By Dr Babu Suseelan
In India, these intellectual mafia’s commitment for Hindu bashing has reached a new pinnacle with the national ascendance of Italian born Sonia as the leader of the Congress Party. The Congress Party’s snobbery and insensitivity to the Hindus has created a pseudo-secular culture whose leaders appear unwilling or unable to communicate with the majority Hindus. They are unable to communicate in the cultural language of the majority.
For centuries, Hindu society has been active in producing intellectuals, philosophers, psychologists, scientists, political theorists, artists, poets, spiritual leaders and life scientists. Islamic invasion, Christian colonialism, destruction of Sanskrit education and Marxist influence had a disastrous influence on the Hindu society. The social and psychological conditioning suffered by Hindus lead frequently to the erosion of cultural identity and the depersonalisation of individuals. It is, therefore, not surprising that the production of intellectuals dwindled. The repercussions of long period of Islamic oppression and colonisation, in the wake of social and cultural disintegration and the trauma suffered by Hindus as a whole, persist even today. Everybody seem to agree that Hindu civilisation is now facing a crisis. Entrenched forces from within and without have joined together to de-structure or destroy our thoughts, beliefs, practices and values.
Hinduism has never been a unified, monolithic movement and there has been a great deal of disagreement among Hindus as to how to protect themselves and their interests. There are several Hindu spiritual organisations, and cultural movements in different parts of India. Unfortunately politically, spiritual movements has not resulted in an over-reaching Hindu strategy in politics, in the media, in academics, and other areas of social-political life.
It is time for Hindus to join together, to discover its causes and to assume the responsibility of formulating a solution. It is time to rally our values, our self-esteem and fight for our moral ideals with full, righteous confidence. The intellectual group is one that manifests a collective capacity for dealing with the wide-ranging needs and problems in national life. Intellectuals of a nation are expected to maintain connections with the country’s past culture, present social, economic, and political groups and concerns itself with renewing and maintaining internal strengths. But this is not what we see today in India.
In India, the anti-Hindu mafia has become the "gatekeepers" of Indian minds. The anti-Hindu intellectual zombies have entrapped the members in a servitude and set in motion a malignant process by creating powerlessness in the majority communities. They join together with our enemies from within and without to demean and discredit the culture, and its perennial philosophy that sustains the social bonds for centuries. Our intellectual zombies are competing with our enemies to make Hindus more powerless and prevent them from acquiring skills and self-esteem to regain lost strength and acclaim. Indeed, the greatest threat to India and Hindus today is the political opportunism of the phony secular intellectuals who are inclined to promote Islamo fascism and dismissing or understating internal and external threats. If we ask our moral relativists, agnostics, secularists, liberals and media pundits-they will come up with sticky puddle of stale syrup of tolerance, love, global programmes, universalism, and co-existence with jihadi terrorists, Marxist murderers and crusaders. India’s intellectual zombies had become apologists for the Islamo fascists, Marxists and underground Maoists. They want to replace Hindu tradition, and its eclectic philosophy with the reductionist dogmas of Islam, Marxism and deconstruction. They have sold our nation for a price and joined with our adversaries and engage in "the socialisation of the anti-social, or acculturation of the anti-cultural, or the legitimisation of the subversive" under the influence of modernism. Intellectual discourse is corrupted by moral relativism, leftist cultural criticism and subversive modernism. By blurring the lines between good and evil, right and wrong, spirituality and fanaticism, these intellectual zombies have rendered our society more vulnerable to evil influences.
One of the tragic errors of India is that too many of its best minds believe as they did in the past-that the solution is to rely on more tolerance, inaction and passivity. They are neither humanist or nationalists. Their goal is to demolish Hindu values and to put barriers on Hindu spirituality and place as many obstacles as possible in the way of Hindutva. Their response against Islamic terrorism goes against the commonest of commonsense and only serve to protect anti-nationalists. They are significantly out of touch with reality. What we need most urgently is to recognise that our tolerant culture cannot exist without a philosophy of confrontation of intolerant ideas.
Our present state of cultural disintegration and political oppression is maintained and prolonged by intellectual zombies, posturing as intellectual leaders. India’s intellectual zombies are living in a fantasy world embracing "all religions are the same", and tolerance of intolerance is a positive virtue. They generally consist of frustrated, alienated and misguided intellectual zombies who serve as catalysts, inciting, and actualising the prevalent sentiment of Hindu hatred. They also endorse extra privileges for Muslims and provide a sort of moral justification for Hindu oppression. These modern intellectual zombies have succeeded in misdirecting the public and have extinguished the flame of protest, and they have no answer to halt the triumphant advance of brute jihadis and Marxist murderers. They have no answer to those voices demanding freedom from oppression, liberty from bogus secularism and reason from political idiosyncrasy.
Fumbled strategy
One of the greatest challenges facing our intellectuals today is objectively examining the roots of the present social-political-pathology and malady afflicting Hindu society and developing a strategy that will lead to a lasting solution of our predicament. The inability to grasp the roots of Islamic terrorism, coercive religious conversion and social disturbances is the result of moral relativism, agnosticism and non-judgmental attitude prominent in India’s liberal thought.
A political ideology directed by bogus secular political leaders whose purpose is to help and empower our enemies is deceptive. In India, these intellectual mafia’s commitment for Hindu bashing has reached a new pinnacle with the national ascendance of Italian born Sonia as the leader of the Congress Party. The Congress Party’s snobbery and insensitivity to the Hindus has created a pseudo-secular culture whose leaders appear unwilling or unable to communicate with the majority Hindus. They are unable to communicate in the cultural language of the majority.
How should Hindus revitalise its strategy? Hindus must better educate and explain the Islamic threat to the general audience. Education at all levels should indicate Hindus in the history, philosophy, mechanics, virtues, responsibilities, and achievements of Hindus. Tolerance and diversity need not mean acceptance of oppression and tyranny. India’s intellectual zombies offer misbegotten solutions, ignore inconvenient facts and hide behind Islamic mafia and promote meaningless universalism. The universal pretensions cannot be used without addressing the proper scale of coercive religious conversion, psychological warfare by foreign agencies, subversive activities of anti-national groups and jihadi terrorism. Instead of putting the blame where it belongs, India’s intellectual zombies, when confronted with social-political problems, invent fantasies to keep the public in darkness. Real problems confronting India and Hindus are too scary for intellectual zombies to comprehend.
Identifying with your adversary without proper reflection is an exaggerated tendency toward grandiosity. It is an expression of narcissism, one of the deepest wellsprings of India’s liberal tendencies towards unreality. The self-defeating belief system, lead to unreality-to the feelings that somehow Muslims will become fair-minded and do justice. India’s intellectual zombies are in self-delusion that virtually gets in the way of reality, clouding their judgments on important matters leading to bad decisions. Unreality, self-delusion, and denial are the hallmarks of their disease and treatment. It is a treatment in that it promotes adjustment to harsh reality of Islamic violence and terrorism. This treatment of escapism, denial, and self-blame are worse than the disease. It is this collective disease of India’s intellectual zombies, the unhealthy side of reality that is badly in need of treatment.
This liberal unreality, denial, escapism, appeasement and irrational tolerance is narcotic. While each dose "cures" the pain of harsh reality or previous abuse, it further strengthen the disease. Escape from reality, and hiding behind a thick wall of denial, may provide India’s intellectual zombies a brief respite from cruel reality of Islamic atrocities and promote a false adjustment to the cruel world of Islamists. But it is not a true or effective cure for Islamic brutality, hostility and demand for extra privileges.
The most human quality we have is our ability to conceptualise, rationalise and act. As a nation, our greatest hope for improving ourselves and becoming better is to use our mind and capacity to think. It takes intellectual capacity to think and makes change for the better. Why, even after physical independence, Indians shape their reality, interpret or appraise events to please their long term oppressors and tormentors? Why intellectuals shape their thought to justify evil deeds of Muslims, Marxists and phony secularists? Why they downplay external threats or turn off unpleasant internal disturbances created by anti-national elements? It is strange that alienated intellectuals, leftist academicians and phony secularists develop an unconscious cravings and urges to feel good, to feel wonderful or to feel exalted delight in front of adversaries and tormentors. They restructure their thoughts and develop self-defeating behaviours to please their oppressors. They have limited intellectual competencies to handle conflicts and social problems created by Islamic fascists, subversive agents, and psychological warfare operatives. It is difficult for them to assertively handle social conflicts or to say "no" to social pressure to participate in self-destructive behaviours. They often lack the skills to question unhealthy and disastrous policies and activities of our enemies.
For any dangerous social or political challenge or problem situation, India’s intellectual zombies come up with automatic anti-Hindu thoughts including blame game. These automatic Hindu blame games that pop up quickly are not rational or evaluative in nature. This self-destructive behaviour of intellectual zombies is reinforced by few bread crumbs thrown at them, and few applauses by jihadis, subversive agents and the bogus secular crowd.
What is to be done?
The intellectual zombies that champions the adversary culture now dominate the cultural establishments-the publishing houses, media, museums, book publications, government public relations, television, theatre, the cinema, the academia, and the national educational institutions. They promote cultural-moral relativism and mindless universalism. This "relativism of truth and values" has corrupted the moral character of India. India’s phony intellectuals and bogus secular politicians are not attuned to the values of freedom, equality, individual rights, spiritual culture, peace, progress and justice. These alienated, self-serving intellectuals are no longer committed to liberty, fairness, equal opportunity, openness and prosperity. They are busy promoting freedom for Islamic tyrants, strengthening conversion gangs and assisting subversive groups. Silencing of the Hindus and the suppression of all inclusive, tolerant, and uplifting Hindu ideas is their pastime.
Hindu organisations should identify Hindu intellectuals and channel resources toward formulating and promoting Hindu vision of public policy. Hindu intellectuals should penetrate community intellectual institutions such as journals, theatre companies, study groups, book publishers, electronic media and music clubs. Vital intellectual institutions should be established to create a culture that thinks critically and discuss ideas and philosophies that shape government policies, education and social policy.
Pseudo secular forces have joined with our enemies to restrict the terms of public debate. Hindu intellectuals should address specific issues and concerns that cut across Hindu communities around the globe. In the public sphere, the culture and values of the pluralistic, all inclusive Hindu values should help fashion public policies and political goals.
