The Great Indian Political Debate - 2

03-08-2005, 10:25 PM

Pioneer -Op-ed
QUOTENeeded, moral clarity to see evil 
Kanchan Gupta
We must "understand a critical difference between the world of fear and the world of freedom," explains Natan Sharansky in his book The Case for Democracy, a must read for those opposed to tyranny at home and abroad, "In the former, the primary challenge is finding the inner strength to confront evil. In the latter, the primary challenge is finding the moral clarity to see evil."

The shockingly amoral politics of smash and grab witnessed this past week, with the Congress brazenly trying to manoeuvre itself into power after winning nine of the 81 seats that constitute the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly by making a mockery of constitutional norms, have no doubt revived memories of the "world of fear" that was India during Ms Indira Gandhi's ruthless and despotic rule in the dark days of Emergency.

But 30 years after that summer when Ms Indira Gandhi stripped Indians of their fundamental rights to put "democracy back on the rails", Ms Sonia Gandhi and her fawning courtiers will find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to recreate the terror of 1975-77 when the Congress ruled with an iron fist after packing the country's jails with Opposition leaders, activists and independent journalists.

The "world of freedom", such as it exists in India today, may be under assault from carpet-baggers, but they are unlikely to succeed beyond causing temporary damage to democratic institutions, even while inflicting tremendous injury to the Congress and its image which had a fortuitous makeover last year after the maudlin renunciation of power by Ms Sonia Gandhi.

Living as we do in a "world of freedom", let us then meet "the primary challenge" of "finding the moral clarity to see evil". In the immediate context of last week's tumultuous political developments, that evil must necessarily be described as the devious politics of the Congress that appears to have rediscovered what drove Ms Indira Gandhi in her pursuit of absolute power: The presumed divine right to rule even in the absence of a popular mandate.

Hence, last week's forced installation of an illegitimate Government in Jharkhand, in which the Congress is a complicit partner, and before that the sacking of the BJP Government in Goa and its replacement with an equally illegitimate Congress regime. Pliant Governors eager to prove their loyalty to Ms Sonia Gandhi were more than happy to subvert the democratic process of government formation.

Only the naÃ¯ve would have believed that there would be no backlash and criticism, if any, would be subsumed by the popularity of Ms Sonia Gandhi: After all, with her halo and larger than life image, who would believe that she could think evil, leave alone act in an evil manner? In the event, the carefully cultivated image of Ms Sonia Gandhi - as also that of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who holds office but wields neither power nor authority - has failed to carry the day for the Congress.

On the contrary, she is now seen as nothing more than an avaricious, self-aggrandising politician who is willing to go to any extent to grab power. In one swift move, she has taken the Congress back to the era when it was perceived as a destabilising force that would rather subvert democracy than allow another party to rule - either in the States or at the Centre.

By sanctioning the appalling abuse of gubernatorial authority in Ranchi and Panaji, she has revived memories of the manner in which Ms Indira Gandhi sacked non-Congress State governments in 1980. Later, she used her stooge in the Raj Bhavan at Hyderabad to remove NT Rama Rao from office; Dr Farooq Abdullah was summarily dismissed and replaced by GM Shah in Srinagar. The destabilising game played by Ms Indira Gandhi in Punjab where she promoted Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale as a countervailing force against the Akali Dal extracted a terrible toll, including her life.

All the while, of course, Ms Indira Gandhi kept on insisting, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, on her innocence. Memories of Ms Indira Gandhi's protestations have been revived by the pathetic damage control exercise launched by the gatekeepers of 10, Janpath, one of whom let it be known that "Madam Soniaji" is mightily unhappy with the turn of events in Ranchi about which, we are now expected to believe, she came to know only the day after.

If Ms Sonia Gandhi's halo no longer sparkles in the spotlight of public adulation, the Congress no longer appears as a reliable ally to those who joined ranks with it to form the United Progressive Alliance Government that, for all practical purposes, does not exist beyond the confines of Parliament. In Bihar, the three major UPA partners - RJD, LJP and Congress - are at the moment daggers drawn.

In Tamil Nadu, the DMK is sulking over an unguarded and considered statement made by a local Congress satrap. In Andhra Pradesh, the TRS is straining at the leash. In Maharashtra, the NCP is biding time. <!--emo& Big Grin

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' />Â All of a sudden, the carefully constructed alliance that saw the Congress' return to power at the Centre in last year's parliamentary election, seems to be developing deep fissures.

Even within the Congress, the authority of Ms Sonia Gandhi is not as unassailable as her courtiers would have us believe. The manner in which the Chief Minister of Haryana was selected, and the subsequent fallout of that selection, is only indicative of the thinning of Ms Sonia Gandhi's authority. In Kerala, Mr K Karunakaran is leading an open revolt against the party; in Punjab, Captain Amarinder Singh has demonstrated that he is not answerable to either her or the Prime Minister.

The Left, meanwhile, finds itself increasingly in a quandary. Last year, it chose to back a Congress-led UPA to keep the BJP out of power. But in 2006, the Left will find itself fighting the Congress in West Bengal and Kerala: Given the nature of voter polarisation in both the States, it has to be a bitter, no holds barred fight if the Left wants to win and survive.

If the political instability engineered by Ms Indira Gandhi's destabilising politics gave rise to strident anti-Congressism, the inherent instability of the UPA and the destabilising manoeuvres of Ms Sonia Gandhi and her coterie are gradually resuscitating anti-Congressism once again, paving the ground for the resurgence of competitive politics which by definition is confrontational and combative.

Apologists of the Congress have been quick to point out that confrontation will work against national interest and affect governance. But there are moments in a free nation's life when a pacific response to deviousness and worse perpetrated by those in power is akin to failing to summon "the moral clarity to see evil".

Only moral cowards would acquiesce in the evil perpetrated last week. And moral cowardice is the first step towards losing the "inner strength to confront evil". If that were to happen, Sharansky's "world of fear" could yet become a reality for the people of India, notwithstanding the fact that Ms Sonia Gandhi lacks the chutzpah of her mother-in-law.

03-09-2005, 07:07 PM

Of course, the COMMIES are wrong. When were they right?
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http://us.rediff.com/news/2005/mar/08kak.htm
The cradle that is India
March 07, 2005

Ideas about early Indian history continue to play an important role in political ideology of contemporary India. On the one side are the Left and Dravidian parties, which believe that invading Aryans from the northwest pushed the Dravidians to south India and India's caste divisions are a consequence of that encounter. Even the development of Hinduism is seen through this anthropological lens. This view is essentially that of colonial historians which was developed over a hundred years ago.

On the other side are the nationalist parties, which believe that the Aryan languages are native to India. These groups cite the early astronomical dates in the Vedas, noting these texts are rooted firmly in the Indian geographical region. But Leftist scholars consider such evidence suspect, politically motivated, and chauvinistic.


In recent years, the work of archaeologists and historians of science concluded that there is no material evidence for any large scale migrations into India over the period of 4500 to 800 BC, implicitly supporting the traditional view of Indian history. The Left has responded by conceding that there were probably no invasions; rather, there were many small scale migrations by Aryans who, through a process of cultural dominance, imposed their language on north Indians.

The drama of text-book revisions, both during the NDA and the current UPA governments, is essentially a struggle to impose one or the other of these viewpoints. In any other country, such a fight would have fought in the pages of academic journals; but in India, where the government decides what history is, it is a political matter.

'There is no absolute objective history'

Now, in an important book titled The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey out of Africa (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2003), the prominent Oxford University scholar Stephen Oppenheimer has synthesised the available genetic evidence together with climatology and archaeology with conclusions which have bearing on the debate about the early population of India. This work has received great attention in the West, and it will also interest Indians tremendously.

Much of Oppenheimer's theory is based on recent advances in studies of mitochondrial DNA, inherited through the mother, and Y chromosomes, inherited by males from the father. Oppenheimer makes the case that whereas Africa is the cradle of all mankind; India is the cradle of all non-African peoples. Man left Africa approximately 90,000 years ago, heading east along the Indian Ocean, and established settlements in India. It was only during a break in glacial activity 50,000 years ago, when deserts turned into grasslands, that people left India and headed northwest into the Russian steppes and on into Eastern Europe, as well as northeast through China and over the now submerged Bering Strait into the Americas.

<img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rocker.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rocker.gif' /> COMMIES are WRONF, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rocker.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rocker.gif' />

In their migration to India, African people carried the mitochondrial DNA strain L3 and Y chromosome line M168 across south Red Sea across the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula. On the maternal side the mtDNA strain L3 split into two daughters which Oppenheimer labels Nasreen and Manju. While Manju was definitely born in India the birthplace of Nasreen is tentatively placed by him in southern Iran or Baluchistan. One Indian Manju subclan in India is as old as 73,000 years, whereas European man goes back to less than 50,000 years.

