Sunday, November 30, 2008
Mossad-CIA Connection ToMumbai Terror Attacks?
By Yoginder Sikand
29 November, 2008Countercurrents.org
“O ye who believe! stand out firmly for God, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to piety: and fear God. For God is well-acquainted with all that ye do.”
(The Quran, Surah Al-Maida: 8)
Numerous theories are doing the rounds about the dastardly terrorist assault on Mumbai. The dominant view, based on what is being suggested by the media, is that this is the handiwork of the dreaded Pakistan-based self-styled Islamist and terrorist outfit Lashkar-e Tayyeba, which, ever since it was ostensibly proscribed by the Government of Pakistan some years ago, has adopted the name of Jamaat ud-Dawah. This might well be the case, for the Lashkar has been responsible for numerous such terrorist attacks in recent years, particularly in Kashmir.
The Lashkar is the military wing of the Markaz Dawat wal Irshad, an outfit floated by a section of the Pakistani Ahl-e Hadith, a group with close affiliations to the Saudi Wahhabis. It has its headquarters at the town of Muridke in the Gujranwala district in Pakistani Punjab. The Markaz was established in 1986 by two Pakistani university professors, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Zafar Iqbal. They were assisted by Abdullah Azam, a close aide of Osama bin Laden, who was then associated with the International Islamic University in Islamabad. Funds for setting up the organization are said to have come from Pakistan’s dreaded official secret services agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). From its inception, it is thus clear, the Lashkar had the support of the Pakistani establishment.
The Lashkar started out as a paramilitary organisation to train warriors to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Soon it spawned dozens of camps across Pakistan and Afghanistan for this purpose. Militants produced at these centres have played a major role in armed struggles, first in Afghanistan, and then in Bosnia, Chechenya, Kosovo, the southern Philippines and Kashmir.
Like other radical Islamist groups, the Lashkar sees Islam as an all-embracing system. It regards Islam as governing all aspects of personal as well as collective life, in the form of the shariah. For the establishing of an Islamic system, it insists, an ‘Islamic state’ is necessary, which will impose the shariah as the law of the land. If, the official website of the Lashkar announces, such a state were to be set up and all Muslims were to live strictly according to 'the laws that Allah has laid down', then, it is believed, ‘they would be able to control the whole world and exercise their supremacy’. And for this, as well as to respond to the oppression that it claims that Muslims in large parts of the world are suffering, it insists that all Muslims must take to armed jihad. Armed jihad must continue, its website announces, ‘until Islam, as a way of life, dominates the whole world and until Allah's law is enforced everywhere in the world’.
The subject of armed jihad runs right through the writings and pronouncements of the Lashkar and is, in fact, the most prominent theme in its discourse. Indeed, its understanding of Islam may be seen as determined almost wholly by this preoccupation, so much so that its reading of Islam seems to be a product of its own political project, thus effectively ending up equating Islam with terror. Being born as a result of war in Afghanistan, war has become the very raison d'être of the Lashkar, and its subsequent development has been almost entirely determined by this concern. The contours of its ideological framework are constructed in such a way that the theme of armed jihad appears as the central element of its project. In the writings and speeches of Lashkar spokesmen jihad appears as violent conflict (qital) waged against 'unbelievers' who are said to be responsible for the oppression of the Muslims. Indeed, the Lashkar projects it as the one of the most central tenets of Islam, although it has traditionally not been included as one of the 'five pillars’ of the faith. Thus, its website claims that ‘There is so much emphasis on this subject that some commentators and scholars of the Quran have remarked that the topic of the Quran is jihad’. Further, a Lashkar statement declares, ‘There is consensus of opinion among researchers of the Qur'an that no other action has been explained in such great detail as jihad’.
In Lashkar discourse, jihad against non-Muslims is projected as a religious duty binding on all Muslims today. Thus the Lashkar’s website claims that a Muslim who has ‘never intended to fight against the disbelievers […] is not without traces of hypocrisy’. Muslims who have the capacity to participate or assist in the jihad but do not do so are said to ‘be living a sinful life’. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Lashkar denounces all Muslims who do not agree with its pernicious and grossly distorted version of Islam and its hideous misinterpretation of jihad—Sufis, Shias, Barelvis and so on—as being ‘deviants’ or outside the pale of Islam or even in league with ‘anti-Islamic forces’. The Lashkar promises its activists that they would receive great rewards, both in this world and in the Hereafter, if they were to actively struggle in the path of jihad. Not only would they be guaranteed a place in Heaven, but they would also 'be honoured in this world', for jihad, it claims, is also ‘the way that solves financial and political problems’.