Only Hindu philosophy points to theoretical systems that yield needed understanding of human beings and their psycho-social-cultural environments. In order to survive in this world of communication, political realities, information warfare, media manipulation and psychological warfare operations, Hindus need to design an action agenda for turning Hindutva into proactive realities in the public field.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Imperialist China flexing its muscles
By Dr Jay Dubashi
China is now doing or will soon be doing what the western nations did in the sixteenth century when they descended on the East in the name of commerce. Let us have no illusions about China. She may be an eastern country but she is no friend of easterners. She is like any other country in the world and will take the same direction as others did when they acquired power.
Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, known generally as HSBC, and one of the biggest banks operating in the East, has decided to move its chief executive from London to Hong Kong. The move to Hong Kong, where the bank was founded in 1865, is to take account of the "shift in the world’s centre of economic gravity from West to East," according to an announcement.
The Chinese, a shrewd lot, are interpreting this as a signal that they are once again the centre of the world, which they may not be right now but will certainly be twenty or thirty years from now, when it will be China, not America, that will call the shots.
China is already calling the shots. On the Ist of October, it held a grand parade in Beijing to mark it birthday on which day Chairman Mao had declared from Tiananmen Square that China had "stood up". Now China is not only standing tall but marching economically, politically and socially, throwing its weight around as nations are apt to do when they grow powerful and start looking at the world with different eyes.
China is now doing or will soon be doing what the western nations did in the sixteenth century when they descended on the East in the name of commerce. Let us have no illusions about China. She may be an eastern country but she is no friend of easterners. She is like any other country in the world and will take the same direction as others did when they acquired power.
We have to be realistic about China. She will behave in the same fashion as Britain did between 1600 and 1800, when she created an empire out of virtually nothing. China will go the same way because that is what power does to you. Power, which means economic and political power, is like a strong drink: it grows on you. You may talk about democracy and Marx, but that is only talk. The Christians who came to India in the wake of European conquerors also talked about Christ and the Bible. Ultimately, they wound up helping the ruler enslave us, talking of the Bible and Macaulay all the time.
Those who argue that recent so-called cartographic aggression in the Himalayas and visas on plain paper are diplomatic aberrations are talking nonsense. Nobody goes into his neighbour’s house and say that he is there because it is his house. The Chinese have a long history of such acts. They have annexed Tibet, which is no part of theirs, and also Xinjiang, which also does not belong to them. Men like Nehru acquiesced in their annexation of Tibet because they were foolish men. And the Chinese treated them as foolish people are treated everywhere. They will do so again, because, it is in their blood, and also because power does that to you. Remember, China will soon be the most powerful country this side of Suez.
The Chinese are not a tolerant or peaceful people. They have never been so in history. When they were down, as they were when the westerners had them beaten, they kept their heads down. As soon as they "stood up", they reverted to form. Mao was one of the cruellest men in recent history, on par with monsters like Hitler and Stalin. He was responsible for the worst kind of atrocities in the name of the various bogus revolutions which he put through. Their main aim was to instil fear in the masses, for such monsters rule through fear. Hitler and Stalin did the same. Between Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, they are supposed to have murdered 30 to 40 million people, roughly half and half. Mao’s successors will do it again if they get the opportunity.
You don’t go about killing your own people if you are peaceful and tolerant. And if that’s the way they treat their own people, just imagine how they will treat those they consider their enemies. Mao, Hitler and Stalin are among the biggest killers in history, but real history is yet to come.
The Chinese are scouring the world for industrial commodities, including crude oil, iron ore and other minerals, and, even land. They are purchasing or taking on lease large swathes of land in Africa-millions of acres-where they will have their own men growing crops, which they badly want.
Soon you will find large chunks of Africa swallowed up by the Chinese in the name of commerce, just as the East India Company did in the 17th and 18th centuries. And no African ruler will be able to dislodge them once they are in place, because the real rulers will be the Chinese.
Africa is already in a way a Chinese colony. The African rulers are already eating out of Chinese hands, whether they are Angola, Mozambique or Congo. The Chinese are investing heavily in these countries and will one day take them over, just as the British did. Imperialism knows no colour or nationality only money-and power. Ten, twenty years from now, the US dollar will be replaced by the yuan, which in any case is stronger than the dollar. And when the dollar goes, the United States will go too.
As I said, let us have no illusions about Beijing or, for that matter, about any would-be aggressor. The men who sit in our foreign ministry or the national security department are fools. The Chinese fooled even Nehru-that is not a great achievement. They-that is, the Chinese-will make mincemeat of these pipsqueaks from the South Block, who are so busy with their twitters, they probably won’t recognise a Chinese coming over the Himalayan passes when they see one!
Will the Americans help us, as many people hope? No, they won’t. Barack Obama is just like an Indian. He is a master of pretty phrases but not of action. His entire programme, from fighting terrorism in Afghanistan to setting up an elaborate health scheme, is on the verge of collapse. His own Senators are not helping him and the Republicans are out for his blood. The American people as a whole are not sure about him because they do not know who he is. The poor man is going through a crisis of confidence, the same kind Richard Nixon went through before he was ousted. If Barack Obama fails in Afghanistan, as his predecessor failed in Vietnam, there will be dancing in Beijing.
India is facing nothing short of an existential crisis, and soon, unless we act promptly and wisely, we shall soon have our backs to the wall.
China is now doing or will soon be doing what the western nations did in the sixteenth century when they descended on the East in the name of commerce. Let us have no illusions about China. She may be an eastern country but she is no friend of easterners. She is like any other country in the world and will take the same direction as others did when they acquired power.
Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, known generally as HSBC, and one of the biggest banks operating in the East, has decided to move its chief executive from London to Hong Kong. The move to Hong Kong, where the bank was founded in 1865, is to take account of the "shift in the world’s centre of economic gravity from West to East," according to an announcement.
The Chinese, a shrewd lot, are interpreting this as a signal that they are once again the centre of the world, which they may not be right now but will certainly be twenty or thirty years from now, when it will be China, not America, that will call the shots.
China is already calling the shots. On the Ist of October, it held a grand parade in Beijing to mark it birthday on which day Chairman Mao had declared from Tiananmen Square that China had "stood up". Now China is not only standing tall but marching economically, politically and socially, throwing its weight around as nations are apt to do when they grow powerful and start looking at the world with different eyes.
China is now doing or will soon be doing what the western nations did in the sixteenth century when they descended on the East in the name of commerce. Let us have no illusions about China. She may be an eastern country but she is no friend of easterners. She is like any other country in the world and will take the same direction as others did when they acquired power.
We have to be realistic about China. She will behave in the same fashion as Britain did between 1600 and 1800, when she created an empire out of virtually nothing. China will go the same way because that is what power does to you. Power, which means economic and political power, is like a strong drink: it grows on you. You may talk about democracy and Marx, but that is only talk. The Christians who came to India in the wake of European conquerors also talked about Christ and the Bible. Ultimately, they wound up helping the ruler enslave us, talking of the Bible and Macaulay all the time.
Those who argue that recent so-called cartographic aggression in the Himalayas and visas on plain paper are diplomatic aberrations are talking nonsense. Nobody goes into his neighbour’s house and say that he is there because it is his house. The Chinese have a long history of such acts. They have annexed Tibet, which is no part of theirs, and also Xinjiang, which also does not belong to them. Men like Nehru acquiesced in their annexation of Tibet because they were foolish men. And the Chinese treated them as foolish people are treated everywhere. They will do so again, because, it is in their blood, and also because power does that to you. Remember, China will soon be the most powerful country this side of Suez.
The Chinese are not a tolerant or peaceful people. They have never been so in history. When they were down, as they were when the westerners had them beaten, they kept their heads down. As soon as they "stood up", they reverted to form. Mao was one of the cruellest men in recent history, on par with monsters like Hitler and Stalin. He was responsible for the worst kind of atrocities in the name of the various bogus revolutions which he put through. Their main aim was to instil fear in the masses, for such monsters rule through fear. Hitler and Stalin did the same. Between Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, they are supposed to have murdered 30 to 40 million people, roughly half and half. Mao’s successors will do it again if they get the opportunity.
You don’t go about killing your own people if you are peaceful and tolerant. And if that’s the way they treat their own people, just imagine how they will treat those they consider their enemies. Mao, Hitler and Stalin are among the biggest killers in history, but real history is yet to come.
The Chinese are scouring the world for industrial commodities, including crude oil, iron ore and other minerals, and, even land. They are purchasing or taking on lease large swathes of land in Africa-millions of acres-where they will have their own men growing crops, which they badly want.
Soon you will find large chunks of Africa swallowed up by the Chinese in the name of commerce, just as the East India Company did in the 17th and 18th centuries. And no African ruler will be able to dislodge them once they are in place, because the real rulers will be the Chinese.
Africa is already in a way a Chinese colony. The African rulers are already eating out of Chinese hands, whether they are Angola, Mozambique or Congo. The Chinese are investing heavily in these countries and will one day take them over, just as the British did. Imperialism knows no colour or nationality only money-and power. Ten, twenty years from now, the US dollar will be replaced by the yuan, which in any case is stronger than the dollar. And when the dollar goes, the United States will go too.
As I said, let us have no illusions about Beijing or, for that matter, about any would-be aggressor. The men who sit in our foreign ministry or the national security department are fools. The Chinese fooled even Nehru-that is not a great achievement. They-that is, the Chinese-will make mincemeat of these pipsqueaks from the South Block, who are so busy with their twitters, they probably won’t recognise a Chinese coming over the Himalayan passes when they see one!
Will the Americans help us, as many people hope? No, they won’t. Barack Obama is just like an Indian. He is a master of pretty phrases but not of action. His entire programme, from fighting terrorism in Afghanistan to setting up an elaborate health scheme, is on the verge of collapse. His own Senators are not helping him and the Republicans are out for his blood. The American people as a whole are not sure about him because they do not know who he is. The poor man is going through a crisis of confidence, the same kind Richard Nixon went through before he was ousted. If Barack Obama fails in Afghanistan, as his predecessor failed in Vietnam, there will be dancing in Beijing.
India is facing nothing short of an existential crisis, and soon, unless we act promptly and wisely, we shall soon have our backs to the wall.
China working on Maoist-SIMI nexus in South India?
