.
Hindu Muslim marriages are obnoxious since the girl must convert to Islam for her safety. If, on the other hand, the groom converts to her Hindus faith then he is inviting his murder at the hands of Muslim zealots. Let us not have short memory to serve the enemy.
Hindu Muslim marriages are objectionable because their children also must be raised as followers of Mohammed of Alien ARABIA. NB: If the converted Hindu brides go on giving them countless more Muslims then secularism and democracy in Bharat will not only be seriously endangered but wiped out. We cannot watch our slow extinction. NB: This is exactly what happened in West Punjab, Kashmir and East Bengal. Let us not be blind to reality.
Hindu Muslim marriages "stink" because a girl brought up in atmosphere of freedoms is forced to sacrifice her own "way of life" and do things that are obnoxious to her nature due to her upbringing, for example, eating or cooking beef, wasting precious hours of life learning the Arabic language in order to read the Koran, even having to hide under a burqa or face cover, especially if she goes with him to his Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan or Turkey, etc.
Hindu Muslim marriages are most degrading and insulting to Hindu and Sikh girls who are second to none on earth but have to enter a dark medieval society where she could be one of four wives and unable to object or protest.
Hindu Muslim marriages are unacceptable where divorce can be effective and binding merely on the husband saying the word "Talaaq" three times in the manner of macho Arab savages fourteen centuries ago.
Hindu Muslim marriages are unacceptable since the status of a Muslim wife is very low. She must obey, obey and obey, or get beaten up, even locked up without food and water if the husband is angry and wants to punish her properly according to Sharia Law of his Religion.
Hindu Muslim marriages are unacceptable since the girls will not be allowed to enter a mandir or Gurdwara to listen to sweet, melodious and calming divine music ("bhajans and kirtan").
Hindu Muslim marriages are objectionable because in an Islamic society a woman’s place is in the house and she is used only to serve her man and produce children for his Rasul Allah. Talking to any other man is taboo. Many are killed every day in the Islamic world merely on suspicion if a girl or woman in seen talking to a stranger. It is called "Honour killing".
Saving girls from the "predators" means saving the future of our "Desh and Dharma". Partition was the direct result of letting them increase their numbers in our own country, and at our own cost. When they had quanity they struck and destroyed quality. So we ought to safeguard our quality, too, not just our mandirs, gurdwaras and the distinctly different ethos and "way of life". Facts ought to be stated fearlessly. Partition not only gave us bleeding memories (loss of everything precious we had, including homes) but also taught us an unforgetable lesson that those areas in which Muslim numbers had grown like cancer cells had to be amputated.
Please think of the uneven playing field. While the Muslims force their females to stay at home and dare not talk to a stranger, Muslim man or boy , on the other hand, is free to approach any Hindu or Sikh girl at place or work, club, disco, cinema, office, factory, hotel or restaurant to introduce himself, show excessive courtesy, love & devotion, exchange telephone numbers, invite her out for further secret, one to one, meetings, seduce her by giving presents from sweets to jewellery and thus physically remove her from her own family moorings. Muslim males are out and about on their own like lone hunters while self respecting Hindu and Sikh young men, brought up in ethical family atmosphere, are conditioned to respect parents, culture and social norms. A Muslim, inspired by his Koran, gets thrill introducing his non Muslim girl to his family and friends while a Hindu boy will think twice before even talking to a Muslim female, leave aside take her to his parents’ home. He is conscious of their disapproval and afraid of attack by someone from the enraged Muslim community. We see this fact in Indian films. While no Hindu actor is seen taking Muslim actresses "for a ride" all the Khans take full advantage of excessive Hindu tolerance.
Hindu Muslim marriages yes, but only if all such marriages mean the Muslim groom embracing the Hindu or Sikh Faith to honour his bride and to respect her feelings and her parents. Otherwise, as a self respecting nation we ought to make it clear to them that this is now Hindusthan, not their Islamic Pakistan, Iran or Arabia where they can make it one way traffic, i.e., each and every mixed marriage to mean "Advantage and Gain to Mohammed" but shame, humiliation and loss to us.
If we love and cherish our daughters, then a print out of this article ought to be given to each one of them. Hindu/Sikh organisations, mandirs and Gurdwaras should distribute this widely in public and congregations. Not to do so under the cover of "political correctness" will be downright cowardince and total betrayal of our own girls.
