Friday, March 26, 2010

Kerala Christians set to invade Konkan

INDIAN Express Kochi edition has reported that Kerala Christians have clandstinely purchased over 10,000 acres of fertile land in Konkan region of Karnataka. A huge Christian exodus is all set to invade the Konkan region shortly. The apparent reason given is that the fertile Konkan region is fit for agriculture. However the hidden agenda is very different,

Right from Gokarna to Kanyakumari is traditionally known as Parashurama Kshetra. The Portugese vandalised Gomantaka (Goa) and the place is Christian dominated.

The Kerala Christian invasion of Konkan will dramatically alter the demographic profile of the Konkan area. Christians will gain an upper hand. Every road turning, street ending, prominent highway junction will have a cross symbol and a mini church. Street names, housing colonies will sport Christian names. Liquor trade will zoom. Worst and crucially, during election time it will become a christian vote bank and ultimately a Malayali Christian will enter the Assembly/Parliament. This has happenned in Karnataka, Maharashtra and even Bihar ! The people of Karnataka should stop this demographic aggression immediately or Konkan will become a hotbed of communal politics and inter State war.

Stop the Kerala christian exodus or be prepared to face the fate of Coorg, which is now under the control of Kerala Muslims.

Mayawati government too takes a pro-Muslim stance

Bareilly under curfew for over a fortnight, Hindus starve, shops looted and burnt
Congress fans Muslim communalism in UP
By Pramod Kumar

Mayawati government too takes a pro-Muslim stance

THE Muslim appeasement politics on the part of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress again demonstrated its ugly face-now in Bareilly town of Uttar Pradesh. The city remained under curfew for more than two weeks and lost the property worth crores of rupees. More than 60 houses of innocent Hindus were burnt and 10 seriously-injured people are struggling for life in different hospitals. Apart from the appeasement politics by political parties, the wrong decisions taken by the local administration too contributed in worsening the situation.

Instead of taking strict and timely action against the rioters, the State BSP government crossed all limits of appeasement by releasing the mastermind of the riots, Maulana Tauqir Raza Khan who is also president of Ittehad-e-Millat Council (IMC). A number of criminal cases have been registered against Raza under section 147, 148, 149, 458, 307, 332, 336, 427, 152, 153 K, 295, etc. of IPC during the last two decades. The followers of this Muslim cleric vandalised the city for many days and the administration remained mute spectator.

Tauqir Raza was arrested on March 8 following his involvement in the riots. Keeping in view the seriousness of the sections imposed on him by the police the court denied him bail the same day. The court had to hear this case again on March 11. But before Raza was produced in the court on March 11, the State government first shunted the District Magistrate Ashish Goel who had arrested Raza and then withdrew all critical Sections imposed on him. Finally, the court had to grant him bail.

The process and means adopted by the local administration to release Raza were even condemned by the laywers of the city. The Bareilly Bar Assocation passed a resolution in a meeting condemning the release. The resolution said the judicial system was made a mockery in the whole process. Some lawers of the city also demanded ban on the IMC, the politcal outfit of Raza. Some members of the Bar Association have written to Chief Minister Mayawati making such demands.

According to an eyewitness, the riots began on March 2 when the followers of Barelavi sect of Muslims were taking out second Barahvafat procession. Normally, they take out only one procession every year to celebrate the birthday of Prophet Mohammad, which they had already taken out on February 27. But this year they announced another procession on March 2. Here the intention of the local administration becomes doubtful why it granted permission for the second procession when one procession had already been allowed? Secondly, despite knowing the fact that the policemen will remain busy in celebrating Holi on March 2 the local administration granted permission for the procession without making adequate alternate security arrangements.

On March 2, apart from the main procession, some small processions were also taken out in the city. Thousands of people from Moradabad, Sambhal and Rampur had also been invited for the second procession. At around 2.30 pm a group of Muslim youth suddenly decided to change the route of the procession, which was not allowed by the administration. It was opposed by the local people also. But the Muslim youth became adamant and they insisted to take out the procession only from the new route. The situation turned tense. Meanwhile, some of the youths passed this information to Tauqir Raza who was then leading the main big procession with more than 50,000 people at Kuhadapeer. Immediately after getting this information, he warned the local administration to clear the route of the procession otherwise the situation would turn out of control. Then he gave a highly inflammatory speech which instigated the crowed to turn violent. Soon after the speech, the Muslim goons allegedly started torching the houses of Hindus in four different localities-Kuhadapeer, Duddalbagh, Banhana and Charvarti. The swords and other country made weapons which they were displaying during the procession were then used to terrorise the Hindus. "It appeared the rioters had made full planning in advance. They searched LPG cylinders in almost all the houses and put them to fire, which blasted like bombs. The rioters even torched the Kohadapeer Police post. Finally, the situation became out of control and the administration clamped curfew in four of the six police stations-Qila, Prem Nagar, Baradari, Kotwali, at around 6,15 pm," told an eyewitness to Organiser.

"It was a deliberate attempt of the communal elements to provoke the sentiments of the Hindus. The sequence of incidents - changing the route of the procession despite specific directions from the local administration and the public display of arms and raising communally sensitive slogans throughout the route of procession - fomented the communal clash," told Mahesh Sharma, a resident of Kotwali area, one of the worst-riot hit areas in Bareilly, to media persons.

The police was aware of the role of Tauqir Raza in the riots but it took six days to arrest him. With his arrest the Muslims took to the streets and staged dharnas in different parts of the city. These dharnas were managed from the local mosques with regular instructions issued to the agitators from there. Despite imposition of curfew and Section 144 in the city thousands of Muslims assembled at Islamia Inter College, Azad Inter College and at many other places on March 9. Not only this they offered namaz in open but no action was taken by the administration.