From Arun Lakshman in Thiruvananthapuram
Sources in the intelligence agency told this reporter that the Chinese interpreters in the Indian intelligence establishment have already got vital evidences that make it quite apparent that the Chinese have already prepared a blueprint for the operation in South India and would in the immediate future create several human interest think tanks in South India for garnering support from the intellectual community and to take the state’s intelligentsia as a major propaganda machinery for its sinister operations.
The Indian intelligence agencies are on the trail of a sinister plan of Chinese for integrating the operations of the Maoist groups with the banned Islamist organisation SIMI. A top official of the Intelligence Bureau while speaking to this reporter said that a meeting between some middle-level leaders of the two organisations was held in Bengaluru recently at the behest of a foreign intelligence agent and a Kerala-based former Naxalite leader is given the charge of the operation in South India.
The former SIMI chief Safdar Nagori during his interrogation has revealed to the Madhya Pradesh Police that his organisation has floated a 200-member suicide squad of which 40 are from Kerala.
The Chinese intelligence, it is learnt, is bent on creating an Islamist-Maoist nexus in South India, which, according to the experts, could prove to be a major force to destabilise the law and order situation in South India. The intelligence official also informed that the Chinese organisations have not yet come to the forefront but are pulling the strings using certain elements of the Pakistani intelligence as a camouflage. However sources in the agency told this reporter that the Chinese interpreters in the Indian intelligence establishment have already got vital evidences that make it quite apparent that the Chinese have already prepared a blueprint for the operation in South India and would in the immediate future create several human interest think tanks in South India for garnering support from the intellectual community and to take the state’s intelligentsia as a major propaganda machinery for its sinister operations.
It may be recalled that the CPI-M of Kerala, which has been the political party that attracted the left intellectuals, is now in the grip of a fierce factional war and several intellectuals have been shown the door by the official faction of the party because of their solidarity with the Chief Minister Achuthanandan, who is now functioning in the party without proper wings.
These elements, according to the experts in the intelligence agencies, have already been roped in by the Maoist and other dalit movements to set up their base among the intellectual community of the state.
The state police have already cracked the case relating to the brutal killing of a middle-aged person while he was on a morning walk and have found a dalit outfit-Dalit Human Rights Forum-behind the murder. After a close observation, it was established that the organisation formed less than two years ago in Aluva has gained momentum in several dalit hamlets in Kerala and that it is flush with funds. A top official of the Intelligence Bureau, who is in the state in connection with the probe on this organisation, told this reporter that they are ascertaining the role played by the external intelligence agencies in creating such an outfit.
The Intelligence Bureau, in its report presented before the Union Home Minister and the National Security Advisor a few weeks ago, has said that the situation in Kerala has gone out of control and that more and more youth are getting involved in terror operations with unabated support from certain mainstream political parties. The report also pointed out that there is a large presence of terror-trained youths in the coastal districts of Kerala and that the state police is not acting properly to the extent they should have acted. The Intelligence Bureau has made its probe deeper into Kerala following the death of four Islamic terrorists in Kashmir, who were all from Kerala
Sources in the intelligence agency told this reporter that the Chinese interpreters in the Indian intelligence establishment have already got vital evidences that make it quite apparent that the Chinese have already prepared a blueprint for the operation in South India and would in the immediate future create several human interest think tanks in South India for garnering support from the intellectual community and to take the state’s intelligentsia as a major propaganda machinery for its sinister operations.
The Indian intelligence agencies are on the trail of a sinister plan of Chinese for integrating the operations of the Maoist groups with the banned Islamist organisation SIMI. A top official of the Intelligence Bureau while speaking to this reporter said that a meeting between some middle-level leaders of the two organisations was held in Bengaluru recently at the behest of a foreign intelligence agent and a Kerala-based former Naxalite leader is given the charge of the operation in South India.
The former SIMI chief Safdar Nagori during his interrogation has revealed to the Madhya Pradesh Police that his organisation has floated a 200-member suicide squad of which 40 are from Kerala.
The Chinese intelligence, it is learnt, is bent on creating an Islamist-Maoist nexus in South India, which, according to the experts, could prove to be a major force to destabilise the law and order situation in South India. The intelligence official also informed that the Chinese organisations have not yet come to the forefront but are pulling the strings using certain elements of the Pakistani intelligence as a camouflage. However sources in the agency told this reporter that the Chinese interpreters in the Indian intelligence establishment have already got vital evidences that make it quite apparent that the Chinese have already prepared a blueprint for the operation in South India and would in the immediate future create several human interest think tanks in South India for garnering support from the intellectual community and to take the state’s intelligentsia as a major propaganda machinery for its sinister operations.
It may be recalled that the CPI-M of Kerala, which has been the political party that attracted the left intellectuals, is now in the grip of a fierce factional war and several intellectuals have been shown the door by the official faction of the party because of their solidarity with the Chief Minister Achuthanandan, who is now functioning in the party without proper wings.
These elements, according to the experts in the intelligence agencies, have already been roped in by the Maoist and other dalit movements to set up their base among the intellectual community of the state.
The state police have already cracked the case relating to the brutal killing of a middle-aged person while he was on a morning walk and have found a dalit outfit-Dalit Human Rights Forum-behind the murder. After a close observation, it was established that the organisation formed less than two years ago in Aluva has gained momentum in several dalit hamlets in Kerala and that it is flush with funds. A top official of the Intelligence Bureau, who is in the state in connection with the probe on this organisation, told this reporter that they are ascertaining the role played by the external intelligence agencies in creating such an outfit.
The Intelligence Bureau, in its report presented before the Union Home Minister and the National Security Advisor a few weeks ago, has said that the situation in Kerala has gone out of control and that more and more youth are getting involved in terror operations with unabated support from certain mainstream political parties. The report also pointed out that there is a large presence of terror-trained youths in the coastal districts of Kerala and that the state police is not acting properly to the extent they should have acted. The Intelligence Bureau has made its probe deeper into Kerala following the death of four Islamic terrorists in Kashmir, who were all from Kerala
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Arundhati Roy denounces Indian democracy
This article was written in 2006..i found it very gentle towards Roy..but it said something..
By Atul Cowshish - Syndicate Features
Ms Arundhati Roy is an unhappy citizen. There is so much in this world that she finds loathsome. She cannot stand the US president, George W. Bush, she condemns the occupation of Iraq, she sees evil designs behind the clarion calls for globalisation and liberalisation coming from the wicked West as it has not helped the impoverished in the Third World. Her catalogue of bad things in India is so large that it is actually difficult to say if she finds anything right here. Indians outside the country too seem to annoy her as she has observed that ‘the so-called expatriate Indians are running a campaign against me’.
Only some weeks ago she was fuming at the callousness and worse shown by the government towards the people affected by the Narmada dam scheme. She had even defied the highest court of the land to speak for the victims of the Narmada scheme and had spent a day in prison when the Supreme Court found her guilty of contempt of court. Her latest object of wrath is the ‘so-called democracy’ in India. ‘The concept of Indian democracy is the biggest publicity scam of this century. Holding elections every five years does not necessarily mean that our country enjoys a democracy,’ she declared at a public meeting.
Ironically, she was berating Indian democracy from an extremist platform; the occasion was a protest against the arrest of the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), Deepankar Bhattacharya, who has been arrested along with four other on charges that include attempt to murder. It will strike some as odd that she was complaining about a ‘phoney’ democracy at a gathering of people who do not pretend to believe in any democratic values such as freedom to disagree.
After her first novel got her the prestigious Booker Prize in 1997, Ms Roy did not use her considerable writing talents to churn out more works of fiction. Or, maybe, she did. She has spoken and written copiously on social and political issues by judiciously mixing facts with fiction. For instance, she told a TV audience in the US that the venue of the public speech George Bush gave in India during his visit in March this year was the Delhi Zoo and, hence, the audience naturally consisted of ‘caged animals’ and ‘caged CEOs’. And who did he meet when he flew into Hyderabad, the latest IT city of India? According to Ms Roy, a buffalo!
As for the official hosts of Bush in India, Ms Roy’s verdict is that the Indian leaders stooped to their ‘servile’ best in doing a ‘death dance’ of embracing the US president. Even the Indian media, particularly one English language newspaper with multi-editions!
Ms Roy’s colourful descriptions have not exactly set the Yamuna on fire. One can suspect that the reason is that instead of offending the intended persons, her observations evoked mirth. That may be befitting because Ms Roy herself found Bush to be an object of ridicule but her overwhelming sense of revolt against the man and his policies prevented her from satirising his visit.
It will be pointless to question Ms Roy’s views on a democracy, even the ‘sham’ one. But it does appear that the yardstick with which she and others like her would like to judge issues like democracy are too harsh and unrealistic. Take her stand on hydro-electric power stations and dams. Opposing a dam is fine, as the governments indeed do not really care much for the persons affected by the project while every effort is made to derive mileage from the project. But projects like a dam cannot be stopped nor, for that matter, will a government mould its domestic and foreign policies to suit the likes of certain ‘idealists’.
It will also appear that there are times when persons like Ms Roy are caught in their own rhetoric. A TV interviewer in America asked her if India should have nuclear weapons. Being a known critic of nuclear arms, she was naturally against India going nuclear. But in her reply she said that not only India but none of the nuclear haves, including the US and Israel, should have the nuclear arsenal.
The interviewer was peeved because obviously his intention was to pin her down to the specific question on India probably to support his line against India’s nuclear programme. Each time the interviewer asked her the question Ms Roy repeated her answer with the mention of the US and other nuclear haves. The interview was never aired and the American interviewer probably wondered why Ms Roy was not categorical in denouncing the Indian nuclear programme outside of the other nuclear programmes.
To be honest, Ms Roy is not the first well-known personality to express extreme views on a range of policies and persons. More and more public figures are coming out in the open to take extreme positions on almost every issue that confront society. The search for the middle path is hardly in reckoning. People in the news (other than politicians) hitherto considered apolitical are increasingly coming before the public to air their views that, they know, will generate controversy, if not heat.
The recent agitation against OBC quota in professional institutions like medical colleges, IIMs and IITs sparked off a partisan agitation enthusiastically participated by many upper caste public figures. The merits of the quota announcement by the government were hardly debated. The critics received wide publicity and it appeared that there were no supporters of the OBC quota policy, which is not true.