Hindu-Muslim marriages are extremely offensive for the reason that the Muslim groom imagines himself to be a "conqueror" of one of the kafirs in the way of his ongoing personal jehad against kufr. Thus these marriages are, therefore, a provocation to all the Kafirs (HIndus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians, Jews and so on) on earth. NB: Hindus are described as kafirs in Koran which is word of God for the Muslims. Collectively, the Muslims are committed to degrade, subdue, subjugate, enslave, convert, even kill, a kafir (non Muslim) who refuses to convert. millions of Hindus paid with their lives, often in the most brutal manner like Guru Tegh Bahadur, the two little sons of Guru Gobind Singhji and the brave boy Hakikat Rai. Hindus escaping from Pakistan and Bangladesh know this at their cost.
Hindu Muslim marriages are obnoxious since the girl must convert to Islam for her safety. If, on the other hand, the groom converts to her Hindus faith then he is inviting his murder at the hands of Muslim zealots. Let us not have short memory to serve the enemy.
Hindu Muslim marriages are objectionable because their children also must be raised as followers of Mohammed of Alien ARABIA. NB: If the converted Hindu brides go on giving them countless more Muslims then secularism and democracy in Bharat will not only be seriously endangered but wiped out. We cannot watch our slow extinction. NB: This is exactly what happened in West Punjab, Kashmir and East Bengal. Let us not be blind to reality.
Hindu Muslim marriages "stink" because a girl brought up in atmosphere of freedoms is forced to sacrifice her own "way of life" and do things that are obnoxious to her nature due to her upbringing, for example, eating or cooking beef, wasting precious hours of life learning the Arabic language in order to read the Koran, even having to hide under a burqa or face cover, especially if she goes with him to his Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan or Turkey, etc.
Hindu Muslim marriages are most degrading and insulting to Hindu and Sikh girls who are second to none on earth but have to enter a dark medieval society where she could be one of four wives and unable to object or protest.
Hindu Muslim marriages are unacceptable where divorce can be effective and binding merely on the husband saying the word "Talaaq" three times in the manner of macho Arab savages fourteen centuries ago.
Hindu Muslim marriages are unacceptable since the status of a Muslim wife is very low. She must obey, obey and obey, or get beaten up, even locked up without food and water if the husband is angry and wants to punish her properly according to Sharia Law of his Religion.
Hindu Muslim marriages are unacceptable since the girls will not be allowed to enter a mandir or Gurdwara to listen to sweet, melodious and calming divine music ("bhajans and kirtan").
Hindu Muslim marriages are objectionable because in an Islamic society a woman’s place is in the house and she is used only to serve her man and produce children for his Rasul Allah. Talking to any other man is taboo. Many are killed every day in the Islamic world merely on suspicion if a girl or woman in seen talking to a stranger. It is called "Honour killing".
Saving girls from the "predators" means saving the future of our "Desh and Dharma". Partition was the direct result of letting them increase their numbers in our own country, and at our own cost. When they had quanity they struck and destroyed quality. So we ought to safeguard our quality, too, not just our mandirs, gurdwaras and the distinctly different ethos and "way of life". Facts ought to be stated fearlessly. Partition not only gave us bleeding memories (loss of everything precious we had, including homes) but also taught us an unforgetable lesson that those areas in which Muslim numbers had grown like cancer cells had to be amputated.
Please think of the uneven playing field. While the Muslims force their females to stay at home and dare not talk to a stranger, Muslim man or boy , on the other hand, is free to approach any Hindu or Sikh girl at place or work, club, disco, cinema, office, factory, hotel or restaurant to introduce himself, show excessive courtesy, love & devotion, exchange telephone numbers, invite her out for further secret, one to one, meetings, seduce her by giving presents from sweets to jewellery and thus physically remove her from her own family moorings. Muslim males are out and about on their own like lone hunters while self respecting Hindu and Sikh young men, brought up in ethical family atmosphere, are conditioned to respect parents, culture and social norms. A Muslim, inspired by his Koran, gets thrill introducing his non Muslim girl to his family and friends while a Hindu boy will think twice before even talking to a Muslim female, leave aside take her to his parents’ home. He is conscious of their disapproval and afraid of attack by someone from the enraged Muslim community. We see this fact in Indian films. While no Hindu actor is seen taking Muslim actresses "for a ride" all the Khans take full advantage of excessive Hindu tolerance.
Hindu Muslim marriages yes, but only if all such marriages mean the Muslim groom embracing the Hindu or Sikh Faith to honour his bride and to respect her feelings and her parents. Otherwise, as a self respecting nation we ought to make it clear to them that this is now Hindusthan, not their Islamic Pakistan, Iran or Arabia where they can make it one way traffic, i.e., each and every mixed marriage to mean "Advantage and Gain to Mohammed" but shame, humiliation and loss to us.