The dramatic release of Tauqir Raza from jail at night of March 11 agitated the Hindus and they protested against the decision of the administration. The police, which did not take any action against the Muslims offering namaz on the road, used force against these agitating Hindus. It even fired rubber bullets on them, which seriously injured 70 year Hiralal, seven year old Ajay and many other innocent people. After this incident, curfew was clamped in the fifth police station (Subhash Nagar) also. Sources claimed that former DM Ashish Goel was shunted out because he refused to give a clean chit to the riot accused cleric Raza and release him as he believed that the administration had sufficient grounds for his arrest.

The police have arrested about 400 people in connection with riots and about 80 per cent of them are Hindus. The police arrested even the sixty years old priest of Janakibai temple Shri Ram Kishore. "The police arrested the innocent people. Not only the temple priest Shri Ram Kishore, a BHMS student Shanu Saxena who had come to the city to celebrate Holi was put behind the bars," said local MLA Shri Rajesh Agrawal. The mastermind of the riots has been released but none of these innocent people have yet been released. The police support to the rioters was clear as the business establishments which were put to fire by the Muslim rioters were termed as ‘fire by short circuit’.

The local administration granted permission for taking out second Brahvafat procession to Muslims, which became the root cause of riots, but it denied permission for taking out the Ram Barat procession which is being taken out for more than two hundred years. Not only this the Congress MP Pravin Aron along with leaders of some other political parties freely moved in the curfew bound areas but the local administration did not allow the three-member team of BJP leaders-MP from Aaonla Maneka Gandhi (some parts of the curfew bound Bareilly come under her constituency), Gorakhpur MP Adityanath and Meerut MP Rajendra Agrawal, to visit the city on March 13. Smt Maneka Gandhi was restricted at Ghaziabad while Yogi Aditynath was asked to get down from Gorakhpur-Bareilly Express train in Barabanki, near Lucknow.

The BJP MPs then raised the issue in the Lok Sabha on March 15. Smt Maneka Gandhi sought a judicial inquiry into the episode by a Supreme Court judge and urged the Centre to be more proactive on the issue. Janata Dal (United) chief Sharad Yadav criticised the Uttar Pradesh government for preventing political leaders from visiting the town. Interestingly, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav attacked Mayawati in the Parliament for the riots, but he defended the mastermind of the riots, Tauqir Raza.

There is a blind race among BSP, SP and Congress leaders to draw political mileage from the riots. According to reports the leaders of all these parties reportedly approached the influential Subbani family of the city as it has high influence among Muslims in the region. Tauqir Raza is also the cousin of Subbani Miyan. This family has been the follower of Congress. It is said some Congress ministers in UPA government also pressurised the administration to release Tauqir Raza.

Why are Islamists up in arms against the world ?

By Dr Jay Dubashi

Most Islamic nations are dependent on the West, including seemingly powerful nations like Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter of oil in the world. There is a standing US army in Saudi Arabia, without which the country would collapse. This is true also of Egypt which receives billions of dollars of assistance from the United States.

JOSEPH Stalin and his brother-in-arms Mao Zedong, were the greatest terrorists this world has seen, with the exception perhaps of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun. They ruled through terror, which is also what Adolf Hitler did, though on a smaller scale. Between Stalin and Mao, they massacred 50 million people, just because they didn’t like them or terror was the only weapon they knew how to use.

Why did they do it? Nobody knows. Stalin had everything going for him: he had a huge country at his feet with tremendous power at his command. He could have, if he wished, turned his Russia into a paradise flowing with honey and milk, or maybe vodka, but instead he turned it into a hell for all but his Kremlin buddies. In the end, the people revolted, as they always do, and destroyed the country, down to the last hammer and sickle.

What Stalin suffered from was not only itching fingers but tremendous inferiority complex with regard to the West. No matter what the Soviets did, the West was always one up on them. Soviet Russia produced steel by the million tonne, but the Western steel mills were already ahead of them, even during the Great Depression of the thirties. This bred frustration in Moscow, and with frustration came inferiority complex. And with inferiority came, came terror.

Is history repeating itself in the Islamic world? Why are Islamists up in arms against the world? They are terrorising every one from America to Israel, and from Britain to India, for reasons they have never really explained or tried to explain. They have set up huge secret and not so secret terror groups around the world, almost all of them well armed, with the support of Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, not to mention Pakistan and Syria. They have probably enough arms to launch a full-scale war, but all they do is go about furtively killing a few innocent people in Mumbai, London and New York and fighting, or pretending to fight, the Westerners in Afghanistan and Iraq, without inflicting much damage.

Terrorists come and go, but the world refuses to yield and life goes on as before, sometimes even better than before, for terror makes little sense and those affected take it in their stride, as happened in Mumbai in 2008, and in Pune earlier this year.

The Islamic terrorists act more out of frustration than anything else, for all around them, the world is progressing rapidly, with the sole exception of Islamic countries themselves. Take these countries: they have everything going for them. They have all the oil in the world, most of which they export. They have other resources too. On the other hand, countries like India and China, and to a certain extent, most countries in Europe, have very little oil and have to import most of it. Yet it is these countries that are doing better than most, and are growing faster than most if not all countries in the Islamic world.

You only have to compare India with Pakistan, or Israel with Palestine. India and Pakistan became free at the same time, but is run by Hindus and the other by Islamists. Since 1991, India has accelerated its growth rate to eight per cent a year, which is more than twice as much as it used to do before. India is still a developing country, in the sense its GDP per head is still rather small compared to rich countries, but it is perhaps only a matter of years before it joins their club. Despite all problems, some caused by Islamists, India has set a fast pace for itself, and is now among the fastest growing countries of the world.

Is this why the Islamists hate it so much, just as they do Israel? Israel was carved out of Palestine and is now the richest and most powerful country in its region, with living standards on par with those of the West. The Hindus of India and the Jews of Israel have been able to build and establish stable and progressive societies, though they have had to fight one war after another with their neighbour, who have never taken kindly to these new giants rising among them. On the other hand, Pakistan is virtually a failed state, run by shady characters and subsisting on the largesse of the Westerners whom they pretend to fight, but on whom they are totally dependent.