Film stars are a class by themselves. No one can grudge them taking a stand on any issue. Trouble arises when they appear to be more keen to steal the limelight rather than express any genuine heartfelt opinion. One moment we can have a hero (or a heroine) endorsing multi-national products for a hefty fee and next you see him or her transformed as a crusader for indigenous causes—to be seen as a politically correct person?
Contradictory public postures of film stars can sometime lead to violence. But then who suffers? Not the star, it is the producer or other connected with the trade as Amir Khan starrer Fanna demonstrated. In the case of Ms Roy’s campaigns, the effect, unfortunately, seems to be the opposite of what she intended. Her opposition to the Narmada dam seems to have given another boost to Narendra Modi in Gujarat. That is the last thing she would have wished.
By Atul Cowshish - Syndicate Features
Ms Arundhati Roy is an unhappy citizen. There is so much in this world that she finds loathsome. She cannot stand the US president, George W. Bush, she condemns the occupation of Iraq, she sees evil designs behind the clarion calls for globalisation and liberalisation coming from the wicked West as it has not helped the impoverished in the Third World. Her catalogue of bad things in India is so large that it is actually difficult to say if she finds anything right here. Indians outside the country too seem to annoy her as she has observed that ‘the so-called expatriate Indians are running a campaign against me’.
Only some weeks ago she was fuming at the callousness and worse shown by the government towards the people affected by the Narmada dam scheme. She had even defied the highest court of the land to speak for the victims of the Narmada scheme and had spent a day in prison when the Supreme Court found her guilty of contempt of court. Her latest object of wrath is the ‘so-called democracy’ in India. ‘The concept of Indian democracy is the biggest publicity scam of this century. Holding elections every five years does not necessarily mean that our country enjoys a democracy,’ she declared at a public meeting.
Ironically, she was berating Indian democracy from an extremist platform; the occasion was a protest against the arrest of the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), Deepankar Bhattacharya, who has been arrested along with four other on charges that include attempt to murder. It will strike some as odd that she was complaining about a ‘phoney’ democracy at a gathering of people who do not pretend to believe in any democratic values such as freedom to disagree.
After her first novel got her the prestigious Booker Prize in 1997, Ms Roy did not use her considerable writing talents to churn out more works of fiction. Or, maybe, she did. She has spoken and written copiously on social and political issues by judiciously mixing facts with fiction. For instance, she told a TV audience in the US that the venue of the public speech George Bush gave in India during his visit in March this year was the Delhi Zoo and, hence, the audience naturally consisted of ‘caged animals’ and ‘caged CEOs’. And who did he meet when he flew into Hyderabad, the latest IT city of India? According to Ms Roy, a buffalo!
As for the official hosts of Bush in India, Ms Roy’s verdict is that the Indian leaders stooped to their ‘servile’ best in doing a ‘death dance’ of embracing the US president. Even the Indian media, particularly one English language newspaper with multi-editions!
Ms Roy’s colourful descriptions have not exactly set the Yamuna on fire. One can suspect that the reason is that instead of offending the intended persons, her observations evoked mirth. That may be befitting because Ms Roy herself found Bush to be an object of ridicule but her overwhelming sense of revolt against the man and his policies prevented her from satirising his visit.
It will be pointless to question Ms Roy’s views on a democracy, even the ‘sham’ one. But it does appear that the yardstick with which she and others like her would like to judge issues like democracy are too harsh and unrealistic. Take her stand on hydro-electric power stations and dams. Opposing a dam is fine, as the governments indeed do not really care much for the persons affected by the project while every effort is made to derive mileage from the project. But projects like a dam cannot be stopped nor, for that matter, will a government mould its domestic and foreign policies to suit the likes of certain ‘idealists’.
It will also appear that there are times when persons like Ms Roy are caught in their own rhetoric. A TV interviewer in America asked her if India should have nuclear weapons. Being a known critic of nuclear arms, she was naturally against India going nuclear. But in her reply she said that not only India but none of the nuclear haves, including the US and Israel, should have the nuclear arsenal.
The interviewer was peeved because obviously his intention was to pin her down to the specific question on India probably to support his line against India’s nuclear programme. Each time the interviewer asked her the question Ms Roy repeated her answer with the mention of the US and other nuclear haves. The interview was never aired and the American interviewer probably wondered why Ms Roy was not categorical in denouncing the Indian nuclear programme outside of the other nuclear programmes.
To be honest, Ms Roy is not the first well-known personality to express extreme views on a range of policies and persons. More and more public figures are coming out in the open to take extreme positions on almost every issue that confront society. The search for the middle path is hardly in reckoning. People in the news (other than politicians) hitherto considered apolitical are increasingly coming before the public to air their views that, they know, will generate controversy, if not heat.
The recent agitation against OBC quota in professional institutions like medical colleges, IIMs and IITs sparked off a partisan agitation enthusiastically participated by many upper caste public figures. The merits of the quota announcement by the government were hardly debated. The critics received wide publicity and it appeared that there were no supporters of the OBC quota policy, which is not true.
Film stars are a class by themselves. No one can grudge them taking a stand on any issue. Trouble arises when they appear to be more keen to steal the limelight rather than express any genuine heartfelt opinion. One moment we can have a hero (or a heroine) endorsing multi-national products for a hefty fee and next you see him or her transformed as a crusader for indigenous causes—to be seen as a politically correct person?
Contradictory public postures of film stars can sometime lead to violence. But then who suffers? Not the star, it is the producer or other connected with the trade as Amir Khan starrer Fanna demonstrated. In the case of Ms Roy’s campaigns, the effect, unfortunately, seems to be the opposite of what she intended. Her opposition to the Narmada dam seems to have given another boost to Narendra Modi in Gujarat. That is the last thing she would have wished.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Times of shah jahan
Shah Jahan: The Rise and Fall of the Mughal Emperor, Fergus Nicoll, Penguin Books, pp 332, Rs. 899.00
Shah Jahan, the Mughal Emperor who was a “ruthless political operator, who only achieved power by ordering the murder of two brothers and at least six other relatives, one of them the legitimately crowned Emperor Dawar Baksh… an enlightened despot, a king who dispensed largesse to favoured courtiers but ignored plague in the countryside.”
This is how Fergus Nicoll introduces Shah Jahan, in his book Shah Jahan: The Rise and Fall of the Mughal Emperor that academically scrutinises the life, time and reign of the Emperor.
It speaks volumes for the King’s character that in this detailed account of his 31 years of rule, one does not come across a single act of goodness or kindness for the people. The official diary, maintained daily diligently by a writer, extensively quoted by Nicoll does not give any evidence that Shah Jahan was bothered about his subjects. Famines and plagues visited the population at regular frequency. But the people had to pay the rent fixed for them.
“The poor, by contrast, thronged every village, highway and urban back-street across the entire empire,” says Nicoll. A Dutch trader in India at the time wrote, “If their villages were unable to pay the full amount of rent, they could be sold – man, woman or child – or charged with fomenting rebellion. For in Mughal India defaulting was tantamount to treason.” What a tragic picture. This when the emperor’s treasury was bursting and overflowing.
Nicoll gives a detailed account of the Emperor’s wealth at several places in the book. Here is one of them: “The fact that Shah Jahan could spend five million rupees on his widow’s tomb with such nonchalance is an indicator of the vast wealth at his disposal.” Together the provinces brought “Shah Jahan’s total income to nearly 190 million rupees. Most of that money flowed directly into the imperial coffers as crown-land revenue. The remainder was allocated at the emperor’s discretion to 655 named individuals: members of the royal family and the members of the nobility whose fiefdom financed their private militias and lavish lifestyles.” The author goes on to further illustrate the emperor’s wealth by comparing it to the pitiable state of finances of his contemporaries in the West. For instance, King Charles I in 1635 was struggling with a financial crisis, to maintain his court at an annual budget of half a million pounds.
As could be expected the book is full of political executions and mass murders. The supporters of political rivals are finished off, their heads separated, lined up for display to act as warning. During the reign of Shah Jahan’s father Jahangir, the fifth Sikh Guru Arjun Dev was executed and the possessions of his followers confiscated. The Guru, not a supporter of any group had only accorded the routine hospitality to Prince Khusraw, in the form of a tilak and spiritual advice when the latter came calling on him. Khusraw (elder brother of Shah Jahan) was then rebelling against his father. When taking the throne, the already incarcerated Khusraw’s murder was ordered by Shah Jahan.
The book elaborately describes the coming up of Taj Mahal, right from the stage of conception. The Red Fort, Jama Masjid and other structures by the Emperor have been penned extensively.
Shah Jahan, the man has got lost in this painstakingly researched book. There is no account of his personal life, as a father, husband (except that he loved Mumtaj Mahal to distraction and subjected her to annual pregnancies) and a victim of his son’s (Aurangzeb) political ambitions. Nicoll has ignored records that show that Shah Jahan was incestuous and used both his daughters Jahan Ara and Roshan Ara sexually and cruelly put to death their lovers when caught.
Nicoll has glossed over the religious fanaticism of Shah Jahan. His very anti-Hindu stances including the reintroduction of jazia the tax on Hindus, though several Rajput kings were his vassals and supplied money and men for his wars. The demolition of the ancient Vishwanatha temple in Kashi was carried out by Shah Jahan. The incident is mentioned by Nicoll in passing as a general demolition of temples in Benaras for “beautification” of the city.
This book is an academic work, on an Emperor who is taught in Indian history books as the ‘builder of Taj Mahal and a man who had an undying love for his wife.’ Nicoll opens our eye to the King that Shah Jahan was. Though the account on the social scene and the plight of the people comes rather late in the book and is not very elaborate, it gives an idea about the life of Hindus in Hindustan then. It of course only got worse under 40 years of Aurangzeb’s rule. That account would have to wait for another book.
Fergus Nicoll has been a current affairs journalist for the BBC since 1988 and is widely travelled. He received a generous grant from the Society of Authors to work on the book. The book no doubt is the result of labourious research of a committed academic mind.
Shah Jahan, the Mughal Emperor who was a “ruthless political operator, who only achieved power by ordering the murder of two brothers and at least six other relatives, one of them the legitimately crowned Emperor Dawar Baksh… an enlightened despot, a king who dispensed largesse to favoured courtiers but ignored plague in the countryside.”
This is how Fergus Nicoll introduces Shah Jahan, in his book Shah Jahan: The Rise and Fall of the Mughal Emperor that academically scrutinises the life, time and reign of the Emperor.