Considering the paternal side, Oppenheimer sees M168 as having three sons, of whom Seth was the most important one. Seth, in turn, had five sons which are named by him as Jahangir, H, I, G and Krishna. Krishna, born in India, is the ancestor of the peoples of East Asia, Central Asia, Oceania and West Eurasia (through the M17 mutation). This is what Oppenheimer says about M17:

South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a 'male Aryan Invasion of India.'

Study of the geographical distribution and the diversity of genetic branches and stems again suggests that Ruslan, along with his son M17, arose early in South Asia, somewhere near India, and subsequently spread not only south-east to Australia but also north, directly to Central Asia, before splitting east and west into Europe and East Asia.

Oppenheimer argues that the Eurocentric view of ancient history is also incorrect. For example, Europeans didn't invent art, because the Australian aborigines developed their own unique artistic culture in complete isolation. Indian rock art is also extremely ancient, going back to over 40,000 BC, so perhaps art as a part of culture had arisen in Africa itself. Similarly, agriculture didn't arise in the Fertile Crescent; Southeast Asia had already domesticated many plants by that time.

Oppenheimer concludes with two extraordinary conclusions: 'First, that the Europeans' genetic homeland was originally in South Asia in the Pakistan/Gulf region over 50,000 years ago; and second, that the Europeans' ancestors followed at least two widely separated routes to arrive, ultimately, in the same cold but rich garden. The earliest of these routes was the Fertile Crescent. The second early route from South Asia to Europe may have been up the Indus into Kashmir and on to Central Asia, where perhaps more than 40,000 years ago hunters first started bringing down game as large as mammoths.'

This synthesis of genetic evidence makes it possible to understand the divide between the north and the south Indian languages. It appears that the Dravidian languages are more ancient, and the Aryan languages evolved in India over thousands of years before migrations took them to central Asia and westward to Europe. The proto-Dravidian languages had also, through the ocean route, reached northeast Asia, explaining the connections between the Dravidian family and the Korean and the Japanese.

Perhaps this new understanding will encourage Indian politicians to get away from the polemics of who the original inhabitants of India are, since that should not matter one way or the other in the governance of the country. Indian politics has long been plagued by the Aryan invasion narrative, which was created by English scholars of the 19th century; it is fitting that another Englishman, Stephen Oppenheimer, should announce its demise.

03-09-2005, 08:53 PM

Direct results of Pissecism!

QUOTEAkhtar laughs off Laughing Guru
Author: Kounteya Sinha
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: February 27, 2005

He teaches people Sudarshan Kriya - breathing exercises that help
them stay calm.

The techniques came to his rescue too on Saturday afternoon.

In a duel between an aggressive, passionate poet and a smiling
guru, Javed Akhtar went up against Art of Living chief Sri Sri
Ravi Shankar (founder of Sudarshan Kriya) to produce what was
definitely the India Today Conclave's most entertaining session
in New Delhi on Saturday.

Talking on "Spirituality - Halo or Hoax", Akhtar took on "modern
age gurus" from the word go. Taking a direct dig at Sri Sri Ravi
Shankar by saying "that spirituality should be more than teaching
the rich how to breathe", the poet claimed that "modern day gurus
have opened a chain of ashrams where the restless elite buy
spiritual fast food".

Refusing to compare old Indian saints with modem age religious
teachers, Akhtar said, "Gautam Buddha and other great spiritual
leaders left their palaces to go into the wilderness. Modem age
gurus, however, are coming out of the wilderness to enter
affluent palaces."

With most of his arguments being received with thunderous
applause by a packed hall, Akhtar continued to steal the show by
comparing today's spiritual leaders with the film fraternity.
"Cinema and modem day gurus do the same things. We both sell
dreams, create illusions and create icons. Fortunately, cinema
has a 'The End' board after three hours," he said.

Claiming that "spirituality was the tranquilliser of the rich",
Akhtar also took the example of unhappy rich wives who needed a
shoulder to cry oil after being ignored by husbands "who were
either busy with work or with other women". "So they seek the
help of modem age gurus, who promise to rid them of all miseries.
The spiritual get-togethers today are nothing less than points of
contact and network building exercises for the elite. Like all
corporate honchos found on a golf course don't necessary love
golf, similarly, all those found at spiritual get-togethers aren'
t necessarily spiritual," he said.

Pointing out that people must think with their brains and see
through the garb of these gurus, "who themselves claim to have
achieved nirvana but can't promise to take you there," Akhtar
added: "Spiritual leaders need to do more than teach about cosmic
consciousness. Where are the spiritualists when there are
communal tensions? How many have taken dalits to a temple where
they are not allowed to enter? Gautam Buddha, Krishna and Kabir
had all raised their voices against social injustice." 

{Ah! The promise Spiritual Utopia ->Segway->class warfare->caste->Hindusim BAD BAD->India Worse->Welcome CommiePakis}Â <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='laugh.gif' />

Sri Ravi Shankar, who just sat, smiled and waited for his turn to
refute Akhtar's arguments, then joined the argument. "To say that
all spiritual leaders are hoaxes would not be right. Similarly,
to claim that the over two lakh religious gurus ill this country
have attained halo wills be equally erroneous. One should not
accept anything that is irrational. Indian spiritualism, which
goes back as long as time, is based on science. Today, in the US
alone, spirituality rose 500 times more in one year. Yoga alone
is a $27 billion industry there. Spirituality binds India,
without which there would be no India. It would become like Congo
and the former Yugoslavia, fraught with ethnic conflicts. Studies
have shown that violence is highest where spirituality is the
lowest," Ravi Shankar said. Akhtar continued, claiming that arms,
drugs and spirituality were today the world's three biggest
industries. "Most of the modem day gurus have affluent clientele
that provide him power, status and money. In return, the rich get
a crash course in spirituality, nirvana and cosmic consciousness
in four easy lessons."

To this, the guru promptly replied: "There is nothing wrong in
including the rich in popular spiritual practices. They go
through tremendous stress. We help them relieve it. Not only are
my followers rich, there are a few million prisoners benefiting
from my programme. Mr Akhtar's views reminds me of 135 Naxalites
who recently visited me with the same doubts. I think the world
has stopped trusting teachers."

SRI SRI's work (Letter to Editor)

Author: Vikram Hazra
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: March 8, 2005

Sir, I was deeply saddened to read about Mr Javed Akhtar's
denigrating views on Indian spirituality at the recent India
Today Conclave (Akhtar laughs off Laughing Guru, The Asian Age,
February 27). Mr Akhtar had clearly not done his homework before
coming to the meeting, and was out to establish an agenda. Did he
not know, for instance, that one of the biggest meetings of Dalit
leaders was hosted at Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's ashram in Bangalore,
and that thousands of Dalit as well as tribal youth are not just
beneficiaries but active organisers of the community service
projects initiated and run by Sri Sri's Art of Living Foundation
(AoL)? Perhaps Mr Akhtar would do well to visit one of the nearly
25,000 villages across India that have been touched by this
humanitarian's efforts; or maybe trek through the dusty paths
that lead to one of the 40 free schools run by the rural youth
trained by AoL in the impoverished areas of eastern and
northeastern India. Sri Sri himself has visited these places,
including the tsunami hit areas of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka,
where dedicated volunteers have been working to alleviate people'
s misery. These visits (and the work) have been going on in
various parts of the world for well over 10 years, but have been
conducted with the participation and empowerment of the local
populace, and without any media hullabaloo. The media would focus
on how many Bollywood personages do the AoL course rather than on
instances such as Sri Sri's visit to Dharavi. Over 22,000
prisoners in Tihar jail have benefited from AoL programmes in the
past four years alone, and 120,000 prisoners worldwide have
undergone the programme in countries such as South Africa,
Germany and the United States to name but a few. The money paid
by the so-called elite to learn stress elimination is channelled
totally into these seva projects. In addition, Sri Sri's
Sudarshan Kriya technique has been widely documented to be one of
the most effective and practical tools for eliminating fear,
violence, stress and negativity from the human mind. It should be
clear to the meanest intelligence that Sri Sri has created that
most unusual of phenomena in our times - a win-win situation for
all, one that can bridge not just the communal divide but which
also bridges the urban-rural divide. I was especially glad that
Sri Sri did not stoop to take issue with Mr Akhtar at the
conclave. Mr Akhtar, however, has lost face and respect; a
vitriolic outburst to draw applause from a small audience would
not fool any thinking mind. Mr Akhtar is probably representative
of that increasingly popular brand of "fancy-dress activists" who
hog media mileage in elegant Fab India ensembles; they have it
easy, they never run out of causes to shout about, and are spared
the responsibility of actually taking action or providing
solutions. I am sure that many dedicated volunteers who have
risked life and limb to work for the upliftment of their
community in remote villages do not see Mr Akhtar and his ilk as
their voice; however, these same masses come together in service
when spiritual leaders like Sri Sri reach out to them with so
much love, responsibility, pro-active attitude, compassion as
well as practical solutions. Lastly, does Mr Akhtar feel that a
spiritual teacher is credible only if he lives cloistered in a
forest hermitage and travels on foot? Does he imagine his own
poetry would be richer if he were a penniless alcoholic? Such
stereotypes exist only in books.
Vikram Hazra
Programme Director
International Art of Living
Foundation

**acharya** · 03-10-2005, 12:48 AM

Why does not Javed talk about the Islamic Mullah.