In fact, most Islamic nations are dependent on the West, including seemingly powerful nations like Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter of oil in the world. There is a standing US army in Saudi Arabia, without which the country would collapse. This is true also of Egypt which receives billions of dollars of assistance from the United States. The Islamists do not like this, but they have not found any way of doing without it.

As I said earlier, the new vicious phase of the Islamic terror against Hindus in India, and other races elsewhere began with the rapid rise of the Indian economy, and with it the Indian state, in 1991 and thereabouts. Before that, there used to be minor skirmishes and low-level terror attacks in Kashmir. It is as if the Islamists have declared a full-scale war on India, or, rather on Hindus, just as they have declared war on the Jews and the Westerners. But this has not affected these countries and races in the least.

The Islamic countries, on the other hand, are mired in their own problems, or rather problems of their own making, from which there seems to be no respite. They are now entirely dependent, more than ever, on the West and its resources, for the solution of their problems. The Islamists cannot say they did not ask for the invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan. There would have been no reason for these invasions, had they not aroused anger by attacking them in the first place. Terror begets terror. Adolf Hitler may have begun by launching small invasions in Austria and Czechoslovakia, but the small fires he started ultimately engulfed the whole world and the flames incinerated the man who started in initial small fires.

The Islamists and their patrons cannot but think in terms of violence and terror, directed both internally against their own governments and externally towards other countries, which, like India, continue to progress and flourish. This gives rise to frustration and then to more violence.

The Islamists were doing pretty well for themselves until recently and had flourishing empires of their own. But a kind of perversity seems to have taken hold of them, the kind of perversity that leads otherwise sane men like MF Husain, who has been spending too much time among them, to do provocatively nude pictures of Hindu deities, for no other reason that they are Hindu, all in the name of freedom of expression. And where is he living now? In an Islamist country in the Middle East whose love for freedom of expression and other freedoms is well known! Husain is his own worst enemy, and so are his Islamic friends from whom he now gets his inspiration!

Friday, March 19, 2010

Genocide of Bangladeshi Buddhist

Genocide of Bangladeshi
Buddhists by Muslim settlers
There have been many attacks on Buddhist and Hindu villages since 1997 in Bangladesh which have now been occupied by Muslim villagers and landowners. Many critics call this a genocide of non-Muslim minorities by neighboring Muslim villages.
By Ranjit Roy

The Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) has demanded the intervention of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) Navi Pillay to ask Bangladesh government to take appropriate action on the burning of tribal Buddhist villages and indiscriminate killing of tribals by the Bangladesh Army and illegal settlers. KOLKATA: Brutal killings of hapless Chakma Buddhists living for centuries in Chittagong hill tract and burning of of their houses and pagodas by powerful gangs of Muslim land mafias in Bangladesh on February 19-20 have evoked sharp reactions from Kolkata’s Bengali intelligentsia. It is these intellectuals who are the main source of inspirations of the general people in West Bengal who are now determined to vote out the present Left government in the next Assembly elections slated for May, 2011. The same intellectuals lent their full support to the Campaign Against Atrocities on Minorities in Bangladesh (CAAMB), a human rights organization, at a meeting in Kolkata Press Club on March 3 and asked the Indian government to intervene. They unequivocally condemned unprovoked killings of 10 Buddhists Chakma villagers attempt to grab their land and houses. The intellectuals have described the ghastly incident as an attempt to sabotage the friendship treaty signed between Bangladesh and Indian governments recently.

According to intellectuals like Tarun Sanyal, Debabrata Bandopadhyaya and Sujat Bhadra, who were present at the press meet, apart from killings of 10 poor Chakmas, at least 200 houses in 11 Chakma villages were burnt to ashes by marauding goons on the night of February 19. At one point during the clash, the military personnel started firing indiscriminately on fleeing Chakma villagers only to help encourage attacking Muslim settlers. Chittagong is Bangladesh’s only district having a significant Buddhist population. Army was called in after a pagoda and an office of a UN-funded project were set on fire. A statue of Lord Buddha installed at the Banani Buddhist Monastery was damaged and another statue was looted. Enraged Chakma villagers prevented Dipankar Talukdar, the minister for Chittagong Hill Tracts and other senior administration officials from visiting the remote Gangaram Mukhi area of Bagaichhari upazila on February 21. Chakmas demanded immediate withdrawal of 400 army camps from Chitagong hills alleging that Bangladesh army personnel are actually helping outsiders to settle in Chakma villages by grabbing their land and premises.

The Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) has demanded the intervention of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) Navi Pillay to ask Bangladesh government to take appropriate action on the burning of tribal Buddhist villages and indiscriminate killing of tribals by the Bangladesh Army and illegal settlers. "This attack on the indigenous Buddhist people shows that the government of Bangladesh has failed to change its policy of indiscriminate killings of tribal and minorities win order to occupy their lands and implant more illegal plains settlers instead of implementing the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord of 1997," stated a Chakma tribal representative present at Kolkata Press Club. There have been many attacks on Buddhist and Hindu villages since 1997 in Bangladesh which have now become occupied by Muslim villagers and landowners. Many critics call this a genocide of non-Muslim minorities by neighboring Muslim villages.

Religious Conversion as an Economic Enterprise

By R Samarasinghe

The imposition of the belief of cultural superiority of the coloniser was particularly important in effecting social control of the colonised. It also underpinned their racial superiority firmly. This process, defined as hegemony enabled the wheels of capitalist system to move efficiently. The colonisers also created a comprador class, whom they educated, trained and some times Christianised to continue their work when they eventually withdrew their military forces of domination.