It speaks volumes for the King’s character that in this detailed account of his 31 years of rule, one does not come across a single act of goodness or kindness for the people. The official diary, maintained daily diligently by a writer, extensively quoted by Nicoll does not give any evidence that Shah Jahan was bothered about his subjects. Famines and plagues visited the population at regular frequency. But the people had to pay the rent fixed for them.
“The poor, by contrast, thronged every village, highway and urban back-street across the entire empire,” says Nicoll. A Dutch trader in India at the time wrote, “If their villages were unable to pay the full amount of rent, they could be sold – man, woman or child – or charged with fomenting rebellion. For in Mughal India defaulting was tantamount to treason.” What a tragic picture. This when the emperor’s treasury was bursting and overflowing.
Nicoll gives a detailed account of the Emperor’s wealth at several places in the book. Here is one of them: “The fact that Shah Jahan could spend five million rupees on his widow’s tomb with such nonchalance is an indicator of the vast wealth at his disposal.” Together the provinces brought “Shah Jahan’s total income to nearly 190 million rupees. Most of that money flowed directly into the imperial coffers as crown-land revenue. The remainder was allocated at the emperor’s discretion to 655 named individuals: members of the royal family and the members of the nobility whose fiefdom financed their private militias and lavish lifestyles.” The author goes on to further illustrate the emperor’s wealth by comparing it to the pitiable state of finances of his contemporaries in the West. For instance, King Charles I in 1635 was struggling with a financial crisis, to maintain his court at an annual budget of half a million pounds.
As could be expected the book is full of political executions and mass murders. The supporters of political rivals are finished off, their heads separated, lined up for display to act as warning. During the reign of Shah Jahan’s father Jahangir, the fifth Sikh Guru Arjun Dev was executed and the possessions of his followers confiscated. The Guru, not a supporter of any group had only accorded the routine hospitality to Prince Khusraw, in the form of a tilak and spiritual advice when the latter came calling on him. Khusraw (elder brother of Shah Jahan) was then rebelling against his father. When taking the throne, the already incarcerated Khusraw’s murder was ordered by Shah Jahan.
The book elaborately describes the coming up of Taj Mahal, right from the stage of conception. The Red Fort, Jama Masjid and other structures by the Emperor have been penned extensively.
Shah Jahan, the man has got lost in this painstakingly researched book. There is no account of his personal life, as a father, husband (except that he loved Mumtaj Mahal to distraction and subjected her to annual pregnancies) and a victim of his son’s (Aurangzeb) political ambitions. Nicoll has ignored records that show that Shah Jahan was incestuous and used both his daughters Jahan Ara and Roshan Ara sexually and cruelly put to death their lovers when caught.
Nicoll has glossed over the religious fanaticism of Shah Jahan. His very anti-Hindu stances including the reintroduction of jazia the tax on Hindus, though several Rajput kings were his vassals and supplied money and men for his wars. The demolition of the ancient Vishwanatha temple in Kashi was carried out by Shah Jahan. The incident is mentioned by Nicoll in passing as a general demolition of temples in Benaras for “beautification” of the city.
This book is an academic work, on an Emperor who is taught in Indian history books as the ‘builder of Taj Mahal and a man who had an undying love for his wife.’ Nicoll opens our eye to the King that Shah Jahan was. Though the account on the social scene and the plight of the people comes rather late in the book and is not very elaborate, it gives an idea about the life of Hindus in Hindustan then. It of course only got worse under 40 years of Aurangzeb’s rule. That account would have to wait for another book.
Fergus Nicoll has been a current affairs journalist for the BBC since 1988 and is widely travelled. He received a generous grant from the Society of Authors to work on the book. The book no doubt is the result of labourious research of a committed academic mind.
for the media secularism is only if muslim boys marry Hindu girls
Times Of India
Thursday October 15, 2009
Tarun Vijay
Rajneesh was a small trader from Jammu often going on business trips to Srinagar. He fell in love with a girl and married her.
He wanted to be faithful to his beloved from Srinagar, who was beautiful and had unflinching trust in her life partner. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to have love bloom between Jammu and Srinagar. But it was more than that. The boy from Jammu was a Hindu and the girl from Srinagar, a Muslim. Ameena was her name and she changed her name to Anchal Sharma after marriage.
A month after the marriage the boy was picked up from his Jammu house by the Kashmir police and taken to Srinagar for "investigation". The police never registered his name, Rajneesh Sharma, as the accused who is being taken to Srinagar, but instead named his brother Pawan Sharma in police records, to confuse and hide the real identity.
The smell of a plot was there the moment they took the boy hustled in a jeep and covered with a blanket.
The boy never returned home to celebrate his first Diwali with Anchal nee Ameena.
He was found dead hanging with an iron grill in his Srinagar cell. Police said he committed "suicide". An inconsolable Anchal alleged that her parents bribed police to murder her beloved because he dared to marry a Muslim girl from the valley. Anchal’s father works in Srinagar’s police department, hence the influence was obvious.
This week Anchal would have been celebrating Diwali with her husband Rajneesh but for if this ultimate Taliban act. Surprisingly the incident, so brutal and tragic hasn’t found an echo in the elite human-rightist circles of Delhi and the self-righteous media which had taken up the Rizwan case of Kolkata at a greater war footing than it has shown regarding Chinese incursions.
Rajneesh's "murder" in a police post in Srinagar wouldn’t have occurred if Rajneesh was a "Rizwan" and the girl had remained an Ameena.
The writerati, who declare love’s supremacy whenever the boy is someone else and the girl is a Hindu (the final test one has to pass to be declared secular in this land of self-flagellation) are maintaining a studied silence. None has spoken so far. None has tried to invoke the wrath of the Women’s Commission, none has bothered to take a delegation of women to Jammu in the name of secularism and its prophets. And none has found it a deserving case for a heated debate on the sparkling channels discussing who should win — love or the colour of your faith?
Why?
Because the girl was a Muslim turned Hindu and the boy, unfortunately happened to be Hindu. Because the culprit in this case is Srinagar, the reservoir of all that is sacred in secular pantheon and the boy belongs to the Hindu Jammu and hence anything that would demand a condemnation of the Taliban in Srinagar must be held back and forgotten?
The girl, Anchal nee Ameena, said sobbingly in Jammu that the Srinagar police tortured her husband just for his crime of marrying a Muslim girl. The mother of the girl knew about the affair but insisted the boy convert to Islam, which Rajneesh refused. Anchal says Rajneesh was tortured in the police custody putting pressure on him to convert and when he refused consistently, he was murdered. The Jammu papers have reported quoting the postmortem report that police tortured the boy in custody, broke his legs, crushed his knee, gave him electric shocks and peeled his nails before declaring his "suicide". In cold blood.
In Srinagar. In a police post. He was married on August 21, "picked up" without an arrest warrant on September 29 and was found dead in police custody on October 4. Though a magisterial inquiry was ordered, no FIR was lodged till yesterday, that is, October 14, when a chief judicial magistrate in Jammu ordered an inquiry against 11 accused persons in Srinagar.
The Buddhists of Ladakh and the Hindus of Jammu have been complaining for long that Srinagar has become an alien land for them. It discriminates against them on the basis of religion. The Amarnath Shrine agitation is a recent pointer to what Srinagar does to its minorities. The forced exile of half a million Hindus from the valley is another example of the attitude that the only Muslim-majority state of India has exhibited towards non-Muslims. For a detailed factsheet regarding Srinagar’s blatant communal bias against Jammu, please see my column.
A couple of years before, the Buddhist Association of Ladakh gave a memorandum to the central government. A part of it said:
1. During 1992-99, 24 Buddhist girls from Leh district were converted to Islam and a majority of them were taken to Kargil and Srinagar.
2. Twelve villages with hamlets of Buddhists, comprising 651 families (numbering approximately 5,000) located at 40km to 60km from Kargil town were targeted for conversions. Till 2002, 72 boys and girls were converted to Islam, according to the survey conducted by the Ladakh Buddhist Association.
3. Muslims of Kargil are not allowing the LBA to repair and reconstruct a 40-year-old Gompa comprising three rooms and lying in a shambles.
4. Cremation of dead Buddhists is not allowed at Kargil and the body has to be moved at a remote Buddhist area.
5. No Buddhist sarai is allowed to be constructed at Kargil though there has been a demand for the last 35 years.
6. Kargil has 20% Buddhist population. Yet (a) only one Buddhist was appointed patwari out of 24 patwaris, the rest were all Muslims. (b) In 1998, 40 employees for Class IV were appointed in the education department; out of these only one was Buddhist, that too after his conversion to Islam.
Similar complaints, with proven statistics were given regarding discrimination against Buddhists in the area of Kashmir Administrative Services (KAS), admission to medical and engineering colleges and allocation of development funds received from the central government.
That’s Srinagar.
So who is going to help Anchal? She seems to be a courageous beloved of her "slain" husband and has been facing media crews with grit. She has refused an ex gratia grant by the state government and has demanded a CBI inquiry. The state leaders, who made a beeline to Shopian, have not bothered to say even a word of sympathy, leave aside visiting her.
Her only "crime": she loved Rajneesh.
Thursday October 15, 2009
Tarun Vijay
Rajneesh was a small trader from Jammu often going on business trips to Srinagar. He fell in love with a girl and married her.
He wanted to be faithful to his beloved from Srinagar, who was beautiful and had unflinching trust in her life partner. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to have love bloom between Jammu and Srinagar. But it was more than that. The boy from Jammu was a Hindu and the girl from Srinagar, a Muslim. Ameena was her name and she changed her name to Anchal Sharma after marriage.
A month after the marriage the boy was picked up from his Jammu house by the Kashmir police and taken to Srinagar for "investigation". The police never registered his name, Rajneesh Sharma, as the accused who is being taken to Srinagar, but instead named his brother Pawan Sharma in police records, to confuse and hide the real identity.
The smell of a plot was there the moment they took the boy hustled in a jeep and covered with a blanket.
The boy never returned home to celebrate his first Diwali with Anchal nee Ameena.
He was found dead hanging with an iron grill in his Srinagar cell. Police said he committed "suicide". An inconsolable Anchal alleged that her parents bribed police to murder her beloved because he dared to marry a Muslim girl from the valley. Anchal’s father works in Srinagar’s police department, hence the influence was obvious.