03-10-2005, 04:56 AM

Javed Insults PAK PM
<!--emo& Tongue

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' />

Personally I think he is an equal opportunity insulter (within the limitations of his intellect). <!--emo& Big Grin

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /> . But he's obviously way out of his depth in trying to take on Sri Ravi Shankar.

Regards,
Sandeep.

03-10-2005, 05:31 AM

An interesting table on balivaad stars and their political affiliations:

Actors
-------------BJP-----------------
Gajendra Chauhan:
Suresh Oberoi:
Bhupen Hazarika:
Dharmendra:
Shatrughan Sinha:
Nitish Bharadwaj :
Vinod Khanna:
Nathusingh Gujjar:
Dara Singh:
Arvind Trivedi:
Upendra Trivedi:
Murli Mohan:
Rajendra Prasada:
Suman:
Sarat Babu:
Prashant Nanda:
Kumar Bangarappa:

--------CON GRESS---------
Rajesh Khanna:
Sunil Dutt:
Chunkey Pandey:
Annu Kapoor:
Govinda:
Shakti Kapoor:
Dilip Kumar:
Ashutosh Rana:
Bhairon Singh Gujjar:
Saif Ali Khan:
Anuj Sharma:
Sekhar Soni:
Vishnu Vardhan:
Jagesh:
Anant Nag:
McMahon:
Prem Chopra:

-----------SJP----------
Raja Murad:

----TRINAMOOL CONGRESS----
Tapas Pal

Actresses
-----------BJP---------------
Hema Malini:
Smriti Irani:
Rupa Ganguli:
Poonam Dhillon:
Sudha Chandran:
Deepika Chikhalia:
Jaya Prada:
Juhi Chawla:
Padmini Kolhapure:
Nagma:

----SWAMI AGNIVESH-----
Sbhabna Azmi:

----------TMC-------------
Madhavi Mukherjee:

-----CONGRESS--------
Nafisa Ali:
Mahima Chaudhari:

Source: Little India

03-10-2005, 05:45 AM

The only ones i feel bad about being on the dark side is Govinda and Prem Chopra. The rest suck anyways..

Sunder · 03-10-2005, 06:07 AM

QUOTE(s.k.mody @ Mar 10 2005, 05:31 AM) Source: Little India 
Vijayashanthi (prathighatana) BJP.
Late Soundarya BJP.

03-10-2005, 08:33 PM

QUOTE(rajesh_g @ Mar 9 2005, 08:15 PM) The only ones i feel bad about being on the dark side is Govinda and Prem Chopra. The rest suck anyways.. 
Rajesh, Govinda's 'humble' beginnings in Vasai, Mumbai weren't so humble as it's be projected in the media. His connections with Bhai Thakur goes back to 80s. So I think he's in the right political party at the moment.

Jaya Prada was a Samajawadi MP unless she's moved to BJP recently.

To be added to the list - Jaya Bacchan - SJP

03-11-2005, 03:04 AM

The false gods of secular India
Kanchan Gupta
Rediff.com
March 10, 2005

It is the Congress that has engineered most of the riots... Rajiv Gandhi failed to protect Harijans and Muslimsâ¦ Geographical boundaries of the country were jeopardised by the Congress and Rajiv Gandhi...'

On reading such harsh accusation, such pitiless pillorying of the Congress and its supreme leader, the last direct descendent of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to sit on the masnad of Delhi, the image that comes to mind is that of an irascible foot soldier of the BJP or a malevolent journalist doing what foot soldiers and malevolent journalists do best: shoot from the hip.

Think again, but it is unlikely that you will be able to guess the identity of the person who tore into the Congress so mercilessly while participating in a debate on the 'Situation in the Country' in the Lok Sabha on December 29, 1989.

The immediate backdrop to this debate was the series of communal riots in Congress-ruled Bihar -- Hazaribagh, Darbhanga, and the horrendous bloodletting in Bhagalpur during the twilight days of Rajiv Gandhi's government in the autumn of that year.

The official death count in Bhagalpur was 1,891, with thousands scarred for the rest of their lives. In Logain village, an entire Muslim mohalla was wiped out: the bodies of 120 Muslim men, women and children were dumped in a shallow pond; when the stench became unbearable, the rotting corpses were fished out, buried
in a field and planted over with cauliflower saplings.

In Chanderi, another Muslim mohalla, 61 people were massacred. Mallika, a 14-year-old girl, tried to flee the mob that had killed her parents and relatives. She stumbled and fell; the mob chopped off her legs and left her to bleed to death in a hyacinth covered pond. An army officer found her the next day, drawn by her pitiful sobs, and Mallika survived to live a traumatic life.

But we digress. From December 18 to 29, the newly elected Lok Sabha, with Prime Minister V P Singh and the Janata Dal occupying the Treasury benches and Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress sitting in the Opposition benches, witnessed a spirited debate over the customary address by the President. Either by design or by
default, the President had failed to mention the riots in Bhagalpur.

Congress MPs seized on this omission to berate the government, alleging that the riots were not mentioned to spare embarrassment to its ally, the BJP, which was accused of fomenting the violence in Bhagalpur and elsewhere. As the debate became increasingly accusatory and the tone and tenor of the attack on the BJP sharpened, the Janata Dal MP from Chapra waded in to battle the Congress.

Responding to the allegation that BJP and VHP activists had provoked the violence, he said, 'I would like to tell you that there are two groups of Muslims in Bhagalpur, i e, Ansaris and Sallans, who had started riots in the city. A bomb was thrown on the SP (of) Bhagalpur and 11 police personnel were injured. They had thrown that bomb on the occasion of Ram Shila Pujan but these people have not been yet rounded up.'

That MP was Lalu Prasad Yadav, now minister for Railways in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance Government and an ardent supporter of 'Madam Soniaji.' Such is his admiration for Sonia Gandhi, that even after losing his rule through conjugal proxy over Bihar thanks to Congress' dalliance with his arch enemy Ram Vilas Paswan, he was the first to jump to her defence in the Lok
Sabha on Wednesday when George Fernandes became particularly vituperative.

But we digress again. On December 29, 1989, Lalu Prasad Yadav was relentless in his assault on the Congress, more so on Rajiv Gandhi, and took vicarious pleasure by slyly mentioning Sonia Gandhi by name now and then, in total disregard of House rules. 'It is the Congress party which (has) engineered most of the riots, particularly in Bihar,' he thundered to the thumping of tables.

'We shall expose their role in inciting communal riots,' he promised on behalf of the government.

Listing the failures of the previous regime, he said, 'Rajiv Gandhi failed to fulfil the promises which he made in regard to the development, unity and security of the country and protection of the Harijans and Muslims. This resulted in creating a gloomy situation in the country...' And, hence, the people voted for change.

'Change had become necessary because the responsibility of protecting the geographical boundaries of the country (sic)... was jeopardised by the Congress and Rajiv Gandhi,' Lalu Prasad Yadav explained, adding with a rhetorical flourish, 'If we fail to safeguard the unity, integrity and the principle of secularism of our country, we cannot save the country from disintegration...'

And then came the full assault. 'Satyendra Narain Sinha became chief minister of Bihar, he failed to quell the riots in Hazaribagh... the procession of Ram Navami had passed off peacefully in front of the Jama Masjid of Hazaribagh. No Muslim had opposed the procession,' Lalu Prasad Yadav said, recalling the sequence of event, 'Ram shila procession and Ram Navami procession passed off from there, but neither there was any riot nor anybody raised provocative
slogans on that day. But later on an incident took place in Hazaribagh which triggered off disturbances in the entire state.'

So who or what was to blame? Read on. 'Rajiv Gandhi, accompanied by his wife Sonia Gandhi, went to participate in the Vaishali festival. They had put on bulletproof vests... Shri Rajiv Gandhi told Sonia Gandhi that he himself would drive the jeep to see the celebrations,' Lalu Prasad Yadav explained with dramatic flourish, before coming to the consequences of that drive from Patna to Vaishali by the former prime minister and his wife.

'An announcement was made in regard to their security... Full security force was required all along the 60 km route from Patna to the place of celebrations. Wireless message was sent to the DM of Hazaribagh, wireless message was sent to the collector also to send all the forces to Vaishali as Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia
Gandhi were coming to attend the celebrations,' he recounted, 'Forces were picked up from Hazaribagh and sent to Vaishali. After three days riots took place between Hindus and Muslims. But no security forces were there to control the situation.'