Fundamentalist Christian groups, funded mainly from America, have continued to use religion as a weapon, funding ‘local’ groups to convert the ‘heathens’. They conduct a spiritual war using sophisticated, psychologically devised forms of mind control and aggressive marketing strategies using electronic media and incorporating them into proselytizing in India and Sri Lanka and other parts of Asia as well as Africa.

The conversions are a two pronged attack against society. They target the poor and vulnerable, because in a democracy numbers mean power, but they also hunt the vulnerable among the power elite. Here, they are able to manipulate the nation through internal interference with the machinery of power, subtly. They target the lonely or the bereaved and depressed among the rich and powerful and promise personal peace and of course salvation.

The foundation of a nation is its culture. The loss of culture and religion weakens a people and naturally and instinctively we tend to react emotionally and irrationally when our way of life is threatened by alien forces. But in modern context this is not skillful. It is made out into an attack on freedom of choice and therefore a rights issue and also since ‘their’ right to ‘save our souls’ has been given to them by God. Our actions have to be justified through rational behaviour and the use of law. RELIGIOUS conversion has to be examined in its global context, because coerced conversion is not a spiritual but a political act with economic motives. So was colonisation; though they said they came to civilise us! The so-called religious wars such as the Crusades were about wealth and dominance.

War is not an option any more because it is no longer economically viable. It can lead to expensive recurring conflict, and though beneficial to the Western military industrial complex, have negative political implications at home for the politicians. Therefore cultural hegemony achieved through conversion is an effective political and economic strategy.

The imposition of the belief of cultural superiority of the coloniser was particularly important in effecting social control of the colonised. It also underpinned their racial superiority firmly. This process, defined as hegemony enabled the wheels of capitalist system to move efficiently. The colonisers also created a comprador class, whom they educated, trained and some times Christianised to continue their work when they eventually withdrew their military forces of domination. This class has completely internalised the idea of European cultural and racial superiority. Present new missionary activity is simply a readjustment of colonial strategy to suit the new global order.

The British colonisers had an existing developed literary and cultural tradition which they used to good effect through education, to create a tame brown elite in colonised countries; to carry out their policies. But in US, which later became the dominant capitalist state, religion provided the basis for social solidarity in place of a shared culture and it was but natural that they would use controlling forms of Christianity to establish hegemony over people they wished to dominate. This form of Christianity arose from Puritanism, a strict, narrow and literal interpretation of the Bible and has evolved into the present day fundamentalism. Economically, religion has proved to be a cost-effective form of social control.

Fundamentalist Christian groups, funded mainly from America have continued to use religion as a weapon, funding ‘local’ groups to convert the ‘heathens’. They conduct a spiritual war using sophisticated, psychologically devised forms of mind control and aggressive marketing strategies using electronic media and incorporating them into proselytizing in India and Sri Lanka and other parts of Asia as well as Africa.

It is an attempt to retain economic dominance through cultural/religious hegemony in order to maintain control of valuable resources.

At these mass rallies for conversion they use religion as propaganda. The methods used in conversion are the same as those used in advertising and war fare. They attack the mind from several directions, breaking down the buyers’ or enemies’ resistance.

Buddhism which appeals to reason and focuses on disciplining the mind and promotes critical thinking stands little chance against this onslaught. There are many morally reprehensible methods used in conversion but only a few can be dealt with here.

One of the main techniques used by missionaries is to create a state of cognitive dissonance in their victims’ minds. That is, they would create doubts about the validity of their existing belief systems, at the same time offering some thing ‘far superior’ which would advance them materially and spiritually. The interpretation of reality offered by their original religions as well as the customs etc. will be shown to have less status and usefulness.

Holding two contradictory views at the same time would cause psychological tension, motivating the person to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. Aggressive missionary activity would create dissonance and convince some, that their beliefs and culture was inferior; leading them to avoid this emotional tension or cognitive dissonance by changing them. The targeted would shift their allegiance to the spiritual colonisers and identify with them, while seeing the ‘natives’ and their religions through the missionaries’ interpretation.

At some of the prayer meetings where new recruits had been lured, they had been asked to bring a statue or picture of the Buddha or Shiva etc or a picture of the Pope. Then after the initial preamble of denigrating their religions, the recruits would be asked to smash the statue or tear and trample the holy pictures. This would create a situation of ‘no return’ spiritually. The prayer leaders are powerfully persuasive, similar to modern salesmen and use the vulnerability and weakness of the victims to their own advantage, so that they would be forced to conform with the group.

The idea of purifying one’s soul through confession and completely washing away one’s sins (total immersion baptism) has existed since early biblical times. Since man was ‘born of sin’ he had to be made ‘pure’.

During the Cold War, enterprising psychiatrists began to experiment with electric shock therapy and mind altering drugs on their patients. According to Naomi Klein, (The Shock Doctrine 2007), Dr Ewen Cameron, who had been the president of the American Psychiatrist Association and later of the World Psychiatrist Association, rejected Freud’s talk therapy and began using electroshock therapy as well as a cocktail of newly discovered mind altering drugs to try to return the minds of patients to a state of tabula rasa, where the earlier personality was wiped out, so that he could reprogramme them as he wished.

For example, the sheer volume of noise at one of these ‘prayer meetings’ shuts out thoughts and one has no choice but to listen to the magnified voice of the Pastor. His shouting and Halleluiahs are interspaced with loud religious pop music and shouting to Satan, Mahasona (a local demon) and related demons etc to leave forthwith! The confused patients allow manipulation through being stunned by the force of persuasion. Sometimes physical force is used to restrain them. Sometimes it is not only their freedom to think that is murdered but their bodies as well.

In the recent deaths that took place at one of these Evangelical Meetings in Viharamaha Devi Park, one of the women who subsequently died was tied up and isolated in a cage, and her father or relatives were forcibly prevented from accessing her. Thus isolated and intimidated by a screaming Pastor and a shouting and singing mass of unfamiliar people she had gone into shock, as they would have expected, and then they would have reprogrammed her, or ‘saved her soul’; but her body was not prepared for the violence imposed on it. It was a very public execution, all in the name of religion.