If we love and cherish our daughters, then a print out of this article ought to be given to each one of them. Hindu/Sikh organisations, mandirs and Gurdwaras should distribute this widely in public and congregations. Not to do so under the cover of "political correctness" will be downright cowardince and total betrayal of our own girls.
The rural poor fare better than in China
By John Lee
China and India will likely defy the economic malaise in Western economies and grow at more than 7 per cent this year. But that is where the comparison should end. Contrary to popular hype, India is actually outpacing China where it counts most-the economic growth of the rural poor.
Half of China’s population and two-thirds of India’s still live in rural areas-roughly 700 million people in each country, most of whom remain poor. In China, the urban-rural income ratio has become increasingly disparate; it was 1.8 times more in the mid-1980s, 2.4 in the mid-1990s, 2.9 in 2001 and now around 3.5.
This trend starkly contrasts with the early years of Chinese economic reform. Over 80% of the poverty reduction in China occurred during Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, between 1978 and 1988. Although per-capita incomes have risen since then, the net incomes of about 400 million people have declined over the past decade.
India started from a lower economic base but has made greater gains: Its urban-rural income gap has slowly but steadily declined since the early 1990s. Over the past decade, economic growth in rural India has outpaced growth in urban areas by almost 40 per cent. Rural India now accounts for half of the country’s GDP, up from 46 per cent in 1993. Unlike the Chinese, rural Indians do not have to migrate to already crowded urban areas to earn a better living.
These trends mirror the path of economic reform in both nations. China had a huge head start in alleviating poverty. It began free-market reforms in 1978, while India only started on its current journey away from socialism toward a market-based system in the early 1990s. Since the turn of the century, India has been rapidly improving, but China has been getting worse. And since 2000, poverty and illiteracy in India have halved, while the same figures doubled in China.
The role of domestic consumption in the economy also demonstrates the divergent paths of these two developing giants. In China, domestic consumption as a proportion of GDP has fallen to 35 per cent from around 60 per cent in the 1980s. The Chinese "economic miracle" depends mostly on exports and state-led fixed investment. Even Beijing consistently admits this is an unbalanced, unsustainable strategy. Moreover, depressed consumption levels and correspondingly high levels of savings by the citizens of a still-poor country mean growth is uneven and benefits relatively few. In contrast, domestic consumption composes more than two-thirds of the Indian economy. India has a lot of catching up to do, but its poor are rising with the tide, unlike in China.
China’s emphasis on state-led fixed-investment growth in urban areas may have fostered this trend, exacerbating inequality and heavily favoring a relatively small number of well-placed insiders. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Beijing decided the state should reassert its control of economic growth, which had rested on private-sector entrepreneurship. Before Tiananmen, private-sector investment growth in rural China was growing at 20 per cent annually. After Tiananmen, it dropped to 7 per cent. Hundreds of millions of Chinese have since missed out on the fruits of the country’s spectacular growth.
The Chinese and Indian development models are not actually in competition, despite what newspaper headlines and books may suggest. But as magnificent as Shanghai now is, its shiny buildings have been built on the backs of peasants forced to deposit their savings into state-owned banks and receiving little in return. In contrast, India started its reforms 15 years later than China but is quietly and gradually building its base. Now that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is starting his second term, he will do well to reject the dangerous appeal of the Chinese approach.
(Courtesy: Wall Street Journal Asia, Mr. Lee is a foreign-policy fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington and the author of Will China Fail? (CIS, 2008). Copyright 2009 Dow Jones WSJ 2July 2009 http://online.wsj.com)
China and India will likely defy the economic malaise in Western economies and grow at more than 7 per cent this year. But that is where the comparison should end. Contrary to popular hype, India is actually outpacing China where it counts most-the economic growth of the rural poor.
Half of China’s population and two-thirds of India’s still live in rural areas-roughly 700 million people in each country, most of whom remain poor. In China, the urban-rural income ratio has become increasingly disparate; it was 1.8 times more in the mid-1980s, 2.4 in the mid-1990s, 2.9 in 2001 and now around 3.5.
This trend starkly contrasts with the early years of Chinese economic reform. Over 80% of the poverty reduction in China occurred during Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, between 1978 and 1988. Although per-capita incomes have risen since then, the net incomes of about 400 million people have declined over the past decade.
India started from a lower economic base but has made greater gains: Its urban-rural income gap has slowly but steadily declined since the early 1990s. Over the past decade, economic growth in rural India has outpaced growth in urban areas by almost 40 per cent. Rural India now accounts for half of the country’s GDP, up from 46 per cent in 1993. Unlike the Chinese, rural Indians do not have to migrate to already crowded urban areas to earn a better living.