And what about Darbhanga? 'They (the Congress) have spared no effort to put Bhagalpur, BJP, RSS and Janata Dal to disrepute,' Lalu Prasad Yadav said, charging the Congress, whose MPs were by then on their feet, with criminal subterfuge, 'One thousand workers belonging to the Congress Party were called to Bahera (an assembly constituency in Darbhanga) by Maithili Brahmins (a snide reference to Jagannath Mishra and what was then the Congress' core constituency
in Bihar) and were asked to wear caps bearing slogans "Garv say kaho hum Hindu hain" and "Radhe Shyam Baba ki Jai".'

After a pause, he added with a condescending flourish, 'You try to understand the actual position in Bhagalpur... Shiv Chander Jha, who was the speaker, was deadly against Bhagwat Jha Azad (another Congress leader). It was due to them and a few of their men that these riots... (interruptions)... they were behind
these riots.'

Researching communal violence in India, as I have been doing these past six months, can be a dreary and depressing experience. But it also has its illuminating moments. Reading the records of the debate in the Lok Sabha on December 29, 1989, was one such moment when the true face of secular politics in India leapt out with venomous fangs exposed.

I could go on about how the prosecution, directly controlled by the government of Bihar, a family enterprise of Lalu Prasad Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi for the last 15 years, has miserably failed to bring the guilty men of Bhagalpur to justice. How nearly two-thirds of the 700 cases filed after the riots in Bhagalpur were never pursued in the special courts that were set up. How files have simply disappeared. How the Lalu-Rabri regime has exerted for 15 years to
exonerate the guilty because they were Yadavs. And how activist champions of secularism have conveniently ignored the fact that only 16 people have been sent to jail till now for the death of more than a thousand men, women and children.

All this, and much more, will not dissuade those who worship false gods of secularism.

03-12-2005, 06:35 AM

Salman Haider interview..

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?...sess=1&id=71004

QUOTEIndiaâs a model

Former Indian Foreign Secretary and erudite commentator Salman Haidar was a keynote speaker at the Third Diversity Matters Forum in Kolkata last week. Haidar spoke to SWAGATA GANGULY on the Indian model of multiculturalism and what it means to be a Muslim citizen of India.

Question : Given that there are diverse kinds of diversity â the European model of aggressive secularism, the American model of separation of church and state, and the Indian model which conforms to neither â which do you think works best?

Answer : These are matters a society has to resolve for itself â thereâs no universal model. It was recently pointed out at the forum that India is a very religious society; people subscribe to one religion or another with great devotion. Prof. Desmond Cahillâs sense at this conference was the state should act as a broker between different groups and find some common ground to bring them together, instead of being a harsh arbitrator whether in one direction or the other.

Question : The state being a broker sounds close to the Indian model, but does it really work? Each religious group tends to think the state is favouring other religions and working against it.

Answer : If the state acquires this kind of intermediary role, it can be an encouragement to the different groups to be more demanding. It struck me that the model he was talking of might apply better in societies that are calmer. It may be less relevant in other areas where the risk of majoritarianism is very strong â large majorities, whether directly or indirectly, can come to have a disproportionate influence on the inclinations of the state apparatus. These are questions to which none has all the answers today.

Question : How would you rate India on the multicultural scale?

Answer : I think Indiaâs a model. We have our bad patches when minorities and nonconforming groups run into difficulty, but despite the aberrations Indiaâs a very diverse society. We only have to look around to our equally diverse neighbours which have been unable to maintain that active tolerance which is a feature of our society.

Question : Which neighbours do you have in mind?

Answer : Pakistan has announced Ahmadiyyas to be non-Muslims by an act of Parliament. Itâs got blasphemy laws that have extraordinary effects, and doesnât treat all its citizens on a par. Chinaâs treatment of dissident minorities or Tibetans hardly need pointing to.

Question : On a personal level, to what extent have you felt accommodated or discriminated against as an Indian Muslim?

Answer : In my career itâs not made any difference at all. Certain groups arenât really affected, for instance those in the foreign service or IAS. But things may be changing; now people tell me that civil servants come to be identified with political leaders or political parties. It was not the case in my time. There may have been occasions when I was not brilliantly treated by politicians that I worked with. Certain prejudices do get expressed, but they are individual not structural matters.

Question : Do you think the decision to open a Srinagar-Muzzafarabad bus service, and also the cricket series where a large number of visas are being offered to Pakistanis, can restore momentum and alter the dynamics of the peace process?

Answer : This is an open question to me at the moment. The people-to-people processes that we have seen have made a real difference. Theyâve made it less easy for governments to go back inside their fortresses where they are comfortably ensconced. But having said that, Iâm not certain the momentum of the peace process has built up to the point where it canât be stopped.

Question : Do you think âsoft powerâ is a useful idea in thinking about Indo-Pak relations, and that India could use it to enhance the peace process?

Answer : I think India has soft power, and that our cultural influence is substantial. Bollywood is a major export; the cinema industry has taken on a dimension where it creates standards in many countries, and the perception of India naturally changes as a result of this. But if an attempt is made to cash in on this soft power, it will fail.
Strange things happen, though. I was in Islamabad once, and I saw what looked to me strikingly like a posh wedding party in Delhi. I donât know who borrows from whom, but greater access to each otherâs way of life will perhaps tend to show the many points of cultural closeness that continue to exist. I think it can be an asset for governments that are inclined to be innovative. Because they can capitalise on a perception that the other side is not wholly evil or wholly to be confronted â we can actually do business with them.

Question : What are the other major foreign policy challenges shaping up? Do the current tensions between Iran on the one side and the USA and Israel on the other look bad, as all of them are our friends? What would be Indiaâs role if there were attacks on Iranian nuclear installations?

Answer : If there is conflict in Iran it would be a very problematic situation for us. Our public may not be at all neutral. It wasnât when Iraq was invaded, though Saddam Hussein is nobodyâs hero. And in Iran thereâs no Saddam, so this will be even more the case. Iran is our major supplier of oil, and now of natural gas, so our interests in Iran are growing. If there is anything for India to do in this it is to try and be a friend to all parties, and head off the possibility of confrontation. We must never forget that foreign policy begins at our frontiers. Whatâs happening at our frontiers today in Nepal isnât comfortable. It will require sustained attention and active policy to calm and stabilise Nepal â that has to be our goal.

(The interviewer is Assistant Editor, The Statesman, Kolkata.)

03-14-2005, 03:30 AM

QUOTEInstruments of conversion
T mani chowdary
Missionaries, Marxists and secularists denounce Hinduism as Brahminical with little concern for the poor and downtrodden. Transnational enterprises like the Christian missionaries have been reaping harvests of converts through the struments of schools, hospitals and other centres during the times of alamities such as droughts, floods and the latest tsunami. Mahatma Gandhi, who had the habit of calling a spade a spade, once pointed out to his missionary friends that their acts of charities and care are evil-intentioned and are executed with the primary objective of gaining converts. But that apart, what is appalling is about 10 to 15 per cent of those who had been converted to Christianity in India are from the educated section.

The allegation that Hindu society does not care for its poor, disadvantaged and the depressed sections hardly has any basis. During the British rule, it was the voluntary organisations like the Ramakrishna Mission and Mahatma Gandhi's arijan Sevak Sangh that were at the forefront of serving the downtrodden through untary contributions from their Hindu brethren. After Independence, however, this ocial duty was taken over by the state. Welfare hostels were set up for SC and ST children, especially students. Since most of them are from below the poverty line, State governments have been providing them subsidised rice, sugar, kerosene and free education. Besides, reservations are earmarked for them in Government services and PSUs. All this costs the exchequer an estimated Rs 80,000 crore every year. Who is contributing this? It is the well-to-do sections of the country, especially the Hindus, who are paying through the income tax, customs and excise duties.

If only these huge amounts were not spent by Government but made available to Hindu charity organisations like the Ramakrishna Mission, the Seva Bharati, etc, then the services would have been identified with Hindu society. Sadly, there is no acknowledgment whatsoever of this tremendous gesture and care that Hindu society is undertaking because the secularists, missionaries and Marxist are engaged in disparaging, denouncing and calumniating the efforts of the Hindus.

When compared to the massive Rs 80,000 crore service, all the missionaries put together spend a mere Rs 8,000 to Rs l0,000 crore. In states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, they receive somewhere between Rs 400 to Rs 500 crore every year, which are spent on people with the purpose of converting them into Christianity. As if the Government's care is not sufficient, secular governments also use the monies that devotees give to Hindu temples. Sadly, this is not for the propagation and defence of Hinduism as enshrined in the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam Act (Andhra Pradesh) but, strangely, for construction of Urdu Ghars, Shadi Khanas, Haj houses, repair of mosques, churches, etc. Besides, there are also plans of distributing the temple lands among the poor, as demanded by the PWG. At the village level, the poor, who essentially constitute SCs and STs, had already been converted to Christianity. This they will hardly disclose as they continue to receive State Government's reservation and welfare entitlements.