There are usually thousands at these conversion meetings and many who come due to sickness or poverty or helplessness are intimidated and coerced by the weight of sheer numbers. The total power of the presiding Pastor backed by the shouting, singing and praying congregation shocks the victims into compliance.

As anyone who reads the history of the Christian religion will know that it has a long history of torture and murder of those who reject their views.

According to Klein, Dr Cameron used what he called "input-overload" or use of six times the normal electroshock to change behavior.

Dr Cameron spoke of ‘wearing down of defenses’ and the ‘breaking down of the individual under continuous interrogation’. The label applied to ‘the enemy’ then was Communist, and now it is ‘infested by Satan’ which really mean non-believer. The word that is repeated again and again is "Jesus" so that Satan is driven out and that word replaces Buddha or Shiva etc. It is ‘shock and awe’ by other means.

Hitler and Mussolini used similar methods very successfully. For them the Satan was the non Aryan Jews and Slavs etc.

The conversions are a two pronged attack against society. They target the poor and vulnerable, because in a democracy numbers mean power, but they also hunt the vulnerable among the power elite. Here, they are able to manipulate the nation through internal interference with the machinery of power, subtly. They target the lonely or the bereaved and depressed among the rich and powerful and promise personal peace and of course salvation. The prayer group provides a substitute family to the lonely and the real family and community are gradually ripped apart.

The core of a culture is religion. The foundation of a nation is its culture. The loss of culture and religion weakens a people and naturally and instinctively we tend to react emotionally and irrationally when our way of life is threatened by alien forces. But in modern context this is not skillful. It is made out into an attack on freedom of choice and therefore a rights issue and also since ‘their’ right to ‘save our souls’ has been given to them by God. Our actions have to be justified through rational behaviour and the use of law.

In acting like victims we become disempowered and taking the law into our own hands criminalises us and makes them, into martyrs, which is what these Evangelists want; in order to obtain more funding from their donors. There is no accountability to the donors or the Government who is responsible for the people they prey on, as to how this vast amount of money is spent.

We are no longer fighting the Portuguese but sophisticated, well funded pseudo-religious organisations who use criminal methods against our society to re-colonise us again. Therefore we should use the law against them but, also ask ourselves why, with free education and free healthcare people still flock to these false messiahs.

Bhopal was Bhoj Nagari

The seat of the great Hindu empire
How Bhojpal became Bhopal
By Sangeet Verma

The glory of Raja Bhoj... One thousand years of a legend

A deliberately concealed fact of history by many, but revealed by Turkish author Gardizi is that it was the military offensive of Raja Bhoj that compelled Mahmud Ghazni to flee India through the desert of Sindh in 1024. Earlier, Bhojraj had also sent military aid to King Bhimdev of Pattan (Gujarat) who was facing the aggression of Ghazni at Somnath. Later, the great Bhojraj not only had the Somnath temple rebuilt, he formed an alliance of many Indian kings against any future Islamic invasions.

The forces of Bhoj surrounded and killed Salar Masood in the month-long battle of Behraich, thus avenging the destruction of Somnath from Mahmud Ghazni. Bhojraj then, along with King Bhimdev and other Kings, went on to liberate far-off territories including Hansi, Thaneshwar and Nagarkot (Himachal Pradesh) from Ghazni’s rule.

The mastermind and visionary that Bhoj was, he understood the necessity to conserve trees and forests as early as the eleventh century. So when he started one of the earliest paper industries in known history, he chose to cultivate lotus over hundreds of acres of land. The tubes of the lotus were used to create the pulp from which paper was manufactured. The village Nalcha on Dhar-Mandu road in Madhya Pradesh-was the site of cultivation, and owes its ancient name Nalkakshpur to the lotus project of Raja Bhoj (nal is the tube of the lotus).

The Bhoj temple near Bhopal is the greatest example of the mixture of art and geometry in ancient India. The sheer size of the temple and the Shivlingam speak volumes of the greatness of traditional Indian architecture and technology. The great Bhojraj did not stop here. Using his understanding and knowledge of geography, he went on to create massive water reservoirs using traditional technology including the upper lake in Bhopal and of course, the biggest man-made reservoir in ancient history, the great Bhimkund, that had a total spread of 648 square kilometres. This massive reservoir is extended from Bhopal to Goharganj down south and had the Bhoj temple on its south-eastern bank.

Raja Bhoj was a legendary ruler of Malwa from 1010 to 1053 who played a key role not only in protecting and institutionalising culture and knowledge, but also chased away Mahmud Ghazni from India. This great King was the founder of Bhopal, which is unfortunately today called the city of the nawabs and the real history of Bhopal is deliberately brushed under the carpet. In an effort to bring back the true history of Bhoj and Bhopal the writer has photographed, researched and documented the unknown facts about Bhojraj. Manav Sangrahalaya, Bhopal has put up an exhibition of this work under the heading ‘Bhojpal / Bhopal 1000 years of cultural journey’ with the aim of starting 1000-year celebrations of the great Bhoj.

RAJA Bhoj or Bhojraj (1010-1053) was one of the greatest kings in India. Although his works and vision spread far and wide, very little has been written and published on this great ruler of central India, who played a key role in saving India from foreign invasions in the eleventh century. Bhojraj was the son of the great conqueror Sindhuraj of the Parmar dynasty in Malwa.

Although the great Bhoj was a brilliant general and a brave conqueror, he is remembered more for his reverence to arts and knowledge and for institutionalising the traditional knowledge system of India. Himself an encyclopaedic author and a master of many subjects, Raja Bhoj documented this elaborate knowledge in 84 encyclopaedias that include Samrangana Sootradhar on architecture and town planning, Yukti Kalpataru on shipbuilding and navigation, Rasmriganka on extraction of metals from ores, Ayurved Sarvasya on ayurved and naturopathy, Tatva Prakash on spirituality, Jyotish Mriganka on astrology and Saraswati Kanthabharan on Sanskrit poetry and phonetic text, to name a few.

