read the caption
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A dog sleeps next to a vegetable stall in Bombay. Two small boys and two girls were married off to four puppies by tribal villagers in the small northern Indian state of Jharkhand to ward off evil.(AFP/File/Rob Elliott)<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<i>What is the link between this picture and Jharkhand story? </i>
<b>NDA parades MLAs before President </b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->After heading a delegation that accompanied the MLAS --30 BJP, six JD (U) and five independents-- BJP President L K Advani, said a demand was made that the Shibu Soren Government should be dismissed, NDA leader Arjun Munda be sworn-in as Chief Minister and that the <b>Governor should not nominate the Anglo-Indian member to the House </b>before Soren's confidence vote<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Now how Indian Express and other English media are writing about Anglo Indian bit.
Here is clarification-LINK
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->But Advani said that the NDA had made one forceful plea. As per the constitutional provisions Jharkhand, <b>the governor has the right to nominate an Anglo-Indian member to the legislative assembly</b>.
<b>"We have demanded that this nomination must take place only after the vote of confidence," </b>asserted Advani.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->What is this whole issue of "ANGLO INDIAN", Please explain more about it.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
In state of Jharkhand there is a constitutional provision that the governor has the right to nominate an Anglo-Indian member to the legislative assembly.
It should be done after appointment of CM, CM then will send list of candidates to Governor for appointment.
In current scenario Soren who became CM on biased basis can send his request to CM and Governor will appoint his own candidate who will definitely vote for Soren on Assembly floor.
With number of 40 and 41 MLA and plus Anglo Indian this will make equal number and Governor can take decision. I don't know what Governor can do in that case. But it will motivate horse trading.
Nominating members of minority to assemblies and even Rajya Sabha is a very common practice.The Idea behind it is to ensure some representation for the community.
On a different note does anyone knows why is the community called Anglo-Indian.
Nominating members of the Anglo Indian community to assemblies and even Rajya Sabha is a very common practice.The Idea behind it is to ensure some representation for the community.
On a different note does anyone knows why is the community called Anglo-Indian.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->why is the community called Anglo-Indian.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Half Brits and half Indian.
In britain Anglo-Indians produly call themselves British. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
ITALIAN EXPRESS is tryin to put their best spin to blame everyone but SONIA in the hope the ITALIAN MAFIA is not EXPOSED.
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The coterie can destroy the party
SAEED NAQVI
One of the most unsettling elements for the UPA government in New Delhi is the Congress desire to revive in UP and Bihar. The UPA rests on a sort of tripod, the three legs of which are Congress, Left, Laloo and company. The Congress and the Left are engaged in a continuous combat in Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal. In Kerala, it is a ding-dong contest, a kind of see-saw bringing UDF or the Left on top. In West Bengal, the Congress is condemned to offer only token resistance.
There were always two parallel tendencies in the Congress â BJP positive and anti-BJP, tendencies inherited from an earlier, pre-BJP period when Purushottam Das Tandon defeated Jawaharlal Nehru at the first Congress session in Bhubaneshwar in 1950.
While the Nehru-Tandon contest reflected differences within the Congress on the nature of Indian nationalism, Indira Gandhiâs cautious stance after her second-coming in 1980 was conditioned by the fear of losing Hindu votes because excessive talk of a so-called Muslim vote-bank was creating a backlash. Rajiv Gandhiâs inauguration of his election campaign in â89 from Ayodhya promising Ram Raj was tactically based on a similar appraisal of electoral politics.
By the time P.V. Narasimha Rao appeared on the scene, mandalisation was a rampaging reality. P.V.âs main support came from MPs from the south. This caused him to contemplate the mandir-mandal mahayudh in the Hindi belt, not like a Nehru but more like Purshottam Das Tandon. Little wonder L.K. Advani described him as the âbest prime minister since Lal Bahadur Shastriâ. In any case, P.V saw Congress revival in the Hindi belt a threat to his prime ministerial longevity. Just in case a revived Congress threw up a leader capable of challenging him! This, in addition to the caste homogeneity he felt for the Mandir forces, who â he believed â stood against the debrahminising tsunami of Mandal.
Preventing the revival of the Congress in the Hindi belt was, ironically, a strategy devised by a Congress PM. The rise and consolidation of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati in UP and Laloo Prasad Yadav in Bihar was one consequence of this policy. The other was the emergence of the BJP-NDA at the Centre.