In countries like Germany and Denmark, the government deducts a certain per cent of salaries and wages which are directed to churches. Why cannot India have a similar scheme so that Hindu organisations receive some per cent of the taxes or duties, which Hindus pay for providing welfare and relief to our SC and ST people?

03-14-2005, 03:42 AM

QUOTESentinelassam
Shame on the 'Secularists'
Tavleen Singh

The latest victim of our twisted version of secularism has been Vinod Pandey's film Sins. Last week the Jammu & Kashmir Government banned it for fear of hurting Christian sentiments. And, the Minorities Commission, ever ready to jump on a "secular" bandwagon has leapt into the act by demanding an explanation from the Censor Board. When "secularists" are in high dudgeon they pay no attention to the vital detail that not only was the film cleared by the Censor Board but found unobjectionable by the Bombay High Court. So, the film will probably end up being banned all over the country in the near future because a handful of Christians are in the streets protesting against it. I find this particularly interesting because I have seen no protests against foreign films or plays that have questioned the very divinity of Christ. Remember the line from the Jesus Christ Superstar, "Prove to me that you're no fool, walk across my swimming pool. Prove to me that you're divine, change my water into wine." So are the objections to Sins based on the film being made by a Hindu?

Sins is the story of one bad priest. Far from being insulting to Christianity it
is almost a tribute to it with the film's heroine finding peace and true faith
when she meditates in front of a forgotten Cross on an abandoned beach.

That there are bad priests should not be a surprise to Indian Christians
considering the scandals that have erupted in the Western world in recent years
over young boys being sexually abused by men of the cloth. The Vatican had to
intervene. That should have brought Indian Christians into the streets but it
did not.

On principle I am against the banning of books and films and on principle
believe that religion must be in the realm of literary and cinematic discourse.
When India became the first country to ban Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses in
1988, I remember asking one of the smug bureaucrats responsible for the ban if
he had read the book and he admitted that he had not. "It's too convoluted and
boring," he said "but we have seen from reviews in various magazines that it
could be offensive to Muslims so we are banning it as a precaution."

This act of stupid censorship drew Ayotollah Khomeini's attention to a book that
hardly anyone would have bothered to read otherwise and along came the fatwa
ordering Rushdie's death and then along came the protests of Muslims who would
never have known of the existence of the book had it not been banned by the
Indian Government.

Vinod Pandey, like most other members of the Hindi film industry, is a
card-carrying secularist. Years ago he denounced Hindu priests and 'mutts' in a television series called Reporter so it has come as a huge surprise to him that
he is now charged with being a proxy of the "saffron brigade."

"How is it when we did six episodes against Hindu mutts nobody said anything,"
he asked in puzzled tones. Well, because in our strange understanding of the
word "secular" it is all right to abuse Hindus, arrest Shankaracharyas and
insult Hindu religious teachers but say one word against Muslims or Christians
and you are in trouble.

Sins is not the only recent victim of this kind of secularism. Sri Sri Ravi
Shankar also is. At the recent India Today conclave famed lyricist, Javed
Akhtar, sneered at Indian spirituality, particularly of Sri Sri's kind, for
being little more than teaching rich people how to breathe. Everyone laughed
heartily and nobody dared ask Akhtar his views on Islamic seminaries whose
teaching of Islamic spirituality led to the creation of the Taliban. Nobody
asked him if he did not think teaching the rich how to breathe was slightly less
dangerous than teaching children how to kill innocent people by becoming suicide
bombers. Sri Sri should have asked these questions but probably refrained
because they are too politically incorrect.

So, he came to Mumbai last week to inaugurate an exhibition on the plight of
Kashmiri Pandits and found himself under attack again from another member of our "secular" film industry. This time from my old friend Mahesh Bhatt. Mahesh
sneered, a la Javed Akhtar, at Indian spirituality and said India was the most
materialistic country in the world and that spiritual teachers like him were no
better than entertainers. Rock Stars.

Would he like to tell us what he thinks of the mullahs that rule most of the
Islamic world? Would he like to tell us the status of spirituality in Islamic
countries? The spiritual aspect of Islam used to be reflected in Sufism and both
Mahesh and Javed would be doing themselves a favour if they spent a few weeks
finding out what happened to that kind of Islam. It has virtually disappeared,
except at concerts at Humayun's Tomb, because it has failed to survive the
onslaught of the new Islam that comes from Saudi Arabia and Iran and found its
most significant political expression in the Taliban.

Personally, I have no difficulty in saying loudly in print that we need to have
more respect for India's religions and Indian spirituality if only because they
have caused much less harm to the world than Western religions. And, there is no
room for banning films and books in a country whose intellectual and religious
traditions are based on the right to question.

03-15-2005, 07:25 AM

http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald...05/n15.asp

QUOTEModi debates his way to glory

The chief minister tilted the scales in a debate on uniform civil code and emerged victorious.

KOLKATA, DHNS:

He had a stormy reception in this citadel of Marxists as hundreds of slogan-shouting demonstrators sought to hold him at bay as he tried to wind his way to the venue of the debate on Sunday evening.

Yet, much to the chagrin of the demonstrators, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his team emerged victorious in the debate where the motion was âTo be truly secular, India needs a uniform civil codeâ.

A different storm
Not that Mr Modiâs able competitors in Mani Shankar Aiyar, Salman Khursheed, Fali S Nariman and Syed Shahabuddin failed to perform; but aided and assisted by none other than Arun Jaitley, Vasundhara Raje and Seshadri Chari, Mr Modi managed to build up a different storm that evoked a spontaneous ovation from the audience replete with representatives of the cityâs elite.

Supporting the motion, the first salvo was fired by Mr Jaitley who wondered if the Hindu could shake off the shackles of deadwood like Sati and polygamy, what were the real impediments before the Muslim community to stick to Shariat regulations.

The former law minister of the BJP sank after Mr Aiyar questioned Mr Jaitley for doing nothing as a minister.

âHe (Jaitley) knew it was not possible and hence, Mr Ambedkar and others who framed the Indian Constitution were a far better breed than the BJP,â the Petroleum Minister countered.

âThe codeâ
Mr Chari who quoted from Tagoreâs verses to prove his point, made a retreat after Mr Nariman, the famous Constitutional expert, charged the saffron club with confusing between patriotism and the uniform civil code.
âThey (BJP leaders) will also seek to introduce uniform food practice, uniform language and a uniform dress code,â he said, leaving the audience in splits.
Ms Vasundhara Raje, the lone woman speaker on the panel, made a valiant attempt to highlight the gender bias in the religious laws and earned instant support from the crowd when she asked why the present society is doing little for those mothers who are only accused of killing the female embryo.

However, before Shahabuddin could turn menacing, the Gujarat chief minister began letting out âmissilesâ from his arsenal. âSecularists swear by two mantras simultaneously â go for emotional blackmail of the minorities and abuse the Hindu as much as possible in the same breath. This takes you high, up on the ladder of secular domain,â was the first reaction from Mr Modi.

Even as Mr Nariman who described himself as âneither a Hindu nor a Muslimâ but just âa poor fish in a shoal of political sharksâ, endeavoured to score some brownie points over Modi, the latter fired his final missile, flooring Salman Khursheed, Shahabuddin et al.

âYou are visibly threatened by the prospect of a uniform civil code in India; but ask the same Muslim from India travelling to the United States and he is too aware of the fact that he must practise the civil code there and he accepts it without hesitation. Why?â â Mr Modiâs googly had his rivals clean-bowled.

The motion, when put to vote, was carried with loud margin, courtesy Modi & Co.

03-15-2005, 07:09 PM

QUOTEAsianage
Truth about 'secularism'- full text of the article:
Questioning 'communalism'
- By Balbir K. Punj

'What is communalism? Explain the rise of communalism in India." This question in the CBSE Social Sciences examination flummoxed the Class X students. While students found it out-of-syllabus, their parents complained it of beingÂ "mischievous." This six-mark question was actually politically motivated. The education department (of the HRD ministry) which is the parent body of the CBSE, expected a "secular" answer rather than the correct answer. 

Thus Gujarat, Ayodhya, RSS, BJP would be accepted as synonyms for "communalism," but Godhra, anti-Sikh riots, Mopla riots, SIMI or Muslim League would draw naught. It is not clear whether HRD grandpa Arjun Singh would send his "secular" answer to the thousands of examiners who evaluate the answer-sheets. But the mischief was certainly evident.

The leftist stamp is quite obvious on such a CBSE question. The leftists have turned history and allied soft-disciplines like social sciences, media studies into bastions of "secularism." "Secularism" is thus an industry for those most of whom are unemployable elsewhere. 