A deliberately concealed fact of history by many, but revealed by Turkish author Gardizi is that it was the military offensive of Raja Bhoj that compelled Mahmud Ghazni to flee India through the desert of Sindh in 1024. Earlier, Bhojraj had also sent military aid to King Bhimdev of Pattan (Gujarat) who was facing the aggression of Ghazni at Somnath. Later, the great Bhojraj not only had the Somnath temple rebuilt, he formed an alliance of many Indian kings against any future Islamic invasions. His vision worked when Mahmud Ghazni send his son Salar Masood to India to loot the wealth in Indian cities that he had missed due to the offensive of Bhojraj. The forces of Bhoj surrounded and killed Salar Masood in the month-long battle of Behraich, thus avenging the destruction of Somnath from Mahmud Ghazni. Bhojraj then, along with King Bhimdev and other Kings, went on to liberate far-off territories including Hansi, Thaneshwar and Nagarkot (Himachal Pradesh) from Ghazni’s rule.

Despite his great military achievements Bhojraj is remembered more as a King who was the protector and promoter of arts and knowledge, and as one who made every effort to document and institutionalise them in order to ensure their use and survival. In fact, he went one step further to implement this great knowledge system and show the world the greatness of Indian knowledge system. Using the technology described in the eighty three chapters of Samramgana Sootradhar, his epic on architecture and design, Bhojraj built great cities like his capital Dharanagari (Dhar), Bhojpal (Bhopal) and Mandap Durg (Mandu). The Bhojshalas at Dhar, Mandu and at Qutub Minar Delhi are beautiful examples of his architectural brilliance. The Bhoj temple near Bhopal is the largest example of the mixture of art and geometry in ancient India. The sheer size of the temple and the Shivlingam speak volumes of the greatness of traditional Indian architecture and technology. The great Bhojraj did not stop here. Using his understanding and knowledge of Geography, he went on to create massive water reservoirs using traditional technology including the upper lake in Bhopal and of course, the biggest man made reservoir in ancient history, the great Bhimkund, that had a total spread of 648 square kilometres. This massive reservoir extended from Bhopal to Goharganj down south and had the Bhoj temple on its south eastern banks. Bhojraj understood the harmful impacts of large reservoirs better than the engineers today, and understanding the threat the upperlake could cause to the city of Bhopal, he created and overflow duct that carried the flood waters of the upper lake to the much larger Bhimkund. This rivulet was named Kalia Srot, after Kalia Gond, the engineer who designed it. This incident clearly highlights the fact that Bhojraj gave education and promoted knowledge in local communities including Gonds, who were the original inhabitants of Bhopal. The Kalia Srot is till date an essential component of the eco system of Bhopal. This great reservoir was later destroyed in the fifteenth century by Hoshangshah (1404 - 1435) who grew jealous of the legend of Bhojraj that refused to die, even four hundred years after his death. Folklore has it that it took three years for the water in the reservoir to drain out and another thirty years for the land to become cultivatable. Even today, this fertile land is called the Taal Pargana meaning fertile land from the reservoir and is a rich harvesting area. The only island or dweep in this great reservoir became the market or mandi for this harvest and is till date called Mandi Dweep, which is now a flourishing industrial town near Bhopal. The upper lake is till date the largest source of water and biodiversity, in fact the reason for the survival of the city of Bhopal.

The model management and governance of Raja Bhoj did not stop here. He understood that the cultural identity of India would be the primary target of future invasions, and also deeply understood the role of Sanskrit language and Indian arts, traditions and practices in safeguarding the same. So he created the Bhojshalas, that were not just temples of Goddess Saraswati, but were institutions where scholars and performers of art, Sanskrit, and various sciences could present, educate, document and be rewarded for their works. Such Bhojshalas can be seen in Dhar, Mandu, Vidisha, and adjacent to Qutub Minar, now called the ‘Qutawal Islam’ mosque. The design of these Bhojshalas is identical with detailed Indian designs and deities on their pillars. Interestingly, the Vijay Mandir Bhojshala in Dhar has a ‘Vijay Stambh’ similar to the iron pillar inside the Qutawal Islam mosque near Qutub Minar. The only surviving statue of Godess Saraswati from the Dhar Bhojshala is now kept at the British Museum in London, and much needs to be done to bring it back and restore its dignity back.

The mastermind and visionary that Bhoj was, he understood the necessity to conserve trees and forests as early as the eleventh century. So when he started one of the earliest paper industries in known history, he chose to cultivate lotuses over hundreds of acres of land. The tubes of the lotuses was used to create the pulp from which paper was manufactured. The village Nalcha on Dhar-Mandu road in Madhya Pradesh-was the site of cultivation, and owes its ancient name Nalkakshpur to the lotus project of Raja Bhoj (nal is the tube of the lotus). The village where the pulp was mixed in huge tanks to manufacture paper is till date called ‘Kagzipura’ (the town of paper) and is located near Nalcha. It still has three mixing tanks surviving from the original 152 that were used in the industry. The evidences of the quality of this paper can be seen in two books, Mista-ul-Fazal and Niyamat Nama that are life style magazines of Mandu, dating the fifteenth century and are till date preserved at the British Museum, London.

The book Samrangana Sootradhar of Bhoj has its chapter 31 dedicated to mechanics, where interestingly, he describes the design of the jet engine in detail. "A large bird like shape made of a very tough material, that has a cylinder within where an inflammable chemical spray is ignited filling the tank with fire. The pilot uses this energy and the energy produced by the movement of the two wings against the winds to activate the machine within and fly at very high velocity to long distances creating beautiful scenery in the sky." This clearly is not imagination. In the eleventh century, when the west was yet deciding whether it is the Sun that orbits the earth or the earth that orbits the Sun, Indians had mastered aircraft design, and it would have been interesting to know what the Wright brothers would have to say about it. Also it would be interesting to know the reaction of Boeing and Airbus in context of the patent laws imposed by the west on the rest of the world today.