These trends mirror the path of economic reform in both nations. China had a huge head start in alleviating poverty. It began free-market reforms in 1978, while India only started on its current journey away from socialism toward a market-based system in the early 1990s. Since the turn of the century, India has been rapidly improving, but China has been getting worse. And since 2000, poverty and illiteracy in India have halved, while the same figures doubled in China.
The role of domestic consumption in the economy also demonstrates the divergent paths of these two developing giants. In China, domestic consumption as a proportion of GDP has fallen to 35 per cent from around 60 per cent in the 1980s. The Chinese "economic miracle" depends mostly on exports and state-led fixed investment. Even Beijing consistently admits this is an unbalanced, unsustainable strategy. Moreover, depressed consumption levels and correspondingly high levels of savings by the citizens of a still-poor country mean growth is uneven and benefits relatively few. In contrast, domestic consumption composes more than two-thirds of the Indian economy. India has a lot of catching up to do, but its poor are rising with the tide, unlike in China.
China’s emphasis on state-led fixed-investment growth in urban areas may have fostered this trend, exacerbating inequality and heavily favoring a relatively small number of well-placed insiders. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Beijing decided the state should reassert its control of economic growth, which had rested on private-sector entrepreneurship. Before Tiananmen, private-sector investment growth in rural China was growing at 20 per cent annually. After Tiananmen, it dropped to 7 per cent. Hundreds of millions of Chinese have since missed out on the fruits of the country’s spectacular growth.
The Chinese and Indian development models are not actually in competition, despite what newspaper headlines and books may suggest. But as magnificent as Shanghai now is, its shiny buildings have been built on the backs of peasants forced to deposit their savings into state-owned banks and receiving little in return. In contrast, India started its reforms 15 years later than China but is quietly and gradually building its base. Now that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is starting his second term, he will do well to reject the dangerous appeal of the Chinese approach.
(Courtesy: Wall Street Journal Asia, Mr. Lee is a foreign-policy fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington and the author of Will China Fail? (CIS, 2008). Copyright 2009 Dow Jones WSJ 2July 2009 http://online.wsj.com)
Thursday, November 5, 2009
US views on God and life are turning Hindu By Lisa Miller | NEWSWEEK
America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of us continue to identify as Christian (still, that's the lowest percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or Muslim, or Jewish, or Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus live in the United States, a fraction of the billion who live on Earth. But recent poll data show that conceptually, at least, we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity.
The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: "Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me."
Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life"—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing. Thirty percent of Americans call themselves "spiritual, not religious," according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in 2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has long framed the American propensity for "the divine-deli-cafeteria religion" as "very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You're not picking and choosing from different religions, because they're all the same," he says. "It isn't about orthodoxy. It's about whatever works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat works, that's great, too."
Then there's the question of what happens when you die. Christians traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together they comprise the "self," and that at the end of time they will be reunited in the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you need them forever. Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body burns on a pyre, while the spirit—where identity resides—escapes. In reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies. So here is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris poll. So agnostic are we about the ultimate fates of our bodies that we're burning them—like Hindus—after death. More than a third of Americans now choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America, up from 6 percent in 1975. "I do think the more spiritual role of religion tends to deemphasize some of the more starkly literal interpretations of the Resurrection," agrees Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at Harvard. So let us all say "om."
The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: "Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me."
Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life"—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing. Thirty percent of Americans call themselves "spiritual, not religious," according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in 2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has long framed the American propensity for "the divine-deli-cafeteria religion" as "very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You're not picking and choosing from different religions, because they're all the same," he says. "It isn't about orthodoxy. It's about whatever works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat works, that's great, too."
Then there's the question of what happens when you die. Christians traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together they comprise the "self," and that at the end of time they will be reunited in the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you need them forever. Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body burns on a pyre, while the spirit—where identity resides—escapes. In reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies. So here is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris poll. So agnostic are we about the ultimate fates of our bodies that we're burning them—like Hindus—after death. More than a third of Americans now choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America, up from 6 percent in 1975. "I do think the more spiritual role of religion tends to deemphasize some of the more starkly literal interpretations of the Resurrection," agrees Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at Harvard. So let us all say "om."
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
There was a time when Tibet ruled China
By Arabinda Ghose
The Tibetans had never accepted Chinese suzerainty, and remained a sovereign nation forcibly under occupation and control by the Chinese. In fact Tibet had once occupied China and sacked its capital too. The time, therefore, has come to tell the people of India as also the world, that China must grant full sovereignty to Tibet and leave the Tibetans to their own fate.