The minister wants to learn what is "communalism." Summarily speaking, it was because of "communalism" that a "secular" Congress ceased to be in Pakistan despite Gandhiji's protestation that Partition would leave the functioning of the Congress unaffected in the seceding parts. It was the "ultra-secular" Communist Party which provided Jinnah with the intellectual arsenal he needed to justify partition. Thanks to "communalism" it was the first to be wiped out from
Pakistan after being dubbed as an anti-Pakistani Hindu party. This is the "communalism" that all "secular" parties have to go through to reach out to theÂ Muslim vote bank via the agency of maulanas and muftis - and a maulana being an Osama bin Laden lookalike helps. 

Ram Vilas Paswan, as a pre-election stunt, had suggested a "secular" formationÂ in Bihar under a Muslim chief minister. The post-election deadlock in Bihar had provided the most propitious opportunity to actualise that suggestion. Bihar would have got rid of the Lalu-Rabri family, the "communal" NDA would not have come to power, Muslims would have been pleased. Lalu himself should have welcomed this auspicious "secular" move to prove "secularism" was dearer to him than family interest.

But what happened when this suggestion was resuscitated after the elections? Both Paswan and Lalu, competitive exponents of "secularism," pooh-poohed it away. Why? It was because both these pseudo-Muslims knew they would make themselves irrelevant by putting a real Muslim in power. Lalu and Paswanare "secular" for their own benefit, and not for the benefit of Muslims.

The bulk of the Muslims, on the other hand, are "secular" by compulsion and not by choice. "Secularism" for them is a political weapon under democracy, where their burgeoning demography helps to tilt the balance in their favour. Muslims did not need "secularism" when Muslim monarchs ruled India for six centuries.

The British era too provided them a level playing field. Nay, with Aligarh Anglo-Mohammedan College (later Aligarh Muslim University) as the node, Muslims were used as a counterweight against the nationalist movement. They dubbed, with impunity, the Congress as a "Hindu party." The Congress under Gandhi, who bent over backwards, to enlist Muslim support could not attract even four per cent of them. 

Hindus, on the other hand, remained loyal to the Congress. The detractors ofÂ Savarkar have reinvented him as the icon of Hindu communalism. Savarkar was the sole interpreter of Hindu history and time is only vindicating him. But, as a leader, Savarkar possibly did not have four per cent Hindus by his side. HinduÂ Mahasabha had little mass following amongst common Hindus. But how come Jinnah carried 90 per cent of the subcontinent's Muslims with him with his stirringÂ call "Ladke Lenge Pakistan (We shall wrest Pakistan through war)." Congress'Â "secular" myth exploded in the 1946 elections where except for NWFP, it lost allÂ Muslim constituencies to Muslim League. This despite the fact that the CongressÂ at that time was being led by a poster boy Muslim president, Maulana Abul KalamÂ Azad.

Jinnah never criticised Savarkar as communal; that epithet was reserved forÂ Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and the entire Congress. Shouldn't the present day Congress buy this wonderful description of their party by Jinnah, who commanded the confidence of 90 per cent of subcontinent's Muslims?

But what happened so dramatically to the Muslims after Independence that theyÂ overnight became "secularists?" They remained ardent Congress loyalists for many years till the other "secular" parties like the Communists, the SP, the BSP, the RJD began to unravel that stranglehold. Before Independence, the British were the rulers, and the Congress merely a struggling party. On Independence, the erstwhile strugglers became rulers with all the mechanisms of state, armedÂ forces, police, intelligence agencies at their disposal. Muslims felt they were now at the raham-o-karam (mercy) of the Congress. 

Simultaneously, the partition had diminished their numerical strength by two-thirds making them look a pale ghost of their former self. Muslims were hardly visible in the Army, police and IB where once they had dominating presence. Emaciated Muslims made "secularism" a virtue out of necessity to survive. The goal now was to stop the rise of any nationalistic force, the Jan Sangh, as in British time the goal was to prevent the Congress from getting popular.

However, Muslims adopting this political "secularism" was a bargain for their being allowed to flounder in their obsolete and anachronistic mindset. The Muslim problem did not disappear from India. The Congress did not take up this opportunity to "secularise" their mindset forever. Nehru introduced reformist measures like the "Hindu Code Bill" for Hindus, but left the Muslim mind in that dark corner. While Hindus (and other minority communities like Christians, Sikhs, Parsis) went to regular schools, madrasas were given a free run for Muslims. Madrasas churn out students who are physically in 20th century India but mentally in 7th century Arabia. A 13-year-old boy from a madrasa knows everything about Prophet Muhammad, his wars, his relatives but hardly how many states there are in India, or how many countries there are in the world. 

It is not that Muslims who have to adopt "secularism" out of circumstances, hate a "secularist" any less than they hate a "Hindu fundamentalist." This was recently made clear by two fatwas in the Marxist bastions of Kerala and West Bengal. In Kerala, Muslim scribes recently issued a fatwa against Muslim girls marrying a Communist. In the second and most sensational fatwa West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee received warning mails spilling the beans of an ISI plan to assassinate him and abduct his daughter. The mail, with "personal" inscribed on it and opened by the chief minister himself, said, "Some heavily paid people injected with jihadi ideas have been sent to this state to assassinate you. We don't want to lose you and we think it is our duty to inform you beforehand." It also said that a plan was being hatched by some ISI agents who had already landed near Tiljala and Kasia Bagan (at a stone's throw from Mr Bhattacharjee's home in Ekdalia Avenue). 

In February 2002 Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was made to shut up by his partyÂ colleagues when he expressed grave concerns about the proliferating madrasasÂ along the Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bangla borders of West Bengal. The Dhantala massÂ rape in Nadia district inside a madrasa under construction during the wedding ofÂ a CPI(M) activist's daughter, later that year, was also watered down. But now itÂ seems the "secular" Communists can no longer ignore the elephant in drawingÂ room.

It is not that "secularists" love Muslims. But the situation has now actually got out of their hands, nor is it possible for well meaning Muslims to bring any enlightenment in the Muslim community. The "secularists" would soon find,Â without the benefit of "Hindu fundamentalism," Islamic extremism rearing itsÂ evil head as on the eve of partition. "Secularism" failed then, "secularism" will fail now. 

Balbir K. Punj, a Rajya Sabha MP and convener of the BJP's think tank, can beÂ contacted at bpunj@email.com

03-18-2005, 11:56 PM

QUOTEKya lagaya hai, yeh secular, secular?
March 18, 2005
The truth is finally out: Ram Vilas Paswan rooting for a Muslim chief minister in Bihar is 'secular,' but L K Advani rooting for a Ram temple at Ayodhya is 'communal' if not a 'fascist' as well.

If the country's entire media and its 'intellectuals' chose to be absolutely mum on Paswan's demand based on alluring the large base of Muslim voters, it was because our media is oh, so 'secular.'

And when Advani's demand is based on the historical, revenue and archaeological records of Ayodhya, he is still 'communal' because our media is oh, so 'secular.' That is the truth and the tragedy of Hindustan's intellectuals, the Election Commission included.

Yes, the cat is out of the bag: 'When it comes to the nitty-gritty what determines whether or not a person is secular is his attitude towards the minority communities, mostly towards Muslims who matter much more than Christians or Sikhs.' That is from the pen of the high priest of liberalism, modernism and smut aka Khushwant Singh, in a recent column.

Judged by that criterion of his, Dr Rafiq Zakaria, the renowned Islamic scholar, must be pronounced as a rabid communalist for the criticism he let loose on Indian Muslims in his book Communal Rage in Secular India, where he lambasts them for their hostility towards Vande Mataram and Hindus, derides them for their ghettoist mindset and mocks them for going to the mullah seeking a fatwa on the length of the beard to be kept, the level to which the kurta must fall over the knees and on whether male urination must be done standing or sitting.

Note, incidentally, Khushwant Singh's observation that Muslims 'matter much more than Christians or Sikhs.' Why? Singh doesn't say. What is conspicuous is that this differentiation in the status of three communities is created by a sardar of 'secularism.' Truly can iconic status be given to such people only in the clueless, spineless and thoughtless pseudo-secular world created by India's English language media and their vernacular cousins and partners.

The Indian Union Muslim League party is a classic case of the 'secular' notions generated by the English media. The IUML was formed on March 10, 1948 with its roots in Jinnah's Muslim League. The IUML is touted as a political party meant for protecting the interests of India Muslims. Yet, despite its name, it is recognised as 'secular' party eligible to contest Indian elections. The Leftists of all hues, the Congress of all hues, the Yadavs and the Paswans, the Mulayams and the Mayawatis, the John Dayal Christians -- all of them don't doubt that the IUML is anything but 'secular' but how many of them all can name a single non-Muslim member of the IUML?

When viewing the BJP, however, all of the above plus the DMK, PMK et al put on their dark glasses. For all its opponents in the political and media world, the BJP is 'communal' because it projects Hindu culture and Hindu aspirations while being the only one to simultaneously promise 'Justice to all with appeasement of none.'