Astoundingly bizarre though it is, the Markaz sees itself as engaged in a global jihad against the forces of ‘disbelief’, stopping at nothing short of aiming at the conquest of the entire world. As Nazir Ahmed, in-charge of the public relations department of the Lashkar, once declared, through the so-called jihad that the Lashkar has launched, ‘Islam will be dominant all over the world’. This global war is seen as a solution to all the ills and oppression afflicting all Muslims, and it is claimed that 'if we want to live with honour and dignity, then we have to return back to jihad’. Through jihad, the Lashkar website says, ‘Islam will be supreme throughout the world’.
In Lashkar discourse, its self-styled jihad against India is regarded as nothing less than a war between two different and mutually opposed ideologies: Islam, on the one hand, and Hinduism, on the other. It tars all Hindus with the same brush, as supposed ‘enemies of Islam’. Thus, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Lashkar chief, declares: ‘In fact, the Hindu is a mean enemy and the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted by our forefathers, who crushed them by force. We need to do the same’.
India is a major target for the Lashkar's terrorists. According to Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, ‘The jihad is not about Kashmir only. It encompasses all of India'. Thus, the Lashkar sees its self-styled jihad as going far beyond the borders of Kashmir and spreading through all of India. Its final goal, it says, is to extend Muslim control over what is seen as having once been Muslim land, and, hence, to be brought back under Muslim domination, creating what the Lashkar terms as 'the Greater Pakistan by dint of jihad’. Thus, at a mammoth congregation of Lashkar supporters in November 1999, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed thundered, ‘Today I announce the break-up of India, Inshallah. We will not rest until the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan’.
The Lashkar, so say media reports, has been trying to drum up support among India’s Muslims, and it may well be that it has managed to find a few recruits to its cause among them. If this is the case, it has probably been prompted by the fact of mounting murderous Hindutva-inspired anti-Muslim pogroms across the country, often abetted by agencies of the state, which has taken a toll of several thousand innocent lives. The fact that no semblance of justice has been delivered in these cases and that the state has not taken any measure to reign in Hindutva terrorism adds further to the deep-seated despondency and despair among many Indian Muslims. This might well be used by self-styled Islamist terror groups, such as the Lashkar, to promote their own agenda. Obviously, therefore, in order to counter the grave threat posed by terror groups such as the Lashkar, the Indian state needs to tackle the menace of Hindutva terror as well, which has now assumed the form of full-blown fascism. Both forms of terrorism feed on each other, and one cannot be tackled without taking on the other as well.
Mercifully, and despite the denial of justice to them, the vast majority of the Indian Muslims have refused to fall into the Lashkar’s trap. The flurry of anti-terrorism conferences that have recently been organised by important Indian Islamic groups is evidence of the fact that they regard the Lashkar’s perverse understanding of Islam as being wholly anti-Islamic and as a perversion of their faith. These voices urgently need to be promoted, for they might well be the most effective antidote to Lashkar propaganda. Numerous Indian Islamic scholars I know and have spoken to insist that the Lashkar’s denunciation of all non-Muslims as ‘enemies of Islam’, its fomenting of hatred towards Hindus and India and its understanding of jihad are a complete misrepresentation of Islamic teachings. They bitterly critique its call for a universal Caliphate as foolish wishful thinking. And they are unanimous that, far from serving the cause of the faith they claim to espouse, groups like the Lashkar have done the most heinous damage to the name of Islam, and are to blame, to a very large extent, for mounting Islamophobia globally.
At the same time as fingers of suspicion are being pointed at the Lashkar for being behind the recent Mumbai blasts, other questions are being raised in some circles. The significant fact that Hemant Karkare, the brave ATS chief who was killed in the terrorist assault, had been investigating the role of Hindutva terrorist groups in blasts in Malegoan and elsewhere and had received threats for this has not gone un-noticed. Nor has the related fact that the assault on Mumbai happened soon after disturbing revelations began pouring in of the role of Hindutva activists in terror attacks in different parts of India. That the attack on Mumbai has led to the issue of Hindutva-inspired terrorism now being totally sidelined is also significant.