It is most disconcerting for any Indian to watch the Government of India reacting in an abject manner to the objections by China to the visit by our Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh visiting Arunachal Pradesh as if this country is a client state of China.
Instead of quoting the Constitution of India for asserting that this State is an inalienable part of India, as Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee did in Kolkata recently, the country wants this Government to tell China to shut up and vacate their occupation of Tibet,
What is more, it is time for India and the democratic world to demand that Tibet be given back her sovereignty because the "fact " of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, which this country had gullibly swallowed during the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Chinese had exercised control over Tibet by fraudulent and even murderous means, as will be revealed in the following paragraphs quoting reliable authorities. In fact Tibet had once occupied China and sacked its capital too.
We have in our hands two or three very reliable sources to support our views-one is a book by Nepalese scholar-politician Balchandra Sharma referring to cultural influence of Nepal over China, the second is the book Chronology and History of Nepal from 600 BC to 880 AD by Dr Kashi Prasad Jaiswal and lastly, Lhasa Vols I and II by Perceval Landon, Special Correspondent of the Times, London, who had accompanied the 1903-04 British expedition to Lhasa led by Sir Francis Younghusband.
We will briefly take up the writings of these three authors.
Shri Sharma who was a leading light of the Nepali Congress in the 1950s and the 1960s, had led a cultural delegation to China in the 1960s when he saw the remnants of the several architects built by a Nepalese sculpture-builder Arniko, spelt Aniko in Chinese. One of them is a monastery near Bejing, still standing. One may remind readers that the Kathmnadu-Kodari Highway which takes one to Lhasa and built by the Chinese in 1964-67, is called the Arniko Rajmarga. in Nepal.
One will find on page 79 of the book Chronology and History of Nepal from 600 BC to 880 AD the following lines: "The T’ang History, gives the contemporary history of Tibet, which had been translated by Dr S.W. Bushel, physician to the British Legation in Peking, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,1880 p.433ff. According to it, Strong-stand-Gampo (Chinese Ch/it-sung-lungtsan) died in 650 and was succeeded by his grandson aged 8,whose son Chi’nu Shsilung was killed in this expedition against Nepal and was succeeded by a minor son aged 7 in 703 A.D. It was no until 755-756 (two successions later) that the Tibetan King once more rose in military greatness by attacking China and taking its capital in 736 A.D."
So it is the T’ang history that says that a Tibetan King had actually attacked China and taken its capital. We have more evidence in the two books by Perceval Landon who incidentally, had authored a book on the ancient history of Nepal too by discovering a "vamsavali" (genealogy).
Landon’s Vol.1 has this to say about the Tibet-China relationship, abridged for want of space: "This history is not one of great interest and may be chiefly dismissed as one of continued hostility with China, but on hostility on equal terms. That the result of these border skirmishes was by no means as uniformly satisfactory to China as one may imagine from her version of the events, is clear but about the 640 A.D, the King of Tibet, Srong-tsan-Gambo, succeeded in obtaining the hands of a princess of the imperial house of the Tang against the will of the emperor and after some years of fighting.....
Strong-tsan-gambo’s grandson, Ti-strong-de-stand, resumed hostilities with China and in 763 actually sacked the capital Changam or Hsia-Fu....."
Vol II has more details of how the Chinese had controlled Tibet. One recalls that this distinguished journalist had accompanied the Francis Younghusband mission of the British to Lhasa in 1903-04. Referring to this, in Chapter I of the Vol II, Landon says :..."Before taking up again the story of the Expedition, I propose to sketch the internal affairs of Lhasa for the last few years with somewhat greater detail than before.
The key to the situation in Tibet, which was now becoming desperate, is to be found in the deliberate and steady determination of the Tibetans to do away with Chinese suzerainty. This is a policy of long standing. Thirty-five years ago, the spirit of independence was already abroad in Tibet, and there was a recognized progressive party, headed by no less a dignitary than the treasurer of the Gaden monastery. Under the old regime, as is well known, a consistent policy of regency, made possible only by the equally systematic assassination of each successive young Grand Lama before he reached the age of eighteen ,resulted in a continual regency ,and therefore, also a continued opportunity for the assertion and reassertion of the Chinese suzerainty, for no regent could be appointed without the sanction of the Chinese emperor."