All these adversaries have forgotten -- like all the media -- that, as a mechanism to resolve the Ayodhya dispute, the BJP had even volunteered to shift, with modern technology, brick by brick of the Babri Masjid to a nearby site even though the Babri structure had long ceased to be a site for offering namaaz. Hence, for all these adversaries afflicted with political glaucoma, the BJP is 'communal,' period, and full stop.

It means no whit to BJP's adversaries that its NDA government in New Delhi had two Muslims in its council of ministers who even today, when out of power, the BJP has given positions of high respect and authority. It means no whit to these adversaries that the BJP-led NDA government's defence minister was a Christian, George Fernandes, an important spokesman was a Sikh, S S Ahluwalia, and its attorney general was born a Parsi, Soli Sorabjee.

It means no whit to these adversaries that the BJP has Christians as its members from Goa to far away Mizoram and Nagaland and that one of the most prolific writers in Urdu, Muzaffar Hussein, has long been in the BJP fold. And, finally, it means no whit to this witless lot of adversaries that the RSS, the mother of the BJP, has always welcomed one and all to its arms, without ever asking for their caste or creed or community.

Under the circumstances, all that matters to those arraigned against the BJP is that the BJP must be kept away from power everywhere, and that any 'secular' government can only be without the BJP though it is all right to have in it that caricature called Lalu Yadav. The ad nauseam way these Commies and Congressmen, the Yadavs and the Paswans, the Mulayams and the Mayawatis have been talking of 'secular alliance,' 'secular coalition,' 'secular forces' and 'secular government' in recent months, makes one puke.

Hence, S Gurumurthy is dead right when he writes, 'For 'secular' India, secularism is not divorced between the State and the religion. For them secularism is exclusively for the benefit of the minorities. Extend it, secularism means pampering the minorities. Go further, it includes being allergic to the majority. That, unless one explicitly appeases the minorities and is overtly allergic to Hindus, one is not 'secular' enough. In Indian politics, uniting a minority for votes is 'secular.' Consequently, uniting the majority is anti-'secular.' And organising the majority is fundamentalist. In contrast, protecting organised minority is a 'secular' duty. This is the high point of 'secular' India.' (The New Indian Express, February 12, 2005)

The time has therefore come for the BJP to straighten its spine, hold the microphone and roar, 'Yeh kya lagaya hai, secular, secular?' It must ask that question, loud and clear, to all across the length and breadth of Hindustan. More specifically, it must direct that question to --

The Congress which, in the Rajya Sabha, voted out that clause in the 45th Constitution Amendment Bill, 1978, which defined 'secular' as 'equal respect for all religions.'
A M Ahmadi, a former chief justice of India who recorded that 'the term Secular has advisedly not been defined presumably because it is a very elastic term not capable of a precise definition and perhaps best left undefined.' (S R Bommai v Union of India, AIR SCW 2946 page 2992).
Lalu Yadav who thinks it is 'secular' to protect Bihar's Muslims from communal riots but to let a Hindu magistrate be transferred because he objected to a nearby azaan blaring during working hours despite a court order to the contrary, and to let Hindus be kidnapped a dime a dozen.
The Leftists of all hues who want us to believe it is secularism that 'in the 28th year of the egalitarian Marxist rule in West Bengal, dowry, lynching women as witches, marrying daughters to dogs and hiring sorcerers' service to tackle malaria, and refusal to eat food cooked by Muslims and lower caste Hindus are rampant and thriving in the state.' (Editorial in The Statesman,Calcutta, January 21, 2005).
Achyut Patwardhan and his ilk of pseudo-secularists who are apparently ignorant that, in his Constitution Law of India, 1998, page 4, footnote, the eminent authority, Basu, described the expression 'secular' as vague, and stated that it would be a correct summary of the provisions of Articles 25 to 30 of the Indian Constitution to say that the expression 'Republic' qualified by the expression 'secular' means a republic in which there is equal respect for all religions.

All 'secularists' of the above kind must be told that by far one of the most clear-cut concepts of pure secularism was propounded on August 11, 1947. It was not propounded by Jawaharlal Nehru, the father of today's pseudo-secularism, or by Mahatma Gandhi, who, with his Khilafat Movement was the first to officially bring religion into our politics. Rather, and most ironically, the perspective was propounded by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who fought for and got Pakistan for Muslims. At the first meeting of Pakistan's Constituent Assembly that day in August 1947, following were some of the words he spoke:

'You may belong to any religious caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the State. We are starting the State with no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, between caste and creedâ¦ We should keep that in front of us as our ideal, and you will find that in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense -- as citizens of the nationâ¦My guiding principle will be justice and impartiality.'(Jinnah, Speeches as Governor General cited on page 491 of The Proudest Day Pimlico 1998, by Anthony Read and David Fisher).

It's another supreme irony that Jinnah's vision of a perfectly secular Pakistan has turned into a fundamentalist jihadistan on the ground while the ancient, most tolerant of all nations, Hindustan, has today turned anti-Hindu under fundamentalists of a different kind. Patriotic Indians must brook no further delay in roaring, 'Kya lagaya hai, yeh secular, secular?'

03-21-2005, 04:19 AM

http://www.hindu.com/2005/03/19/stories/...071000.htm

QUOTE Don't hand religion to the Right

By Giles Fraser and William Whyte

In the United Kingdom, the secular Left must stop sniping and realise it has Christian allies.

FOR DECADES, the political class in the United Kingdom has prided itself on the absence of religious culture wars. The obsession with abortion, gay marriage and obscenity, the alliance between the secular and religious Right â these are peculiarly American pathologies. It could not happen in Britain.

Except it does seem to be happening here too. In making abortion an election issue, the Conservative Opposition leader, Michael Howard, has prompted the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, pointedly to warn against assuming "that Catholics would be more in support of the Labour party."

Elsewhere, the Christian Right targets the BBC, and the Church of England is being colonised by homophobic evangelicals with broad smiles and loads of PR savvy.

In contrast, the Left continues to push religion away. They "don't do God," according to one former spin-doctor. Even those politicians of the Left who "do God" privately have to be effectively outed, as the Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, was over her membership of Opus Dei. It never used to be like this.

There has long been an affinity between the Church and the Left. The Liberal party was sustained by the so-called non-conformist conscience and the Labour party famously derived more from Methodism than Marx â Keir Hardie once describing socialism as "the embodiment of Christianity in our industrial system." Later both CND and the anti-apartheid movement were inspired by Christian socialism.

Even comparatively recently, things were looking up for the religious Left. Tony Blair is a member of the Christian socialist movement and in Rowan Williams the Church of England has a self-confessed "bearded lefty" at the top. Yet instead of a renaissance there has been a decline. The Archbishop of Canterbury is now a virtual prisoner of the religious Right. And Labour Christians seem silent and impotent.

How did it come to this?In the first place, the religious Left has found itself constantly challenged by the secular Left. Whilst the religious Right and neo-conservatives have worked together, the progressives have split and split again. Mr. Blair is too embarrassed to talk the language of faith because he knows it would alienate his allies. Some object to religion on principle. Others insist that a Christian response is inevitably intolerant, exclusive, even racist. So Left secularists welcomed the Jubilee 2000 third world debt cancellation campaign but ignored the fact that the Jubilee is a biblical concept.

But progressive Christians also seem incapable of confronting the religious Right on its own terms. The irony is that the religious Right and the secular Left have effectively joined forces to promote the idea that the Bible is reactionary. For the secular Left, the more the Bible can be described in this way, the easier it is to rubbish. Thus the religious Right is free to claim a monopoly on Christianity. And the Christian Left, hounded from both sides, finds itself shouted into silence.

Does this matter? Well, yes. Religion is not going away; if anything, it is making a comeback. Nearly three-quarters of the U.K. population declared themselves Christian in the 2001 census. The old belief that religion would wither and die has been exposed as simplistic. In this environment, the secular Left needs to suspend worn-out hostilities and realise that many people of faith are fellow travellers in the fight for social justice.

Otherwise, the coalition of Christian and secular conservatives will grow stronger. That will further damage the church, turning it into an intolerant sect. But it will also undermine progressive politics.

All of which requires a new courage from the Christian Left. They need to toughen up, get organised and invoke the spirit of millions of Christians, from St. Francis to Donald Soper, who have fought against injustice throughout the ages.

The present situation also demands a reassessment by the secular Left of the religious Left. Because only the religious Left is capable of challenging the religious Right with the language of faith.

The secular Left, in short, needs to stop sniping and start making new friends. In America, the Christian Right and the neocons have grown strong by working together. Now so must the British.

03-25-2005, 12:37 AM

QUOTEAppeasing minority, again

NS Kapur

The haste with which the Parliament has enacted the bill to set up the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions is a great leap forward towards further appeasement of minorities. Article 30(i) of the Constitution guarantees an absolute right to the minorities, religious and linguistic, to "establish and administer" educational institutions of their choice. No other Constitution offers such rights to them in absolute terms. In fact, all other fundamental rights in our Constitution are hedged around with one restriction or the other with the sole exception of the educational rights of minorities.