And then there is a possible Israeli angle that some are raising. Thus, the widely-read Mumbai-based tabloid Mid-Day, in an article about a building where numerous militants were holed up titled ‘Mumbai Attack: Was Nariman House the Terror Hub?’, states:
“The role that Nariman House is coming to play in this entire attack drama is puzzling. Last night, residents ordered close to 100 kilograms of meat and other food, enough to feed an army or a bunch of people for twenty days. Shortly thereafter, the ten odd militants moved in, obviously, indicating that the food and meat was ordered, keeping their visit in mind, another cop added.
“One of the militants called up a television news channel and voiced his demands today, but, interestingly, when he was asked where are they all holed him, he said at the Israeli owned Nariman House and they are six of them here", one of the investigating cops said. Since morning, there has been exchange of gun fire has been going on and the militants seem well equipped to counter the cops fire. To top it, they have food and shelter. One wonders [if] they have the support of the residents, a local Ramrao Shanker said.”
A Mossad/Israeli hand in the affair might seem far-fetched to some, but not so to others, who point to the role of Israeli agents in destabilizing a large number of countries as well as possibly operating within some radical Islamist movements, such as a group in Yemen styling itself ‘Islamic Jihad’, said to be responsible for the bombing of the American Embassy in Sanaa, and which is said to have close links with the Israeli intelligence. Some have raised the question if the Mossad or even the CIA might not be directly or otherwise instigating some disillusioned Muslim youth in India, Pakistan or elsewhere to take to terror by playing on Muslim grievances, operating through existing Islamist groups or spawning new ones for this purpose.
If this charge is true—although this remains to be conclusively established—the aim might be to further radicalize Muslims so as to provide further pretext for American and Israeli assaults on Islam and Muslim countries. The fact that the CIA had for years been in very close contact with the Pakistani ISI and radical Islamist groups in Pakistan is also being raised in this connection. The possible role of such foreign agencies of being behind some terror attacks that India has witnessed in recent years to further fan anti-Muslim hatred and also to weaken India is also being speculated on in some circles.
Whether all this is indeed true needs to be properly investigated. But the fact remains that it appears to be entirely in the interest of the Israeli establishment and powerful forces in America to create instability in India, fan Hindu-Muslim strife, even to the point of driving India and Pakistan to war with each other, and thereby drag India further into the deadly embrace of Zionists and American imperialists.
In other words, irrespective of who is behind the deadly attacks on Mumbai, it appears to suit the political interests and agendas of multiple and equally pernicious political forces—Islamist and Hindu radicals, fired by a hate-driven Manichaean vision of the world, but also global imperialist powers that seem to be using the attacks as a means to push India even deeper into their suicidal axis.
29 November, 2008Countercurrents.org
“O ye who believe! stand out firmly for God, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to piety: and fear God. For God is well-acquainted with all that ye do.”
(The Quran, Surah Al-Maida: 8)
Numerous theories are doing the rounds about the dastardly terrorist assault on Mumbai. The dominant view, based on what is being suggested by the media, is that this is the handiwork of the dreaded Pakistan-based self-styled Islamist and terrorist outfit Lashkar-e Tayyeba, which, ever since it was ostensibly proscribed by the Government of Pakistan some years ago, has adopted the name of Jamaat ud-Dawah. This might well be the case, for the Lashkar has been responsible for numerous such terrorist attacks in recent years, particularly in Kashmir.
The Lashkar is the military wing of the Markaz Dawat wal Irshad, an outfit floated by a section of the Pakistani Ahl-e Hadith, a group with close affiliations to the Saudi Wahhabis. It has its headquarters at the town of Muridke in the Gujranwala district in Pakistani Punjab. The Markaz was established in 1986 by two Pakistani university professors, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Zafar Iqbal. They were assisted by Abdullah Azam, a close aide of Osama bin Laden, who was then associated with the International Islamic University in Islamabad. Funds for setting up the organization are said to have come from Pakistan’s dreaded official secret services agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). From its inception, it is thus clear, the Lashkar had the support of the Pakistani establishment.