Raja Bhoj was not just a King, he was a visionary who added steel to the foundations of a great civilisation. He ruled vast territories from Himachal Pradesh in the north to Telangana down south, and from Malwa in the west to Bengal in the east, from his capital Dharanagri. The great Bhoj had many great scholars in his court, but unlike other ‘great’ kings, he did not have a single biography written on himself, nor had any poetic marvels composed praising his achievements, neither any statues carved to make himself immortal. Instead, he used all available strength to institutionalise and protect the knowledge banks, traditions and culture of the land he loved, lived and died for

History in the Remaking

A temple complex in Turkey thatpredates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution
(Courtesy: Newsweek, by Patrick Symmes, issue dated March 1, 2010 http://ndn2.newsweek.com A pillar at the Gobekli Tepe temple near Sanliurfa, Turkey, the oldest known temple in the world.)

The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archaeology. Göbekli Tepe is "unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date," according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford’s archaeology programme. Enthusing over the "huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art" at Göbekli, Hodder-who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites-says: "Many people think that it changes everything...It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong."

Unlike most discoveries from the ancient world, Göbekli Tepe was found intact, the stones upright, the order and artistry of the work plain even to the un-trained eye. Most startling is the elaborate carving found on about half of the 50 pillars Schmidt has unearthed. There are a few abstract symbols, but the site is almost covered in graceful, naturalistic sculptures and bas-reliefs of the animals that were central to the imagination of hunter-gatherers. Wild boar and cattle are depicted, along with totems of power and intelligence, like lions, foxes, and leopards. Many of the biggest pillars are carved with arms, including shoulders, elbows, and jointed fingers.

Whatever mysterious rituals were conducted in the temples, they ended abruptly before 8000 BC, when the entire site was buried, deliberately and all at once, Schmidt believes. The temples had been in decline for a thousand years-later circles are less than half the size of the early ones, indicating a lack of resources or motivation among the worshipers. THEY call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilisation. And under our feet, according to archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot-the exact spot-where humans began that ascent.

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archaeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: The temple was built 11,500 years ago-a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture-the first embers of civilisation. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember-the spark that launched mankind towards farming, urban life, and all that followed.

Göbekli Tepe-the name in Turkish for "potbelly hill"-lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey. After a dozen years of patient work, Schmidt has uncovered what he thinks is definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a "Rome of the Ice Age," as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community. Across the hill, he has found carved and polished circles of stone, with terrazzo flooring and double benches. All the circles feature massive T-shaped pillars that evoke the monoliths of Easter Island.

Though not as large as Stonehenge-the biggest circle is 30 yards across, the tallest pillars 17 feet high-the ruins are astonishing in number. Last year Schmidt found his third and fourth examples of the temples. Ground-penetrating radar indicates that another 15 to 20 such monumental ruins lie under the surface. Schmidt’s German-Turkish team has also uncovered some 50 of the huge pillars, including two found in his most recent dig season that are not just the biggest yet, but, according to carbon dating, are the oldest monumental artworks in the world.

The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archaeology. Göbekli Tepe is "unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date," according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford’s archaeology programme. Enthusing over the "huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art" at Göbekli, Hodder, who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites, says: "Many people think that it changes everything...It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong."

Schmidt’s thesis is simple and bold: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and then to settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city.

This theory reverses a standard chronology of human origins, in which primitive man went through a "Neolithic revolution" 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. In the old model, shepherds and farmers appeared first, and then created pottery, villages, cities, specialised labour, kings, writing, art, and-somewhere on the way to the airplane-organised religion. As far back as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, thinkers have argued that the social compact of cities came first, and only then the "high" religions with their great temples, a paradigm still taught in American high schools.

Religion now appears so early in civilised life-earlier than civilised life, if Schmidt is correct-that some think it may be less a product of culture than a cause of it, less a revelation than a genetic inheritance. The archaeologist Jacques Cauvin once posited that "the beginning of the gods was the beginning of agriculture," and Göbekli may prove his case.

The builders of Göbekli Tepe could not write or leave other explanations of their work. Schmidt speculates that nomadic bands from hundreds of miles in every direction were already gathering here for rituals, feasting, and initiation rites before the first stones were cut. The religious purpose of the site is implicit in its size and location. "You don’t move 10-ton stones for no reason," Schmidt observes. "Temples like to be on high sites," he adds, waving an arm over the stony, round hilltop. "Sanctuaries like to be away from the mundane world."

Unlike most discoveries from the ancient world, Göbekli Tepe was found intact, the stones upright, the order and artistry of the work plain even to the un-trained eye. Most startling is the elaborate carving found on about half of the 50 pillars Schmidt has unearthed. There are a few abstract symbols, but the site is almost covered in graceful, naturalistic sculptures and bas-reliefs of the animals that were central to the imagination of hunter-gatherers. Wild boar and cattle are depicted, along with totems of power and intelligence, like lions, foxes, and leopards. Many of the biggest pillars are carved with arms, including shoulders, elbows, and jointed fingers. The T shapes appear to be towering humanoids but have no faces, hinting at the worship of ancestors or humanlike deities. "In the Bible it talks about how God created man in his image," says Johns Hopkins archaeologist Glenn Schwartz. Göbekli Tepe "is the first time you can see humans with that idea, that they resemble gods."

The temples thus offer unexpected proof that mankind emerged from the 140,000-year reign of hunter-gatherers with a ready vocabulary of spiritual imagery, and capable of huge logistical, economic, and political efforts. A Catholic born in Franconia, Germany, Schmidt wanders the site in a white turban, pointing out the evidence of that transition. "The people here invented agriculture. They were the inventors of cultivated plants, of domestic architecture," he says.