A common problem of minority institutions is the role of madarsas that provide fodder for the growth of fundamentalism, as for instance the Deoband-Taliban axis represented the legacy of revivalism. Madarsas have sprung up all over the country in countless numbers, offering education to boys from primary to seventh standard in Arabic and Urdu languages. Besides, they provide physical education and emphasise on the handling of toy guns and rifles in the name of moral rearmanent. A number of students at the Aligarh Muslim University come from madarsa background, and are susceptible to the influence of militant Islam. The arrest of SIMI (Student Islamic Movement India) leader from the AMU is a case in point.

The minority psyche has not spared the majority as well. Hindus are a local minority in Kashmir, Panjab, Pondicherry, Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya. Their educational institutions in these states can claim the minority status. For instance, DAV College, Jallundur (Panjab) has been granted minority status by the High Court. The National Minorities Commission has already recommended minority status to Hindus who are living in Kashmir. Besides, there are nearly 20,000 Shishu Mandirs and Vidya Bharti schools scattered all over the country where education is imparted on the RSS's view of history. They teach that the rule of Hindu rulers in ancient India was golden. That Hedgewar, Golwalker and Veer Savarkar were among the great freedom fighters; and that Muslims, Christians and Parsis are foreigners. Besides, the caste system, child marriage and Sati practicers are defended. Further, Gujarat State Education Department had addressed a circular to all state schools, on January 20, 2000, to subscribe to RSS Magazine Sadhana.

Similarly, the Vijay Shanti Education Trust in Rajasthan claimed minority status for members of Jain community. The Rajasthan High Court observed, in its judgement in September 2001, that the founder of Jain religion lord Rishab Deo was himself a Kshatriya (Hindu) and that the Jains believed in all the deities worshipped by Hindus. The Court further ruled that if each section worshipping separate deities was recognised as a different community, it would lead to the fragmentation of the society. Still, the State Government recently accorded minority status to the Jain community in Rajasthan.

The status of women in minority institutions deserves introspection. Their biased approach towards women was noticeable when a woman teacher in the SGTB Khalsa College (Delhi) was sent on leave because she had come to the college with a hair cut, which is against the Sikh tenets. Another Sikh woman teacher of Mata Sundri College (Delhi) lost her job because she married a Hindu. The St Stephen's College (Delhi) is no exception, and a women was denied the presidentship of the college students union in 1980s even though she was declared elected in the first count. Thereafter she was refused admission in MA (History), although she had scored first division in the same subject from St Stephen's.

The emergence of minority within a minority is another unsavoury phenomenon. The Dashmesh Institute of Research and Dental Science at Faridkot (Panjab), as per the resolution of their Society (July 20,1996), circulated the admission notice debarring Patit Sikhs (without beard and turban) from seeking admission to the institute. It, thus, discriminates between "Sehajdhari" and "Keshadhari" students of the Sikh community. The "Sehjdhari" Sikhs are eligible voters for electing candidates to the SGPC Amritsar. The parallel growth of Protestant and Catholic faiths is reflected in the Memorandum and Articles of Association of St Stephen's that provides for only a Protestant to become its principal. As regards Muslims, the appointment of Vice-Chancellor Bashiruddin Ahmed was opposed by a Janta Dal MP Mohd Fazal on the ground of his being an Ahmedia Muslim. Likewise, Shia Muslim Professor Mushirul Hasan, the Pro-VC of the Jamia Milia Islamia, was looked down upon by the Sunni Muslims.

There is a general belief that a secular state exists only on paper if a citizen not being a member of the community which founded the institution can neither get admission nor become head of the institution, notwithstanding the fact that the institution is funded wholly or partially by the state. What is disturbing is that single faith educational institutions tend to institutionalise segregation instead of encouraging tolerance, with the result that students brought up are ignorant of others religions and cultures. The task of reforming minority run institutions brooks no delay. Functional transparency and the separation of administrative and religious function can be one of the options.

**acharya** · 04-10-2005, 04:13 AM

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Singhal sees campaign `to denigrate Hinduism'

By Our Special Correspondent

HUBLI, APRIL 9. Ashok Singhal, international working president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), today accused Sonia Gandhi, without naming her, of being responsible for what he termed "the systematic campaign of denigrating Hinduism and Hindu religious leaders."

Speaking at a function organised by the north Karnataka unit of the VHP to administer the "pledge in nationalism" to over 1,500 youth here today, Mr. Singhal said the intention of the campaign is to make people give up Hinduism and convert to Christianity.

Mr. Singhal who never named Ms. Gandhi but kept referring to the "foreign lady controlling the strings of power in New Delhi," saw her hand behind what had happened to the Kanchi acharyas.

According to Mr. Singhal, the refusal by the U.S. Government to give a visa to the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, was an affront to Hindus and formed part of the strategy.

He criticised the Chief Minister, N. Dharam Singh, and his Cabinet colleague for "bowing before the American evangelist Benny Hinn" when he organised a programme in Bangalore recently. These forces are abetting efforts to spread Christianity in the country, he said.

Mr. Singhal appealed to the people to be vigilant against the activities of those who are trying to undermine Hinduism, whose main weakness is that it is a divided house. The time has come to close ranks to challenge the assault on Hinduism, he said.

G.H. Naregal, working president of the VHP north Karnataka unit, welcomed the gathering. Pramod Mutalik, convener of the Bajrang Dal in South India, spoke about the pledge that was administered. Basavaraj Doddappa Appa, honorary president of the VHP State unit presided.

Mr. Singhal later inaugurated a `Hindu Bhavan' built by the VHP north Karnataka unit.

`Be prepared'

Replying to questions at an interaction with sadhus mainly drawn from the north Karnataka districts, Mr. Singhal asked the religious heads to be prepared to go to jail if need be for preventing conversion.

He asserted that it was imperative that the conversion of Hindus should be opposed at all costs. One should not mind going to jail for this, he said. The campaign against conversion will have an impact only when it is intensified, he said.

There is no point in remaining mute to the developments taking place, Mr. Singhal said and added that if one did not protest, "we will end up as slaves of the Congress."

04-13-2005, 07:57 PM

STATEMENT OF DR.SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY, PRESIDENT OF JANATA PARTY MADE IN CHENNAI ON APRIL 13, 2005

1. India is facing a severe threat to its national integrity. Indians will soon have to decide on whose side they stand on the side of the ancient Indian civilization or in the corner of fraudulent money throwing foreign fraudulent Christian missionary forces who are out to disrupt India. The recent visits of Benny Hinn and K.A.Paul are indicative of the likely âinvasionâ of India by these forces and its money power. Their patron, as indicted by Benny Hinn publicly, is Ms.Sonia Gandhi. Most of Congress Party has already capitulated to these forces.

2. Some Indian leaders, professing to be devout Hindus, who have capitulated, on blackmail, and have become the tools of these forces. Ms.Jayalalitha, the present CM of Tamil Nadu is one such Hindu renegade. She has pathetically surrendered to Ms.Sonia Gandhi and agreed to do Ms.Gandhiâs bidding undermine the Hindu heritage. The bogus cases filed against the Kanchi Acharyas and the
sullying of the Acharyaâs personal character is one such example of attack. The question arises why Indian Christian organizations are silent about this outrage especially after the Supreme Court verdict that there is no prima facie case? The defaming of Vivek Oberoi by Ms.Jayalalitha is also at the behest of these forces who want to use the Tsunami victims as a base. Ms.Jayalalithaâs cringing message on Popeâs death over Radio Vatican is yet another example of
this capitulation.

3. Moreover, India is ungovernable today with adherence to Nehruvian secularism. India will go the way of Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and disintegrate, unless secularism is redefined to include a Social Contract between the majority Hindu community and minorities, much like the Parsis had agreed to.

4. Hence I have decided to call for a Conference on âThreats to Indiaâs Integrityâ in New Delhi on April 23, 2005 (Programme enclosed). The nation is not safe until the UPA Government is toppled.
(SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY)

13.04.2005
PRESS RELEASE
The crude attack of the former Secretary to the PM, Mr.Brijesh Mishra on the RSS Sri Sudharshan does not answer anyone of the charges against him (Mishra).

Will Mr. Mishra publicly deny the following on record:

(a) That he holds a position in the present UPA government that entitles him to a diplomatic passport?

(b) That he has strong connections with Sonia Gandhiâs Italian family through his daughter Jyotsna, who is married to an Italian and lives in Italy. <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' />

Â© That he refused to authorize in February-May 2004 period the arrest of the CIA spy in RAW, Mr.Rabinder Singh, despite repeated requested for permission by RAW official Mr.Amar Bhushan, thus enabling Singh to escape to USA on mid May
2004? <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='unsure.gif' />

(d) That he intervened with US Administration to release from FBI custody Mr.Rahul Gandhi MP and his live in girl Juanita alias Veronique, when he was arrested in Bostonâs Logan airport on September 27, 2001?

(SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY)

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