This week Anchal would have been celebrating Diwali with her husband Rajneesh but for if this ultimate Taliban act. Surprisingly the incident, so brutal and tragic hasn’t found an echo in the elite human-rightist circles of Delhi and the self-righteous media which had taken up the Rizwan case of Kolkata at a greater war footing than it has shown regarding Chinese incursions.
Rajneesh's "murder" in a police post in Srinagar wouldn’t have occurred if Rajneesh was a "Rizwan" and the girl had remained an Ameena.
The writerati, who declare love’s supremacy whenever the boy is someone else and the girl is a Hindu (the final test one has to pass to be declared secular in this land of self-flagellation) are maintaining a studied silence. None has spoken so far. None has tried to invoke the wrath of the Women’s Commission, none has bothered to take a delegation of women to Jammu in the name of secularism and its prophets. And none has found it a deserving case for a heated debate on the sparkling channels discussing who should win — love or the colour of your faith?
Why?
Because the girl was a Muslim turned Hindu and the boy, unfortunately happened to be Hindu. Because the culprit in this case is Srinagar, the reservoir of all that is sacred in secular pantheon and the boy belongs to the Hindu Jammu and hence anything that would demand a condemnation of the Taliban in Srinagar must be held back and forgotten?
The girl, Anchal nee Ameena, said sobbingly in Jammu that the Srinagar police tortured her husband just for his crime of marrying a Muslim girl. The mother of the girl knew about the affair but insisted the boy convert to Islam, which Rajneesh refused. Anchal says Rajneesh was tortured in the police custody putting pressure on him to convert and when he refused consistently, he was murdered. The Jammu papers have reported quoting the postmortem report that police tortured the boy in custody, broke his legs, crushed his knee, gave him electric shocks and peeled his nails before declaring his "suicide". In cold blood.
In Srinagar. In a police post. He was married on August 21, "picked up" without an arrest warrant on September 29 and was found dead in police custody on October 4. Though a magisterial inquiry was ordered, no FIR was lodged till yesterday, that is, October 14, when a chief judicial magistrate in Jammu ordered an inquiry against 11 accused persons in Srinagar.
The Buddhists of Ladakh and the Hindus of Jammu have been complaining for long that Srinagar has become an alien land for them. It discriminates against them on the basis of religion. The Amarnath Shrine agitation is a recent pointer to what Srinagar does to its minorities. The forced exile of half a million Hindus from the valley is another example of the attitude that the only Muslim-majority state of India has exhibited towards non-Muslims. For a detailed factsheet regarding Srinagar’s blatant communal bias against Jammu, please see my column.
A couple of years before, the Buddhist Association of Ladakh gave a memorandum to the central government. A part of it said:
1. During 1992-99, 24 Buddhist girls from Leh district were converted to Islam and a majority of them were taken to Kargil and Srinagar.
2. Twelve villages with hamlets of Buddhists, comprising 651 families (numbering approximately 5,000) located at 40km to 60km from Kargil town were targeted for conversions. Till 2002, 72 boys and girls were converted to Islam, according to the survey conducted by the Ladakh Buddhist Association.
3. Muslims of Kargil are not allowing the LBA to repair and reconstruct a 40-year-old Gompa comprising three rooms and lying in a shambles.
4. Cremation of dead Buddhists is not allowed at Kargil and the body has to be moved at a remote Buddhist area.
5. No Buddhist sarai is allowed to be constructed at Kargil though there has been a demand for the last 35 years.
6. Kargil has 20% Buddhist population. Yet (a) only one Buddhist was appointed patwari out of 24 patwaris, the rest were all Muslims. (b) In 1998, 40 employees for Class IV were appointed in the education department; out of these only one was Buddhist, that too after his conversion to Islam.
Similar complaints, with proven statistics were given regarding discrimination against Buddhists in the area of Kashmir Administrative Services (KAS), admission to medical and engineering colleges and allocation of development funds received from the central government.
That’s Srinagar.
So who is going to help Anchal? She seems to be a courageous beloved of her "slain" husband and has been facing media crews with grit. She has refused an ex gratia grant by the state government and has demanded a CBI inquiry. The state leaders, who made a beeline to Shopian, have not bothered to say even a word of sympathy, leave aside visiting her.
Her only "crime": she loved Rajneesh.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Let Indians become genuine Indians
By Dr Jay Dubashi
When you imitate the West, as we have been doing for the last two hundred years ever since they conquered us, you first start imitating their dress. This is how one culture drives the other culture out.
Unlike Gandhiji, Nehru had a complex about Britishers and he simply had to dress like them. Neither Gandhiji nor Lokmanya Tilak dressed like Englishmen. They were genuine Indians and Tilak was a genuine Hindu. It is because of this complex that Nehru made a mess of everything he touched—Kashmir, China and relations with the West—and annoyed everyone without making a single friend.
We Indians are a simple people. We dress simply—just a dhoti and a kurta or a kurta-pajama will do for most of us men; sometimes, particularly in the South, just a dhoti will do, with nothing over it, as I found to my great surprise when I called on a famous writer in Bangalore. We live simply too, often in a house with little or no furniture. I am talking about the average Indian, not those who live in five-star hotels at taxpayers’ expense. Then, of course, there are no limits to what you spend, or somebody else pays for you.
I went out recently to buy a dhoti for me, a simple hand-spun dhoti, such as Gandhiji used to wear. I could not find one. I walked through dozens of lanes in the crowded alleys of Pune—but no dhoti. They could give me fine-spun three-piece polyester suiting, the kind Dhirubhai Ambani used to wear, but no dhotis. And this in Pune, where until recently elderly people used to go about with the headgear known as pugdi, which Lokmanya Tilak used to wear, and so did his arch-rival, Gopal Krishna Gokhale. About sixty years ago, when I was a student in Pune, I used to see many people wearing pugdi, especially the Poona pugdi, and even I purchased one for my grandfather, who, for some reason, refused to wear it—I never could understand why.
Now, there are no pugdis in Poona and no dhotis either. The only people who wear dhotis are fruit-sellers in bazaars and priests in temples. I often go to temples in the evenings and listen to priests singing kirtans. If reminds me of my younger days when, as a child, I used to accompany my grandmother to temples. The Poona temples are still very crowded and the priests, handsome in their silken finery, regularly sing their kirtans, but the younger generation has taken to shirts and trousers, many of them imported, and they wouldn’t know a pagdi, if they saw one.
When you imitate the West, as we have been doing for the last two hundred years ever since they conquered us, you first start imitating their dress. This is how one culture drives the other culture out. After all, you ask, what is the harm wearing a shirt, and maybe a tie, instead of a kurta? Why not wear a pair of shoes instead of a pair of chappals? If you are wearing a shirt, why not a necktie to go with it? And so on and on, until you find you have gone totally Western, not only in your dress but also in your thinking. You not only dress like them, you also think like them. And ultimately you succumb as completely that you become a caricature of the Western man, as Pandit Nehru became and almost destroyed himself and the country.
Nehru’s grandfather was a kotwal of Delhi and worked for the last remnants of the Delhi Sultanate. Go and see his picture in an old Nehru book. He is dressed just like a moulvi from Lucknow, complete with churidar pajama and Fez cap. He also looks as a Muslim, which probably his forefathers, who came from Kashmir, were. I am quite sure he and his family spoke Urdu at home, just as today’s babus speak English at home. Their food was probably no different from those of the Muslim rulers. For all practical purposes, they were Muslims, and Nehru himself once said that he was born a Hindu by accident. Nehru was an accidental Hindu, just as his grandchildren and other brood are accidental Britishers. Nehru had also said that he was the last Englishman in India, just as his grandfather, a minor functionary of the fading Moghuls, would no doubt describe himself as the last Moghul in India.
It is this cultural dislocation that is responsible for most of our troubles today. Though most of us know who we are, our leaders, particularly the Nehru types, do not. These are men who have nothing of their own, neither dress nor culture, nor even food, who imitate those who rule over them, and who follow slavishly one conqueror after another, who are neither Indians, nor Muslims nor Westerners, but a horrible mixture, a hybrid lot with nothing genuine about them.
Whatever you might say about Gandhiji—and I am not one of his great admirers—he was, with all his faults, a genuine person. Like all great leaders, he was simplicity personified. Gandhiji had simple tastes and his meals were simple—often raw vegetables and fruits, and goat’s milk to go with it. His dress was the simplest anybody could think of—the dress of an Indian farmer. The only costly thing he used to have was his watch, which must have cost a few rupees. Even when he visited London, the imperial capital, and saw the British King in his Buckingham Palace, he wore the same clothes as he did back home in Wardha, and he washed and pressed them himself, just as Abraham Lincoln, another genuine person, shined his own shoes and peeled his own potatoes.
Nehru was entirely different, not at all a genuine person. When I first saw him in London in 1948, a year after Independence, he looked so funny in his suit and tie, I failed to recognise the great leader we were used to. Krishna Menon was our High Commissioner in London then, so he had asked some of us to receive Nehru at the embassy, as he himself was unable to come down to receive him. Nehru arrived in a Rolls-Royce—an embassy-owned car which we used to ferry special guests like Nehru around town—and had to walk a few paces as the car was parked a few yards away from the entrance. Nehru looked like Charlie Chaplin—but for his polished shoes and his hat. It was the first time many of us were seeing Nehru in that kind of dress—and I doubt whether he would have had the guts to appear before Gandhiji in that ugly dress.
Unlike Gandhiji, Nehru had a complex about Britishers and he simply had to dress like them. Neither Gandhiji nor Lokmanya Tilak dressed like Englishmen. They were genuine Indians and Tilak was a genuine Hindu. It is because of this complex that Nehru made a mess of everything he touched—Kashmir, China and relations with the West—and annoyed everyone without making a single friend. Unless Indians become genuine Indians, not always imitating the West as they do, will India demand and receive the world’s respect, which it deserves
When you imitate the West, as we have been doing for the last two hundred years ever since they conquered us, you first start imitating their dress. This is how one culture drives the other culture out.
Unlike Gandhiji, Nehru had a complex about Britishers and he simply had to dress like them. Neither Gandhiji nor Lokmanya Tilak dressed like Englishmen. They were genuine Indians and Tilak was a genuine Hindu. It is because of this complex that Nehru made a mess of everything he touched—Kashmir, China and relations with the West—and annoyed everyone without making a single friend.