<b>The May Lok Sabha elections exposed the hollowness of the NDA. Sonia Gandhiâs renunciation placed her on an unassailable pedestal. Under challenging conditions she had humbled the BJP. </b>True, but one fact must never be forgotten. The Congress only has 145 seats in a House of 543. The BJP has 138. P.V. had brought the party down to its lowest tally ever â 140 seats. Sitaram Kesari, as party president, won for the party 141 seats. Admittedly under trying conditions, Sonia Gandhi pulled up the party to 145 seats. It is a stark reality â from â96 to May â04, the Congress has hovered between 140 to 145 seats. All the other seats are with the Left (60 seats) or Mulayam (36), Laloo (24), BSP (19) DMK (16) and so on.
The UPA tripod, intelligently conceived, rests on the above figures. P. Chidambaram, in a brilliant Budget, demonstrated total grasp of these ground realities, without capitulating in any way. Full marks to the UPA government on several other counts â
<b>
foreign affairs, energy security. But just when the nation should have been showering praise on the UPA Budget, look what the party has gone and done. It has embroiled itself in the most inelegant, third-rate political manoeuvres in Jharkhand and Bihar, and it was so avoidable from the start.
Who are the coterie freelancers who have served Sonia Gandhi so poorly? They should be shown the door. Otherwise, the impression will continue to gain ground that she herself is solely responsible for the mess. In their eagerness to hand Sonia Gandhi the trophy of a revived Congress in Bihar, the coterie have gone and scored own-goals in Bihar and Jharkhand.
</b>
Sonia Gandhi must grasp the stark reality. In 1947, the Congress contained within itself the entire ideological spectrum, regional forces and what has emerged as the social justice formation. Today they are all outside the Congress. They cannot be put back in the Congress womb. They can only be kept in a coalition like the UPA.
Yes, Oscar Fernandes is doing excellent work setting up party structures up to the block level in UP. This can yield dividends over a decade provided the party comes across to the block returning officers or the district Congress samitis as possible winners in the near future. Can the party revive itself in UP, Bihar? Yes, but only up to a point. And that too when it stitches together arrangements with the regional forces on the following lines: say 30:70 in favour of the regional party for the assembly election and 70:30 in favour of the Congress for the Lok Sabha.
This is just an example. The idea has to be refined. Realistic arrangements must be put in place with regional parties. The dream of reviving the Congress in certain parts of the country is unrealistic because it involves knocking off the legs of the tripod on which the centre rests. The only way to keep a national party in play is in a coalition. The alternative is a United Front minus the Congress (and the BJP) if the party cannot resist the urge to revive and revive in a hurry.
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Here in this editorial anti-national Sekhar Gupta very intelligently spinning the whole thing. on surface, it looks like criticism but he smartly covers it with praise.
<b>Hand as Fist</b>
<b>The Congress, by grabbing power through pliant governors, will end up only undermining itself</b>
The decision of the Jharkhand governor to invite Shibu Soren to form a government, and then give him almost three weeks to prove his majority, is a travesty of all constitutional morality. The decision on whom to invite to form a government in cases where no party or coalition has a clear majority is not an easy one, and there is no formulaic answer to this conundrum. But, in this particular case, the governor has clearly crossed all bounds of propriety. The NDA was closer to a majority than its rivals, and it claimed to have the support of 41 MLAs. The independents in question had been paraded before the governor. The proper thing to do would have been to invite them to form the government and give them an opportunity to prove themselves on the floor of the house.
There was no justification to hurriedly swear Shibu Soren and then give him a long lease of life to secure a majority. The governorâs decision, coming on the heels of Goa Governor S.C. Jamirâs misconduct in Goa, has again compromised the authority of the governorâs office. The governor has few powers other than to facilitate the making and breaking of governments. It is palpably clear that governors are willing to use this discretion arbitrarily. From a constitutional point of view it is a mystery why governors give weeks rather than a couple of days for governments to prove their majority. Shorter lead times in conducting votes will, at the margins, ensure that independents vote their first instincts rather than act under tantalising incentives.