The Lashkar started out as a paramilitary organisation to train warriors to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Soon it spawned dozens of camps across Pakistan and Afghanistan for this purpose. Militants produced at these centres have played a major role in armed struggles, first in Afghanistan, and then in Bosnia, Chechenya, Kosovo, the southern Philippines and Kashmir.
Like other radical Islamist groups, the Lashkar sees Islam as an all-embracing system. It regards Islam as governing all aspects of personal as well as collective life, in the form of the shariah. For the establishing of an Islamic system, it insists, an ‘Islamic state’ is necessary, which will impose the shariah as the law of the land. If, the official website of the Lashkar announces, such a state were to be set up and all Muslims were to live strictly according to 'the laws that Allah has laid down', then, it is believed, ‘they would be able to control the whole world and exercise their supremacy’. And for this, as well as to respond to the oppression that it claims that Muslims in large parts of the world are suffering, it insists that all Muslims must take to armed jihad. Armed jihad must continue, its website announces, ‘until Islam, as a way of life, dominates the whole world and until Allah's law is enforced everywhere in the world’.
The subject of armed jihad runs right through the writings and pronouncements of the Lashkar and is, in fact, the most prominent theme in its discourse. Indeed, its understanding of Islam may be seen as determined almost wholly by this preoccupation, so much so that its reading of Islam seems to be a product of its own political project, thus effectively ending up equating Islam with terror. Being born as a result of war in Afghanistan, war has become the very raison d'être of the Lashkar, and its subsequent development has been almost entirely determined by this concern. The contours of its ideological framework are constructed in such a way that the theme of armed jihad appears as the central element of its project. In the writings and speeches of Lashkar spokesmen jihad appears as violent conflict (qital) waged against 'unbelievers' who are said to be responsible for the oppression of the Muslims. Indeed, the Lashkar projects it as the one of the most central tenets of Islam, although it has traditionally not been included as one of the 'five pillars’ of the faith. Thus, its website claims that ‘There is so much emphasis on this subject that some commentators and scholars of the Quran have remarked that the topic of the Quran is jihad’. Further, a Lashkar statement declares, ‘There is consensus of opinion among researchers of the Qur'an that no other action has been explained in such great detail as jihad’.
In Lashkar discourse, jihad against non-Muslims is projected as a religious duty binding on all Muslims today. Thus the Lashkar’s website claims that a Muslim who has ‘never intended to fight against the disbelievers […] is not without traces of hypocrisy’. Muslims who have the capacity to participate or assist in the jihad but do not do so are said to ‘be living a sinful life’. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Lashkar denounces all Muslims who do not agree with its pernicious and grossly distorted version of Islam and its hideous misinterpretation of jihad—Sufis, Shias, Barelvis and so on—as being ‘deviants’ or outside the pale of Islam or even in league with ‘anti-Islamic forces’. The Lashkar promises its activists that they would receive great rewards, both in this world and in the Hereafter, if they were to actively struggle in the path of jihad. Not only would they be guaranteed a place in Heaven, but they would also 'be honoured in this world', for jihad, it claims, is also ‘the way that solves financial and political problems’.
Astoundingly bizarre though it is, the Markaz sees itself as engaged in a global jihad against the forces of ‘disbelief’, stopping at nothing short of aiming at the conquest of the entire world. As Nazir Ahmed, in-charge of the public relations department of the Lashkar, once declared, through the so-called jihad that the Lashkar has launched, ‘Islam will be dominant all over the world’. This global war is seen as a solution to all the ills and oppression afflicting all Muslims, and it is claimed that 'if we want to live with honour and dignity, then we have to return back to jihad’. Through jihad, the Lashkar website says, ‘Islam will be supreme throughout the world’.
In Lashkar discourse, its self-styled jihad against India is regarded as nothing less than a war between two different and mutually opposed ideologies: Islam, on the one hand, and Hinduism, on the other. It tars all Hindus with the same brush, as supposed ‘enemies of Islam’. Thus, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Lashkar chief, declares: ‘In fact, the Hindu is a mean enemy and the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted by our forefathers, who crushed them by force. We need to do the same’.