The very election of the Dalai Lama himself was theoretically subject to the approval of Peking, but this prerogative was seldom or never, exercised. In other parts of the his dominions the Chinese emperor made undoubted use of his rights, Without going into more details at this stage, we would like to quote Landon once again here: "China had been of no use to them in their dispute with India (prior to the Younghusband expedition) and to have the "reincarnated" the Dalai Lama at that moment meant a repetition of the usual opportunity for the exertion of Chinese influence which would have peculiarly inappropriate and even disastrous. He was, therefore, allowed the survive maturity, but only as a religious pontiff, the temporary power remaining in the hands of the regent. But as soon as the Treaty was signed, the last vestige of Chinese influence in Tibet was thrown off by a coup d’etat, in 1805 (The Treaty was with Russia, if one is not mistaken)."
These references show clearly that the Tibetans had never accepted Chinese suzerainty, and remained a sovereign nation forcibly under occupation and control by the Chinese. The time, therefore, has come to tell the people of India as also the world, that China must grant full sovereignty to Tibet and leave the Tibetans to their own fate.
The Tibetans had never accepted Chinese suzerainty, and remained a sovereign nation forcibly under occupation and control by the Chinese. In fact Tibet had once occupied China and sacked its capital too. The time, therefore, has come to tell the people of India as also the world, that China must grant full sovereignty to Tibet and leave the Tibetans to their own fate.
It is most disconcerting for any Indian to watch the Government of India reacting in an abject manner to the objections by China to the visit by our Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh visiting Arunachal Pradesh as if this country is a client state of China.
Instead of quoting the Constitution of India for asserting that this State is an inalienable part of India, as Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee did in Kolkata recently, the country wants this Government to tell China to shut up and vacate their occupation of Tibet,
What is more, it is time for India and the democratic world to demand that Tibet be given back her sovereignty because the "fact " of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, which this country had gullibly swallowed during the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Chinese had exercised control over Tibet by fraudulent and even murderous means, as will be revealed in the following paragraphs quoting reliable authorities. In fact Tibet had once occupied China and sacked its capital too.
We have in our hands two or three very reliable sources to support our views-one is a book by Nepalese scholar-politician Balchandra Sharma referring to cultural influence of Nepal over China, the second is the book Chronology and History of Nepal from 600 BC to 880 AD by Dr Kashi Prasad Jaiswal and lastly, Lhasa Vols I and II by Perceval Landon, Special Correspondent of the Times, London, who had accompanied the 1903-04 British expedition to Lhasa led by Sir Francis Younghusband.
We will briefly take up the writings of these three authors.
Shri Sharma who was a leading light of the Nepali Congress in the 1950s and the 1960s, had led a cultural delegation to China in the 1960s when he saw the remnants of the several architects built by a Nepalese sculpture-builder Arniko, spelt Aniko in Chinese. One of them is a monastery near Bejing, still standing. One may remind readers that the Kathmnadu-Kodari Highway which takes one to Lhasa and built by the Chinese in 1964-67, is called the Arniko Rajmarga. in Nepal.
One will find on page 79 of the book Chronology and History of Nepal from 600 BC to 880 AD the following lines: "The T’ang History, gives the contemporary history of Tibet, which had been translated by Dr S.W. Bushel, physician to the British Legation in Peking, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,1880 p.433ff. According to it, Strong-stand-Gampo (Chinese Ch/it-sung-lungtsan) died in 650 and was succeeded by his grandson aged 8,whose son Chi’nu Shsilung was killed in this expedition against Nepal and was succeeded by a minor son aged 7 in 703 A.D. It was no until 755-756 (two successions later) that the Tibetan King once more rose in military greatness by attacking China and taking its capital in 736 A.D."
So it is the T’ang history that says that a Tibetan King had actually attacked China and taken its capital. We have more evidence in the two books by Perceval Landon who incidentally, had authored a book on the ancient history of Nepal too by discovering a "vamsavali" (genealogy).
Landon’s Vol.1 has this to say about the Tibet-China relationship, abridged for want of space: "This history is not one of great interest and may be chiefly dismissed as one of continued hostility with China, but on hostility on equal terms. That the result of these border skirmishes was by no means as uniformly satisfactory to China as one may imagine from her version of the events, is clear but about the 640 A.D, the King of Tibet, Srong-tsan-Gambo, succeeded in obtaining the hands of a princess of the imperial house of the Tang against the will of the emperor and after some years of fighting.....
Strong-tsan-gambo’s grandson, Ti-strong-de-stand, resumed hostilities with China and in 763 actually sacked the capital Changam or Hsia-Fu....."
Vol II has more details of how the Chinese had controlled Tibet. One recalls that this distinguished journalist had accompanied the Francis Younghusband mission of the British to Lhasa in 1903-04. Referring to this, in Chapter I of the Vol II, Landon says :..."Before taking up again the story of the Expedition, I propose to sketch the internal affairs of Lhasa for the last few years with somewhat greater detail than before.