<b>The Congress Party must take a fair share of the blame in this matter. Whether or not the governor acted on his own behest is beside the point. </b>The party has a shocking record of politicising the office of the governor. One of its first acts in office was to remove three governors and replace them with old Congress hacks. It will now be difficult for the partyâs protestations to carry any conviction. The party seems determined to acquire power at all costs. It was just routed in Bihar, securing less than a dozen seats. It snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Jharkhand. Yet it feels entitled to share in power. The only kind of politics such an aspiration can unleash is a politics of backroom wheeling and dealing. Rather than gracefully accepting verdicts, the Congress is encouraging the worst kind of power politics. It would be too much to expect the party to rise above the temptations of power in the short term. But the Congress should remember that it declined in part because it got a reputation for playing footloose with constitutional values. <b>Its commitment to secularism and its concern for the poor will amount to nothing if the impression gains ground that it colludes with governors to cheat its adversaries out of power. </b>
The ITALIAN EXPRESS editor GARBAGE GUPTA is weeping and sh1tting in pants. Why madam? why did you do it? why so soon? Wait till Rahul is ready! Who did this? blah blah blah
You do not have to be a political pundit to guess what Sonia Gandhi will be asking herself once the dust of Jharkhand, Goa and Bihar settles: how did a set of state elections that should have brought some feel-good for my party, become such an embarrassment? How come she was left, instead of savouring success, controlling the damage? The how, who, why of this remarkable self-goal in the week of a very decent budget. <b>Just what did she do to deserve this, who is responsible for her party suffering this entire series of self-inflicted reverses, so bad these now threaten to rub away the halo that was hers after her remarkable renunciation? </b> <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
It was smart of her government to cut its losses in Goa. With the governor having already sworn in Shibu Soren, a total retreat will be messier in Jharkhand. But so immoral and so unconstitutional has been the conduct of the governor in Ranchi that even the most loyal Congressmen are refusing to justify it. I have personally heard from several cabinet ministers in deep embarrassment, and if our understanding of the prime ministerâs style, personality and political beliefs is even halfway accurate, he really couldnât be sleeping peacefully this week. No amount of self-serving distancing, spin-doctoring with the help of loyalist journalists to say that the governor acted on his own, is going to take this blot away. Frankly, in the past three days, since the enormity of this outrage became evident, you have not seen a single Congressman, not even one of the great behind-the-scenes manipulators who devote their full time and attention to running intrigues and conspiracies after losing their own elections, has dared to to defend this. Poor Sibtey Razi has been hung out to dry, humiliated (deservingly so) by the president, collecting that rarest of dubious distinctions of having to explain his actions to the media on the steps of Rashtrapati Bhavan.
In our political history post-1971, every government has had an inflexion point in its tenure when the honeymoon ends. What follows is a logical process when a downhill movement starts, the opposition sharpens the knives and people begin to think change. It happened to Indira Gandhi with the Allahabad High Court verdict setting aside her election (1975), with Rajiv Gandhi on Bofors and V.P. Singhâs rebellion (1987), Narasimha Rao with Harshad Mehta (1993) and, to a lesser extent, with the BJP on Gujarat, 2002. Please mark the fact that this point always comes almost neatly midway through a governmentâs tenure. It is something that our politicians know and worry about. But it is only the less serious governments that allow such crises to build so soon. The first is the type that does not believe it is in power for too long anyway, like V.P. Singh with Mandal in his first few months. Second, the foolhardy ones like Gowda going after Sitaram Kesri, probably because some astrologer told him to go ahead, just do it.
This government, and this Congress leadership, should have been smarter than that. <b> The Congress had acquired power after a long time, particularly under the Gandhi family. The last thing it needed was such political crisis so early on. The logical theme of Congress politics today should have been to treat the ascent of the Manmohan Singh government as a semi-final victory and to prepare for the final, under Rahul Gandhi if this coalition lasted five years. Or even under Manmohan Singh, if the next elections came before Rahul was ready. </b> <!--emo&:thumbdown--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/thumbsdownsmileyanim.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='thumbsdownsmileyanim.gif' /><!--endemo--> It follows, therefore, that the first pillar of Congress politics post-May â04 should have been stability and a clutter-free environment, at least for a couple of years, for this government to make some impact. If, instead, it is now caught in such a mess, retreating three steps a day with its bloodied nose, somebody has blundered.