Göbekli sits at the Fertile Crescent’s northernmost tip, a productive borderland on the shoulder of forests and within sight of plains. The hill was ideally situated for ancient hunters. Wild gazelles still migrate past twice a year as they did 11 millennia ago, and birds fly overhead in long skeins. Genetic mapping shows that the first domestication of wheat was in this immediate area-perhaps at a mountain visible in the distance-a few centuries after Göbekli’s founding. Animal husbandry also began near here-the first domesticated pigs came from the surrounding area in about 8000 BC, and cattle were domesticated in Turkey before 6500 BC. Pottery followed. Those discoveries then flowed out to places like Çatalhöyük, the oldest-known Neolithic village, which is 300 miles to the west.

The artists of Göbekli Tepe depicted swarms of what Schmidt calls "scary, nasty" creatures: spiders, scorpions, snakes, triple-fanged monsters, and, most common of all, carrion birds. The single largest carving shows a vulture poised over a headless human. Schmidt theorises that human corpses were ex-posed here on the hilltop for consumption by birds-what a Tibetan would call a sky burial. Sifting the tonnes of dirt removed from the site has produced very few human bones, however, perhaps because they were removed to distant homes for ancestor worship. Absence is the source of Schmidt’s great theoretical claim. "There are no traces of daily life," he explains. "No fire pits. No trash heaps. There is no water here." Everything from food to flint had to be imported, so the site "was not a village", Schmidt says. Since the temples predate any known settlement anywhere, Schmidt concludes that man’s first house was a house of worship: "First the temple, then the city," he insists.

Some archaeologists, like Hodder, the Neolithic specialist, wonder if Schmidt has simply missed evidence of a village or if his dating of the site is too precise. But the real reason the ruins at Göbekli remain almost unknown, not yet incorporated in textbooks, is that the evidence is too strong, not too weak. "The problem with this discovery," as Schwartz of Johns Hopkins puts it, "is that it is unique." No other monumental sites from the era have been found. Before Göbekli, humans drew stick figures on cave walls, shaped clay into tiny dolls, and perhaps piled up small stones for shelter or worship. Even after Göbekli, there is little evidence of sophisticated building. Dating of ancient sites is highly contested, but Çatalhöyük is probably about 1,500 years younger than Göbekli, and features no carvings or grand constructions. The walls of Jericho, thought until now to be the oldest monumental construction by man, were probably started more than a thousand years after Göbekli. Huge temples did emerge again-but the next unambiguous example dates from 5,000 years later, in southern Iraq.

The site is such an outlier that an American archaeologist who stumbled on it in the 1960s simply walked away, unable to interpret what he saw. On a hunch, Schmidt followed the American’s notes to the hilltop 15 years ago, a day he still recalls with a huge grin. He saw carved flint everywhere, and recognised a Neolithic quarry on an adjacent hill, with unfinished slabs of limestone hinting at some monument buried nearby. "In one minute-in one second-it was clear," the bearded, sun-browned archaeologist recalls. He too considered walking away, he says, knowing that if he stayed, he would have to spend the rest of his life digging on the hill.

Now 55 and a staff member at the German Archaeological Institute, Schmidt has joined a long line of his countrymen here, reaching back to Heinrich Schliemann, the discoverer of Troy. He has settled in, marrying a Turkish woman and making a home in a modest "dig house" in the narrow streets of old Urfa. Decades of work lie ahead.

Disputes are normal at the site-the workers, Schmidt laments, are divided into three separate clans who feud constantly. ("Three groups," the archaeologist says, exasperated. "Not two. Three!") So far Schmidt has uncovered less than 5 per cent of the site, and he plans to leave some temples untouched so that future researchers can examine them with more sophisticated tools.

Whatever mysterious rituals were conducted in the temples, they ended abruptly before 8000 BC, when the entire site was buried, deliberately and all at once, Schmidt believes. The temples had been in decline for a thousand years-later circles are less than half the size of the early ones, indicating a lack of resources or motivation among the worshipers. This "clear digression" followed by a sudden burial marks "the end of a very strange culture," Schmidt says. But it was also the birth of a new, settled civilisation, humanity having now exchanged the hilltops of hunters for the valleys of farmers and shepherds. New ways of life demand new religious practices, Schmidt suggests, and "when you have new gods, you have to get rid of the old ones."

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Sonia invited Europian delgation to visit Kandhamal"

By Samanwaya Nanda

BHUBANESWAR: Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s International President Ashok Singhal came down heavily on Congress-led UPA government for it’s soft stand on Pakistan. He said there is no point talking to Pakistan .and said India should withdraw itself from the proposed talks.

"Instead of taking a hard stand against Pakistan the Central Government is going for talks with Pakistan . Talks are just part of Muslim appeasement policy. These politicians don’t know how to live with dignity", he added.

Shri Singhal termed European Union delegation’s recent visit to Kandhamal as direct interference of external forces in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. He questioned how this delegation was given permission for the visit.

He added that for conversion activities the church and missionaries are pumping huge funds in to India and the Europian delegation recently came here to review and monitor the church funded programmes.

"I don’t think they have come here from their own. UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi invited them to visit Kandhmal", h e said.

"Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik has a secrete understanding with Sonia Gandhi. He is sympathetic to missionaries as his elder brother Prem patnaik’s wife is also an Italian and and good friend of Congress chief" Shri Singhal added.

He accused Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik of encouraging conversion in the state. He slammed Chief Minister for his government’s ‘inefficiency‘ to arrest the killers of Swami Laxmananda Saraswati.

"Naveen Patnaik has betrayed the Hindu society by not arresting the killers of Swami Laxmananda Saraswati even after one and half year of the incident. On the other hand government is victimising thousands of innocent vanvasis by arresting them on false charges and registering cases against them.", he pointed out.