India is a major target for the Lashkar's terrorists. According to Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, ‘The jihad is not about Kashmir only. It encompasses all of India'. Thus, the Lashkar sees its self-styled jihad as going far beyond the borders of Kashmir and spreading through all of India. Its final goal, it says, is to extend Muslim control over what is seen as having once been Muslim land, and, hence, to be brought back under Muslim domination, creating what the Lashkar terms as 'the Greater Pakistan by dint of jihad’. Thus, at a mammoth congregation of Lashkar supporters in November 1999, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed thundered, ‘Today I announce the break-up of India, Inshallah. We will not rest until the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan’.
The Lashkar, so say media reports, has been trying to drum up support among India’s Muslims, and it may well be that it has managed to find a few recruits to its cause among them. If this is the case, it has probably been prompted by the fact of mounting murderous Hindutva-inspired anti-Muslim pogroms across the country, often abetted by agencies of the state, which has taken a toll of several thousand innocent lives. The fact that no semblance of justice has been delivered in these cases and that the state has not taken any measure to reign in Hindutva terrorism adds further to the deep-seated despondency and despair among many Indian Muslims. This might well be used by self-styled Islamist terror groups, such as the Lashkar, to promote their own agenda. Obviously, therefore, in order to counter the grave threat posed by terror groups such as the Lashkar, the Indian state needs to tackle the menace of Hindutva terror as well, which has now assumed the form of full-blown fascism. Both forms of terrorism feed on each other, and one cannot be tackled without taking on the other as well.
Mercifully, and despite the denial of justice to them, the vast majority of the Indian Muslims have refused to fall into the Lashkar’s trap. The flurry of anti-terrorism conferences that have recently been organised by important Indian Islamic groups is evidence of the fact that they regard the Lashkar’s perverse understanding of Islam as being wholly anti-Islamic and as a perversion of their faith. These voices urgently need to be promoted, for they might well be the most effective antidote to Lashkar propaganda. Numerous Indian Islamic scholars I know and have spoken to insist that the Lashkar’s denunciation of all non-Muslims as ‘enemies of Islam’, its fomenting of hatred towards Hindus and India and its understanding of jihad are a complete misrepresentation of Islamic teachings. They bitterly critique its call for a universal Caliphate as foolish wishful thinking. And they are unanimous that, far from serving the cause of the faith they claim to espouse, groups like the Lashkar have done the most heinous damage to the name of Islam, and are to blame, to a very large extent, for mounting Islamophobia globally.
At the same time as fingers of suspicion are being pointed at the Lashkar for being behind the recent Mumbai blasts, other questions are being raised in some circles. The significant fact that Hemant Karkare, the brave ATS chief who was killed in the terrorist assault, had been investigating the role of Hindutva terrorist groups in blasts in Malegoan and elsewhere and had received threats for this has not gone un-noticed. Nor has the related fact that the assault on Mumbai happened soon after disturbing revelations began pouring in of the role of Hindutva activists in terror attacks in different parts of India. That the attack on Mumbai has led to the issue of Hindutva-inspired terrorism now being totally sidelined is also significant.
And then there is a possible Israeli angle that some are raising. Thus, the widely-read Mumbai-based tabloid Mid-Day, in an article about a building where numerous militants were holed up titled ‘Mumbai Attack: Was Nariman House the Terror Hub?’, states:
“The role that Nariman House is coming to play in this entire attack drama is puzzling. Last night, residents ordered close to 100 kilograms of meat and other food, enough to feed an army or a bunch of people for twenty days. Shortly thereafter, the ten odd militants moved in, obviously, indicating that the food and meat was ordered, keeping their visit in mind, another cop added.
“One of the militants called up a television news channel and voiced his demands today, but, interestingly, when he was asked where are they all holed him, he said at the Israeli owned Nariman House and they are six of them here", one of the investigating cops said. Since morning, there has been exchange of gun fire has been going on and the militants seem well equipped to counter the cops fire. To top it, they have food and shelter. One wonders [if] they have the support of the residents, a local Ramrao Shanker said.”
A Mossad/Israeli hand in the affair might seem far-fetched to some, but not so to others, who point to the role of Israeli agents in destabilizing a large number of countries as well as possibly operating within some radical Islamist movements, such as a group in Yemen styling itself ‘Islamic Jihad’, said to be responsible for the bombing of the American Embassy in Sanaa, and which is said to have close links with the Israeli intelligence. Some have raised the question if the Mossad or even the CIA might not be directly or otherwise instigating some disillusioned Muslim youth in India, Pakistan or elsewhere to take to terror by playing on Muslim grievances, operating through existing Islamist groups or spawning new ones for this purpose.