The key to the situation in Tibet, which was now becoming desperate, is to be found in the deliberate and steady determination of the Tibetans to do away with Chinese suzerainty. This is a policy of long standing. Thirty-five years ago, the spirit of independence was already abroad in Tibet, and there was a recognized progressive party, headed by no less a dignitary than the treasurer of the Gaden monastery. Under the old regime, as is well known, a consistent policy of regency, made possible only by the equally systematic assassination of each successive young Grand Lama before he reached the age of eighteen ,resulted in a continual regency ,and therefore, also a continued opportunity for the assertion and reassertion of the Chinese suzerainty, for no regent could be appointed without the sanction of the Chinese emperor."
The very election of the Dalai Lama himself was theoretically subject to the approval of Peking, but this prerogative was seldom or never, exercised. In other parts of the his dominions the Chinese emperor made undoubted use of his rights, Without going into more details at this stage, we would like to quote Landon once again here: "China had been of no use to them in their dispute with India (prior to the Younghusband expedition) and to have the "reincarnated" the Dalai Lama at that moment meant a repetition of the usual opportunity for the exertion of Chinese influence which would have peculiarly inappropriate and even disastrous. He was, therefore, allowed the survive maturity, but only as a religious pontiff, the temporary power remaining in the hands of the regent. But as soon as the Treaty was signed, the last vestige of Chinese influence in Tibet was thrown off by a coup d’etat, in 1805 (The Treaty was with Russia, if one is not mistaken)."
These references show clearly that the Tibetans had never accepted Chinese suzerainty, and remained a sovereign nation forcibly under occupation and control by the Chinese. The time, therefore, has come to tell the people of India as also the world, that China must grant full sovereignty to Tibet and leave the Tibetans to their own fate.
Take action against Love Jehad
What is the lure of Love Jehad? The problem is old. But the terminology is new crediting its origins to some imaginative police officer in Kerala, who filed his affidavit in the High Court following a widespread commotion against an alleged sinister campaign by Kerala Islamists to convert non-Muslim women to Islam through deceptive love and marriage. Such cases have become commonplace in North India and the readers of Organiser are familiar with them, as such cases have been written about in the journal. The problem received wider attention in Kerala because the Christian girls are equal victims of the jehadi Romeos as the Hindus, and the church has taken a serious view.
The Commission for Social Harmony and Vigilance of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council, which is actively creating public opinion against the organised menace of Love Jehad, says that women so converted to Islam are being used by male Islamist terrorists for satisfying their carnal needs in their camps in inhospitable areas from where escape is impossible. Reports quoting senior police officials say that they can trace the presence of love jehadis but are unable to lay hands on them because of the political patronage they enjoy.
Reports emanating from various parts of the country confirm that the aim of luring vulnerable women from other religions with the offer of love and marriage is to convert them to Islam before using them as couriers, cooks and sex-slaves. This is no liberation theology, as they claim.
The matter hit headlines in recent months when parents of two missing girls approached the Kerala High Court with habeas corpus petitions. One of them is a Hindu and the other Christian. Soon reports about several such incidents popped in the media and police stations, political parties and community organisations came out with appeals to the public to be on the guard against the evil designs of the Islamic groups engaged in this activity. According to a report in The Pioneer, police officials probing the Love Jehad have estimated that as many as 940 women had gone missing in Kerala in the past five years in dubious circumstances. Love jehadis have converted more than 4,000 women in Kerala alone through love and marriage in the recent past, according to reports appearing in the local media. As a result, a concerned Kerala High Court ordered the State Director General of Police and the Union Home Department last month to file their reports on the matter after a thorough probe. Last week, the Kerala DGP Jacob Punnose filed a reply, which he later termed interim, in which he denied the presence of any organised campaign or outfit named Love Jehad. Experts termed his report politically dictated and funny because of its timing and contradictory observations. The Kerala ruling Left Front, facing three by-elections on November 7, tried to woo the fanatic Muslims by presenting such a reply in the Court. However, it backfired. The reply admitted that Muslim men had been trying to convert women to Islam through love marriages. Such Muslim youth could be getting external financial assistance for expensive clothes, motorbikes and money to attract girls, it said. The DGP’s reply further revealed that these young men could be getting legal assistance for staying out of dangers from police and public. Irked by the contradictions in the reply, the High Court ordered the DGP to file a fresh report.