We Indians are a simple people. We dress simply—just a dhoti and a kurta or a kurta-pajama will do for most of us men; sometimes, particularly in the South, just a dhoti will do, with nothing over it, as I found to my great surprise when I called on a famous writer in Bangalore. We live simply too, often in a house with little or no furniture. I am talking about the average Indian, not those who live in five-star hotels at taxpayers’ expense. Then, of course, there are no limits to what you spend, or somebody else pays for you.
I went out recently to buy a dhoti for me, a simple hand-spun dhoti, such as Gandhiji used to wear. I could not find one. I walked through dozens of lanes in the crowded alleys of Pune—but no dhoti. They could give me fine-spun three-piece polyester suiting, the kind Dhirubhai Ambani used to wear, but no dhotis. And this in Pune, where until recently elderly people used to go about with the headgear known as pugdi, which Lokmanya Tilak used to wear, and so did his arch-rival, Gopal Krishna Gokhale. About sixty years ago, when I was a student in Pune, I used to see many people wearing pugdi, especially the Poona pugdi, and even I purchased one for my grandfather, who, for some reason, refused to wear it—I never could understand why.
Now, there are no pugdis in Poona and no dhotis either. The only people who wear dhotis are fruit-sellers in bazaars and priests in temples. I often go to temples in the evenings and listen to priests singing kirtans. If reminds me of my younger days when, as a child, I used to accompany my grandmother to temples. The Poona temples are still very crowded and the priests, handsome in their silken finery, regularly sing their kirtans, but the younger generation has taken to shirts and trousers, many of them imported, and they wouldn’t know a pagdi, if they saw one.
When you imitate the West, as we have been doing for the last two hundred years ever since they conquered us, you first start imitating their dress. This is how one culture drives the other culture out. After all, you ask, what is the harm wearing a shirt, and maybe a tie, instead of a kurta? Why not wear a pair of shoes instead of a pair of chappals? If you are wearing a shirt, why not a necktie to go with it? And so on and on, until you find you have gone totally Western, not only in your dress but also in your thinking. You not only dress like them, you also think like them. And ultimately you succumb as completely that you become a caricature of the Western man, as Pandit Nehru became and almost destroyed himself and the country.
Nehru’s grandfather was a kotwal of Delhi and worked for the last remnants of the Delhi Sultanate. Go and see his picture in an old Nehru book. He is dressed just like a moulvi from Lucknow, complete with churidar pajama and Fez cap. He also looks as a Muslim, which probably his forefathers, who came from Kashmir, were. I am quite sure he and his family spoke Urdu at home, just as today’s babus speak English at home. Their food was probably no different from those of the Muslim rulers. For all practical purposes, they were Muslims, and Nehru himself once said that he was born a Hindu by accident. Nehru was an accidental Hindu, just as his grandchildren and other brood are accidental Britishers. Nehru had also said that he was the last Englishman in India, just as his grandfather, a minor functionary of the fading Moghuls, would no doubt describe himself as the last Moghul in India.
It is this cultural dislocation that is responsible for most of our troubles today. Though most of us know who we are, our leaders, particularly the Nehru types, do not. These are men who have nothing of their own, neither dress nor culture, nor even food, who imitate those who rule over them, and who follow slavishly one conqueror after another, who are neither Indians, nor Muslims nor Westerners, but a horrible mixture, a hybrid lot with nothing genuine about them.
Whatever you might say about Gandhiji—and I am not one of his great admirers—he was, with all his faults, a genuine person. Like all great leaders, he was simplicity personified. Gandhiji had simple tastes and his meals were simple—often raw vegetables and fruits, and goat’s milk to go with it. His dress was the simplest anybody could think of—the dress of an Indian farmer. The only costly thing he used to have was his watch, which must have cost a few rupees. Even when he visited London, the imperial capital, and saw the British King in his Buckingham Palace, he wore the same clothes as he did back home in Wardha, and he washed and pressed them himself, just as Abraham Lincoln, another genuine person, shined his own shoes and peeled his own potatoes.
Nehru was entirely different, not at all a genuine person. When I first saw him in London in 1948, a year after Independence, he looked so funny in his suit and tie, I failed to recognise the great leader we were used to. Krishna Menon was our High Commissioner in London then, so he had asked some of us to receive Nehru at the embassy, as he himself was unable to come down to receive him. Nehru arrived in a Rolls-Royce—an embassy-owned car which we used to ferry special guests like Nehru around town—and had to walk a few paces as the car was parked a few yards away from the entrance. Nehru looked like Charlie Chaplin—but for his polished shoes and his hat. It was the first time many of us were seeing Nehru in that kind of dress—and I doubt whether he would have had the guts to appear before Gandhiji in that ugly dress.
Unlike Gandhiji, Nehru had a complex about Britishers and he simply had to dress like them. Neither Gandhiji nor Lokmanya Tilak dressed like Englishmen. They were genuine Indians and Tilak was a genuine Hindu. It is because of this complex that Nehru made a mess of everything he touched—Kashmir, China and relations with the West—and annoyed everyone without making a single friend. Unless Indians become genuine Indians, not always imitating the West as they do, will India demand and receive the world’s respect, which it deserves
President Obama, an appraisal
By OP Gupta IFS (Retd)
So far as India is concerned Obama has continued to behave as a non-proliferation Ayatollah neglecting outstanding self-imposed restraints and non-proliferation roles of all Indian Governments.
The unemployment rate in US is running high and is expected to keep rising to 10 per cent by 2010. This coupled with continued returning of body bags from Iraq and Afghanistan has adversely affected popularity of Obama in opinion polls.
In article ‘Obama makes a welcome History’ in the Organiser of November 16, 2008 this writer had opined that Democratic US Presidents had in general been less friendly to India than Republican Presidents; and, only time would tell whether Barack Hussein Obama would be able to reverse this trend. Actions taken by Obama so far show that he has continued with the democratic trend of tilting against India though we Indians remain warm hearted towards USA.
So far as India is concerned Obama has continued to behave as a non-proliferation Ayatollah neglecting outstanding self imposed restraints and non-proliferation roles of all Indian Governments.
The G-8 nations at their July 10, 2009 meeting held at L’Aquila, Italy adopted a resolution welcoming (vide Para 8) the progress that continues to be made by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) on mechanisms to strengthen controls on transfer of enrichment and reprocessing items and technologies to Non-NPT countries. NPT means Non Proliferation treaty. India is a non-NPT country. No doubt, India was given exemption by NSG but whether this exemption will be applicable to subsequent NSG procedures remains a debatable point.
At its 6191st Meeting held on September 24, 2009 at New York presided over by US President Obama and attended by 14 other Presidents/PMs the Security Council vide Resolution 1887(2009) unanimously decided to end nuclear weapons proliferation and ensure reductions in existing weapons stockpiles as well as control on production of fissile materials for explosion. Para 4 reads: “Calls upon all States that are not parties to NPT to accede to the Treaty as non-nuclear weapon States” Para 7 of this resolution reads: “calls upon states to refrain from conducting a nuclear test explosion and to sign and ratify CTBT.” Para 8 reads: “calls upon the Conference on Disarmament to negotiate a Treaty banning production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” Among others this SC meeting was attended by Presidents of China, France and Russia and British PM. So pressures on India to sign NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state and sign CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) and FMCT (Fissile Material Control Treaty) are going to build up courtesy our ‘strategic partner’ USA. These multilateral irritants in bilateral Indo-US relations have been created by the Obama Administration. India has been called upon to join NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state.
India does not find place in the inner financial core of the G-8.
Addressing the Indian-American community in early 2008 Obama had said: “I believe that India is a natural partner for America in the 21st century and that the US should be working with India on a range of critical issues from preventing terrorism to promoting peace and stability in Asia... And that is why I will move forward to build a close strategic partnership between the US and India when I am President of the United States.” Well Obama is seen lacking on his these promises.
Here it is pertinent to recall that Obama has strong views on non-proliferation, which was evidenced by two killer amendments he had moved in the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee while approving the infamous Hyde Act. In this Committee he had suggested (Senate Amendment 5169) that supply of nuclear fuel to India should be actual need based of an imported nuclear reactor (Section 103(b) (10) of the Hyde Act) so that India is not able to create its strategic reserves from imported fuel. Obama also suggested ensuring that US should not facilitate nuclear exports by other countries to India if such US exports were terminated. This second Obama amendment is reflected in Section 102(13) of the Hyde Act.
The unemployment rate in US is running high and is expected to keep rising to 10 per cent by 2010. This coupled with continued returning of body bags from Iraq and Afghanistan has adversely affected popularity of Obama in opinion polls.
In his Cairo speech (June 4, 2009) Obama very correctly said that America is not and will never be at war with Islam but will relentlessly confront violent extremists extensively. We did not go (to Afghanistan) by choice; we went because of necessity.
His Pak-Afghan policy has got stalemated with fears of Afghanistan turning into another Vietnam with scenario of exit in disgrace. Re-take of Afghanistan by Taliban secretly supported by Pakistan will weaken India in that part of the world. Pakistan is playing double game with US in war against terror. Obama has followed a wrong policy in Afghanistan which has potential to escalate violence in India sooner than later in case inglorious exit of US and NATO from Afghanistan materialised. Thereafter Taliban and jihadis would be free to deploy all their resources and focus on kafir India. Therefore, it is in long term interest of India to see that USA and NATO are not militarily defeated in Afghanistan. A section of Pakistan establishment wants defeat and exit of US from Afghanistan. Pakistan will not be interested in quick defeat of Al Qaeda as its defeat would dry up flow of US dollars. On Afghanistan, therefore, Obama and India must think out of box solutions.
Obama should not fall in well laid out Pakistani trap of linking Afghanistan with India’s Kashmir as by doing so USA would gain nothing except losing goodwill of Indian people. Merger of J & K into India in 1947 was also supported by its the then local popular leaders. People living in J & K have participated in State Assembly and Indian Parliament elections a number of times since 1947.