That somebody, or more likely a bunch of nobodies, has to also answer for bringing back the old, seventiesâ Congress instincts back so soon, and when their party has barely a fraction of the kind of majorities it had then. It is a different matter that these instincts did not pay even in the seventies, leading to the Emergency and also the beginning of a more evened-out politics and the end of Congress monopoly over power.<b> Sonia is far too astute not to know that, having brought her son into politics, the last thing she can afford is to leave the party under the care of these losers. It would also be short-sighted to blame her problems now on a Sibtey Razi or Jamir. This blundering phase was initiated by whoever advised her to break away from Laloo, her most loyal ally. It opened up a contest that was in her pocket (Jharkhand), and another where she would have had no option but to go with Laloo anyway. </b> Could anyone have argued before the Bihar elections that a scenario where Paswan and Congress would have enough seats to form a government without involving Laloo was even remotely possible? And if it wasnât, where was the need for the Congress to break away, expose its irrelevance, and then snuggle right back into Lalooâs contemptuous embrace?
Surely, the Congress has plenty to think about, once this infamous chapter in its history is over. But we also need to worry about one more turn our politics has taken lately. In the past, howsoever bitter the differences, our political class had the ability to keep pretty good equations at personal, social and even political levels. Even after Indira Gandhi put so many opponents in jail, and they jailed her in retaliation, communication between the two sides never stopped. Through increasingly bitter differences of ideology and personal ambition, our political class never lost its sense of humour and social conduct. You saw them chatting and joking in the central hall in the course of a tough day in Parliament as Indian and Pakistani cricketers would after a hard dayâs game. They visited each otherâs homes socially, attended weddings of each otherâs children, and made common cause in Parliament and elsewhere whenever national interest so required. Both the BJP and Congress have been mature enough to help the other pass bills that even their own coalition partners would oppose. At this point, in completely fractious politics, when this kind of maturity is most needed at least within the two largest parties, it is being replaced by an unprecedented bitterness.
A story I always cherish is Nawaz Sharif asking me, most incredulously, how Rajiv Gandhi could welcome V.P. Singh with folded hands to the prime ministerâs chair, after losing to him in the winter of 1989. âI saw it with my own eyes, on TV,â he said, âhow could he do it, that man in Jinnah cap used to call him a thief, Bofors chor.â I explained to him thatâs how politics in mature democracies was. He said, sadly, that he and Benazir did not even say dua-salaam if they met at an airport. I told him, grandly, be patient. Your democracy will also mature, like ours. If he is reading this on the Net in Jeddah as he usually does, he will note that I was wrong, that India has regressed since then. If he is also watching whatâs happening in our Parliament, where abuse has replaced debate and adjournments make the headlines rather than legislation, he would also think it is a bad advertisement for democracy. If our national politics begins to echo the bitterness of Mamata versus the Left, Laloo versus Paswan, Mulayam versus Mayawati kind of equations, we would have come a long way even from December 13, 2001, when the first call Vajpayee received after the attack on Parliament was from Sonia, asking if he was okay.
So iessence, it is not madame's fault. It is all those around hher who did it. Please be careful and let the DI-NASTY take over first. Then kill the democracy. Otherwise, you will be exposed.
<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+Mar 4 2005, 09:59 AM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ Mar 4 2005, 09:59 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->why is the community called Anglo-Indian.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Half Brits and half Indian.
In britain Anglo-Indians produly call themselves British. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Are they different from converted Christians?
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Are they different from converted Christians? <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> Who are the Anglo Indians
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Anglo-Indians, were more "Anglo" than "Indian". Their mother-tongue was English, and so was their religious upbringing, as were their customs and traditions. While most of them married within their own Anglo-Indian circle, there were many who continued to marry expatriate Englishmen. Very few, if any, married Indians. The same rigid social barriers that the British erected between themselves and the Anglo-Indians, also existed to isolate the Anglo-Indians from the vast majority of Indians.
Neither the British nor the Anglo-Indians made any attempt at appreciating Indian music, art, dance, literature or drama. The "natives" were seen as idol worshippers, and not particularly clean ones at that, with their habits of blowing their noses, spitting and defecating in public. Not to mention eating with their fingers while sitting cross legged on the ground. The aloofness between themselves and their Indian subjects were of little concern to the British, and even less so now that they were going âhomeâ. But the Anglo-Indians, left in a twilight zone of uncertainty, felt a bitter sense of betrayal â and dismay at the fact that Britain made no effort to offer her swarthier sons any hospitality in the land where their forefathers had been born.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Anglo-Indian identity is disappearing fast. Those who have found new lives abroad have merged into the mainstream. Other than the nostalgic reminiscences of an older generation (much of it irrelevant to the busy day-to-day concerns of their children and grand-children) their Indian past has all but faded into oblivion. In India, the Community are indistinguishable from their Indian friends and neighbours. The women wear saris or salwar kameez, the kids disco enthusiastically to Hindi film hits and watch Bollywood movies. Although English remains their first language, they speak the local vernacular with ease and fluency.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How to destroy nation? Keep seperate identity for every group.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The anglo-Indians, children of mixed marriage, were called, the wheels, the cranks, the levers of the Empire building machinery
...