In July, the Maharashtra assembly had ordered a CID inquiry into organised women conversion by marriage after several MLAs raised the issue. The Kerala incidents have fortunately highlighted a national menace, which the country as a whole has so far tried to brush under the carpet. This is an organised crime and a major threat to peace and harmony in the society. It is also a form of demographic aggression. But for the external financial support, these scoundrel gangs are getting, it is impossible to believe that any woman in her right senses would convert to a religion that denies even basic dignity and human rights to the fair sex. On October 28, a report from Saudi Arabia said, a female journalist was sentenced to 60 lashes for participating in a television show in which a man talked about sex. Another report, from Somalia on October 16 said that country’s Islamic group al Shabaab gave women 50 lashes in public for wearing bras, which according to them violates Islam. They rounded up all women seen with "firm busts and had them publicly whipped by masked men. The women were then asked to remove their bras and shake their breasts", according to a report in The Indian Express. In Pakistan and Afghanistan women are routinely rounded up and publicly beaten for being seen in the company of men other than their parents or husbands. These fanatics burn down schools for admitting girl children. On all this neither the state nor the society comes to the rescue of these besieged women. Because they follow the Islamic jurisprudence. To such a situation no women would willingly convert. It is here that the state has to step in to protect the hapless victims. Hindu religious organisations also have to keep a vigil so that these deceitful jehadis meet their Waterloo
The Commission for Social Harmony and Vigilance of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council, which is actively creating public opinion against the organised menace of Love Jehad, says that women so converted to Islam are being used by male Islamist terrorists for satisfying their carnal needs in their camps in inhospitable areas from where escape is impossible. Reports quoting senior police officials say that they can trace the presence of love jehadis but are unable to lay hands on them because of the political patronage they enjoy.
Reports emanating from various parts of the country confirm that the aim of luring vulnerable women from other religions with the offer of love and marriage is to convert them to Islam before using them as couriers, cooks and sex-slaves. This is no liberation theology, as they claim.
The matter hit headlines in recent months when parents of two missing girls approached the Kerala High Court with habeas corpus petitions. One of them is a Hindu and the other Christian. Soon reports about several such incidents popped in the media and police stations, political parties and community organisations came out with appeals to the public to be on the guard against the evil designs of the Islamic groups engaged in this activity. According to a report in The Pioneer, police officials probing the Love Jehad have estimated that as many as 940 women had gone missing in Kerala in the past five years in dubious circumstances. Love jehadis have converted more than 4,000 women in Kerala alone through love and marriage in the recent past, according to reports appearing in the local media. As a result, a concerned Kerala High Court ordered the State Director General of Police and the Union Home Department last month to file their reports on the matter after a thorough probe. Last week, the Kerala DGP Jacob Punnose filed a reply, which he later termed interim, in which he denied the presence of any organised campaign or outfit named Love Jehad. Experts termed his report politically dictated and funny because of its timing and contradictory observations. The Kerala ruling Left Front, facing three by-elections on November 7, tried to woo the fanatic Muslims by presenting such a reply in the Court. However, it backfired. The reply admitted that Muslim men had been trying to convert women to Islam through love marriages. Such Muslim youth could be getting external financial assistance for expensive clothes, motorbikes and money to attract girls, it said. The DGP’s reply further revealed that these young men could be getting legal assistance for staying out of dangers from police and public. Irked by the contradictions in the reply, the High Court ordered the DGP to file a fresh report.
In July, the Maharashtra assembly had ordered a CID inquiry into organised women conversion by marriage after several MLAs raised the issue. The Kerala incidents have fortunately highlighted a national menace, which the country as a whole has so far tried to brush under the carpet. This is an organised crime and a major threat to peace and harmony in the society. It is also a form of demographic aggression. But for the external financial support, these scoundrel gangs are getting, it is impossible to believe that any woman in her right senses would convert to a religion that denies even basic dignity and human rights to the fair sex. On October 28, a report from Saudi Arabia said, a female journalist was sentenced to 60 lashes for participating in a television show in which a man talked about sex. Another report, from Somalia on October 16 said that country’s Islamic group al Shabaab gave women 50 lashes in public for wearing bras, which according to them violates Islam. They rounded up all women seen with "firm busts and had them publicly whipped by masked men. The women were then asked to remove their bras and shake their breasts", according to a report in The Indian Express. In Pakistan and Afghanistan women are routinely rounded up and publicly beaten for being seen in the company of men other than their parents or husbands. These fanatics burn down schools for admitting girl children. On all this neither the state nor the society comes to the rescue of these besieged women. Because they follow the Islamic jurisprudence. To such a situation no women would willingly convert. It is here that the state has to step in to protect the hapless victims. Hindu religious organisations also have to keep a vigil so that these deceitful jehadis meet their Waterloo
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