Since 2001 about 1442 NATO soldiers have already been killed in Afghanistan including 867 US, 219 British and 131 Canadian casualties with no light in the tunnel. 68 per cent Americans believe war in Afghanistan is a military stalemate. 61 per cent Democrats want to reduce US troops but Republicans want to send more troops. NATO commander US General McCrystal said the war would end in failure without additional troops of 30,000 to 40,000. Vice President Joe Biden is reported to favour narrowing down US role in Afghanistan. There are about 32,000 US troops in Afghanistan.
Obama should explore the possibility of inducting troops from such developing countries where returning body bags do not pose much problem to governments. This option should be explored more vigorously as hilly terrain of Afghanistan demands that for military victory armed strength should be at least four times that of enemy and in this case NATO soldiers in field do not know who is enemy. So even after adding another 40000 US troops the NATO strength would be below this basic military requirement of four times superiority.
The US has approved civilian and economic aid of USD 1.5 billion a year for five years to Pakistan for democratic, economic and social programmes and also such sums as are necessary for military aid. The US claims that aid aims at alleviating poverty and reducing economic allurement of jihadis to unemployed youth. Well attackers of 9/11 were neither poor nor uneducated. Jihad against kafirs is not poverty driven but Qur’an and ideology driven. Senator John Kerry has clarified that there is no conditionality attached to civilian and economic aid. One is not sure whether this Kerry clarification would not further alienate the ethnic groups (Baluch, Pashtuns, and Sindhi) from US as one does not see any US public statement that an equitable part of this aid will be spent in their regions too.
In order to succeed in Afghanistan Obama must make politico-military use of ethnic differences to defeat Al Qaeda as locals know better than NATO soldiers who is their enemy in fields. On one side of Durand line it is Pashtuns vs Hazara etc., and, on the other side, it is Baluch, Pashtuns, Sindhis vs Punjabi elite of Pakistan. Somehow or other USA is seen by respected leaders of these ethnic groups more as friend and protector of Punjabi hegemony.
It may be recalled that Baluchistan and the North West Frontier were merged by force and fraud over ruling local leaders (Nabab of Kalat and Frontier Gandhi) into Pakistan which keeps the pot boiling and is the root cause of unrest in this region.
An assurance by US and the EU to Pashtuns, Baluch and Sindhis that their democratic aspirations shall no more be overlooked by them coupled with stronger military action in Afghanistan as at present may go a long way to decisively defeat Al Qaeda in its den. Victory cannot be achieved only by military divisions of US and NATO as it is not a pure military war. It is two pronged war, military and political.
(The writer retired in the rank of Secretary to the Govt of India in the Indian Foreign Service (1971 batch). He has served as Ambassador to Finland, Estonia, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Tunisia and Tanzania and; as Consul General, Dubai and Birmingham (UK). Contact: www.opgupta.org
So far as India is concerned Obama has continued to behave as a non-proliferation Ayatollah neglecting outstanding self-imposed restraints and non-proliferation roles of all Indian Governments.
The unemployment rate in US is running high and is expected to keep rising to 10 per cent by 2010. This coupled with continued returning of body bags from Iraq and Afghanistan has adversely affected popularity of Obama in opinion polls.
In article ‘Obama makes a welcome History’ in the Organiser of November 16, 2008 this writer had opined that Democratic US Presidents had in general been less friendly to India than Republican Presidents; and, only time would tell whether Barack Hussein Obama would be able to reverse this trend. Actions taken by Obama so far show that he has continued with the democratic trend of tilting against India though we Indians remain warm hearted towards USA.
So far as India is concerned Obama has continued to behave as a non-proliferation Ayatollah neglecting outstanding self imposed restraints and non-proliferation roles of all Indian Governments.
The G-8 nations at their July 10, 2009 meeting held at L’Aquila, Italy adopted a resolution welcoming (vide Para 8) the progress that continues to be made by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) on mechanisms to strengthen controls on transfer of enrichment and reprocessing items and technologies to Non-NPT countries. NPT means Non Proliferation treaty. India is a non-NPT country. No doubt, India was given exemption by NSG but whether this exemption will be applicable to subsequent NSG procedures remains a debatable point.
At its 6191st Meeting held on September 24, 2009 at New York presided over by US President Obama and attended by 14 other Presidents/PMs the Security Council vide Resolution 1887(2009) unanimously decided to end nuclear weapons proliferation and ensure reductions in existing weapons stockpiles as well as control on production of fissile materials for explosion. Para 4 reads: “Calls upon all States that are not parties to NPT to accede to the Treaty as non-nuclear weapon States” Para 7 of this resolution reads: “calls upon states to refrain from conducting a nuclear test explosion and to sign and ratify CTBT.” Para 8 reads: “calls upon the Conference on Disarmament to negotiate a Treaty banning production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” Among others this SC meeting was attended by Presidents of China, France and Russia and British PM. So pressures on India to sign NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state and sign CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) and FMCT (Fissile Material Control Treaty) are going to build up courtesy our ‘strategic partner’ USA. These multilateral irritants in bilateral Indo-US relations have been created by the Obama Administration. India has been called upon to join NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state.
India does not find place in the inner financial core of the G-8.
Addressing the Indian-American community in early 2008 Obama had said: “I believe that India is a natural partner for America in the 21st century and that the US should be working with India on a range of critical issues from preventing terrorism to promoting peace and stability in Asia... And that is why I will move forward to build a close strategic partnership between the US and India when I am President of the United States.” Well Obama is seen lacking on his these promises.
Here it is pertinent to recall that Obama has strong views on non-proliferation, which was evidenced by two killer amendments he had moved in the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee while approving the infamous Hyde Act. In this Committee he had suggested (Senate Amendment 5169) that supply of nuclear fuel to India should be actual need based of an imported nuclear reactor (Section 103(b) (10) of the Hyde Act) so that India is not able to create its strategic reserves from imported fuel. Obama also suggested ensuring that US should not facilitate nuclear exports by other countries to India if such US exports were terminated. This second Obama amendment is reflected in Section 102(13) of the Hyde Act.
The unemployment rate in US is running high and is expected to keep rising to 10 per cent by 2010. This coupled with continued returning of body bags from Iraq and Afghanistan has adversely affected popularity of Obama in opinion polls.
In his Cairo speech (June 4, 2009) Obama very correctly said that America is not and will never be at war with Islam but will relentlessly confront violent extremists extensively. We did not go (to Afghanistan) by choice; we went because of necessity.
His Pak-Afghan policy has got stalemated with fears of Afghanistan turning into another Vietnam with scenario of exit in disgrace. Re-take of Afghanistan by Taliban secretly supported by Pakistan will weaken India in that part of the world. Pakistan is playing double game with US in war against terror. Obama has followed a wrong policy in Afghanistan which has potential to escalate violence in India sooner than later in case inglorious exit of US and NATO from Afghanistan materialised. Thereafter Taliban and jihadis would be free to deploy all their resources and focus on kafir India. Therefore, it is in long term interest of India to see that USA and NATO are not militarily defeated in Afghanistan. A section of Pakistan establishment wants defeat and exit of US from Afghanistan. Pakistan will not be interested in quick defeat of Al Qaeda as its defeat would dry up flow of US dollars. On Afghanistan, therefore, Obama and India must think out of box solutions.
Obama should not fall in well laid out Pakistani trap of linking Afghanistan with India’s Kashmir as by doing so USA would gain nothing except losing goodwill of Indian people. Merger of J & K into India in 1947 was also supported by its the then local popular leaders. People living in J & K have participated in State Assembly and Indian Parliament elections a number of times since 1947.
Since 2001 about 1442 NATO soldiers have already been killed in Afghanistan including 867 US, 219 British and 131 Canadian casualties with no light in the tunnel. 68 per cent Americans believe war in Afghanistan is a military stalemate. 61 per cent Democrats want to reduce US troops but Republicans want to send more troops. NATO commander US General McCrystal said the war would end in failure without additional troops of 30,000 to 40,000. Vice President Joe Biden is reported to favour narrowing down US role in Afghanistan. There are about 32,000 US troops in Afghanistan.
Obama should explore the possibility of inducting troops from such developing countries where returning body bags do not pose much problem to governments. This option should be explored more vigorously as hilly terrain of Afghanistan demands that for military victory armed strength should be at least four times that of enemy and in this case NATO soldiers in field do not know who is enemy. So even after adding another 40000 US troops the NATO strength would be below this basic military requirement of four times superiority.
The US has approved civilian and economic aid of USD 1.5 billion a year for five years to Pakistan for democratic, economic and social programmes and also such sums as are necessary for military aid. The US claims that aid aims at alleviating poverty and reducing economic allurement of jihadis to unemployed youth. Well attackers of 9/11 were neither poor nor uneducated. Jihad against kafirs is not poverty driven but Qur’an and ideology driven. Senator John Kerry has clarified that there is no conditionality attached to civilian and economic aid. One is not sure whether this Kerry clarification would not further alienate the ethnic groups (Baluch, Pashtuns, and Sindhi) from US as one does not see any US public statement that an equitable part of this aid will be spent in their regions too.
In order to succeed in Afghanistan Obama must make politico-military use of ethnic differences to defeat Al Qaeda as locals know better than NATO soldiers who is their enemy in fields. On one side of Durand line it is Pashtuns vs Hazara etc., and, on the other side, it is Baluch, Pashtuns, Sindhis vs Punjabi elite of Pakistan. Somehow or other USA is seen by respected leaders of these ethnic groups more as friend and protector of Punjabi hegemony.
It may be recalled that Baluchistan and the North West Frontier were merged by force and fraud over ruling local leaders (Nabab of Kalat and Frontier Gandhi) into Pakistan which keeps the pot boiling and is the root cause of unrest in this region.
An assurance by US and the EU to Pashtuns, Baluch and Sindhis that their democratic aspirations shall no more be overlooked by them coupled with stronger military action in Afghanistan as at present may go a long way to decisively defeat Al Qaeda in its den. Victory cannot be achieved only by military divisions of US and NATO as it is not a pure military war. It is two pronged war, military and political.
(The writer retired in the rank of Secretary to the Govt of India in the Indian Foreign Service (1971 batch). He has served as Ambassador to Finland, Estonia, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Tunisia and Tanzania and; as Consul General, Dubai and Birmingham (UK). Contact: www.opgupta.org
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Why did Hinduism never become an 'organised' religion like Christianity or Islam?
http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report_why-did-hinduism-never-become-an-organised-religion-like-christianity-or-islam_1294838
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