<b>The early settlers left their womenfolk at home and so in the 17th and early 18th centuries, it was not uncommon for the Englishman to marry an Indian wife and adopt Indian ways. His children inherited his fortune and were sent home for education</b>.
The name Anglo-Indian was coin to describe an <b>India-returned Englishman</b>. It was not until the early 20th century that the word came to denote the mixed or Eurasian population in India.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Who are these people ?
http://www.southasianmedia.net/ <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Who else? Paki. Portal for Muslims of Southasia. Now Pakistan is Fort of Islam, they need this portal & power to control rest of Soutasia muslims. Link - About us
A spate of discriminatory laws, derived from a narrow and communal version of history, were drawn up to erase the ungodly secular influences of the social policies of Ayub Khan and Zulfiqar Bhutto periods. Realising the power of education to manipulate the mind, General Zia quickly seized upon it to re-make the nation in a sectarian image. As expected, it was the subject of history that was subjected to the maximum deletion and addition in the process of forging a Sunni Muslim Pakistan50. For example, the following example from a textbook of Pakistan Studies produced in 1986, shows the levels of historical distortion:
âDuring the 12th Century the shape of Pakistan was more or less the same as it is today...Under the Khiljis, Pakistan moved further south-ward to include a greater part of Central India and the Deccan...In retrospect it may be said that during the 16th century 'Hindustan' disappeared and was completely absorbed in âPakistanâ.51
In this total collapse of the identities of Muslim and Pakistan, the latter is said to exist when it was not yet imagined as an idea. It is as though Pakistan was always there in India's womb just waiting to be born, which it ultimately did with the help of a much awaited mid-wife, the Muslim League! Pakistan is projected back into history to lay claim to antiquity and authenticity since its founding myth, the two-nation theory, was seriously challenged with the formation of Bangladesh.
Actually, you've got my so-called ploy all wrong. However, I don't expect guys with your mentality to understand that.
You'll be pleased to know that you 'secularists' have a successful and time-tested way of tackling free speech: I am no longer writing for Rediff since its top honcho, Ajit Balakrishnan (also involved with Communalism Combat), finds me 'very inflammatory.' That's surely something to rejoice over. Yes, please do post my comments on your newsgroup.
MICHIGAN: A US-based Hindu organisation has accused the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) of "casteist practices" at a mass conversion campaign in Etah in Uttar Pradesh last month.
<b>Navya Shastra</b>, the organisation which<b> boasts of scholars and priests</b> "dedicated to fostering the <b>spiritual equality </b> <i>{Spiritual Utopia ?? <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â }</i> of all Hindus" among its followers, said the VHP, which claimed to have converted 5,000 Christians to Hinduism at Etah, had classified them as Dalits in their new religion.
"While we applaud all efforts to spread the Hindu religion through peaceful and legitimate means, we are utterly baffled that the VHP would insist that the new converts be labelled as untouchables," it said in a statement here.
"This is a bizarre act of conceptual dehumanisation," the statement quoted Navya Shastra co-chairperson Jaishree Gopal as saying.
The statement urged all Hindu organisations involved in proselytising activities to do away with attaching cast labels to new converts. "Surely all modern Hindu reformers agree that there is no spiritual merit attached to any caste affiliation," the statement added.
Organisations like the VHP, which envisions a caste-free society, should follow their own advice, it maintained.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->boasts of scholars and priests..<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ahem..who exactly are these 'priests'? Are they willing to give up their job to some Dalit or are they non-brahmins to start with? Let me see if I can get a list from proponents of Navyashastra here.
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â }</i> of all Hindus" among its followers, said the VHP, which claimed to have converted 5,000 Christians to Hinduism at Etah, had classified them as Dalits in their new religion.