If this charge is true—although this remains to be conclusively established—the aim might be to further radicalize Muslims so as to provide further pretext for American and Israeli assaults on Islam and Muslim countries. The fact that the CIA had for years been in very close contact with the Pakistani ISI and radical Islamist groups in Pakistan is also being raised in this connection. The possible role of such foreign agencies of being behind some terror attacks that India has witnessed in recent years to further fan anti-Muslim hatred and also to weaken India is also being speculated on in some circles.
Whether all this is indeed true needs to be properly investigated. But the fact remains that it appears to be entirely in the interest of the Israeli establishment and powerful forces in America to create instability in India, fan Hindu-Muslim strife, even to the point of driving India and Pakistan to war with each other, and thereby drag India further into the deadly embrace of Zionists and American imperialists.
In other words, irrespective of who is behind the deadly attacks on Mumbai, it appears to suit the political interests and agendas of multiple and equally pernicious political forces—Islamist and Hindu radicals, fired by a hate-driven Manichaean vision of the world, but also global imperialist powers that seem to be using the attacks as a means to push India even deeper into their suicidal axis.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Hemant Karkare! Tribute To A Hero
Hemant Karkare! Tribute To A Hero
By Mustafa Khan
If any Indian distinguished himself by writing history by his sweat and while doing so made history by writing it in his blood, it is this modest looking man. This assistant commissioner in charge of Anti Terrorist Squad of Maharashtra will be remembered for good. Those who were breathing down his neck will breathe a sigh of relief but all others will have grief
Terrorist Atrocity In Mumbai
By Keith Jones
Whoever were the authors of this week’s terrorist attack in Mumbai, it was a vile act that will only serve reaction in India and internationally. Unquestionably the BJP will seize on the Mumbai atrocity and its horrific toll in human life to try to suppress public discussion of, and derail the investigation, into the Hindu terrorist network
Bombs And Bullets Cannot Destroy India -As Long As Its Gates Remain Open
By Shashi Tharoor
This atrocity was not homegrown. But if it leads to demonisation of the nation's Muslims, the terrorists will have won
Once Was Mumbai
By Kumar Ketkar
That the terrorist attack took place just when the media was full of stories of “saffron terrorism” may be a coincidence, but the killing of Hemant Karkare, the chief of the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS), gives the event an anti-climactic turn
India's Leaders Need To Look Closer To Home
By Tariq Ali
Indian intelligence outfits are well aware of all this and they should not encourage the fantasies of their political leaders. Its best to come out and accept that there are severe problems inside the country. A billion Indians: 80 percent Hindus and 14 percent Muslims. A very large minority that cannot be ethnically cleansed without provoking a wider conflict
Zero Tolerance Time
By Zafar Sobhan
It is unclear what, if any, links exist between terrorists in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (to say nothing of links between Maoist extremists across South Asia), but what is incontrovertible is that all three countries of the Indian sub-continent have active terrorist networks, and given the porosity of our borders and the ideological affinities of many of the groups, it would be unlikely if cross-border networks and support structures did not exist
By Mustafa Khan
If any Indian distinguished himself by writing history by his sweat and while doing so made history by writing it in his blood, it is this modest looking man. This assistant commissioner in charge of Anti Terrorist Squad of Maharashtra will be remembered for good. Those who were breathing down his neck will breathe a sigh of relief but all others will have grief
Terrorist Atrocity In Mumbai
By Keith Jones
Whoever were the authors of this week’s terrorist attack in Mumbai, it was a vile act that will only serve reaction in India and internationally. Unquestionably the BJP will seize on the Mumbai atrocity and its horrific toll in human life to try to suppress public discussion of, and derail the investigation, into the Hindu terrorist network
Bombs And Bullets Cannot Destroy India -As Long As Its Gates Remain Open
By Shashi Tharoor
This atrocity was not homegrown. But if it leads to demonisation of the nation's Muslims, the terrorists will have won
Once Was Mumbai
By Kumar Ketkar
That the terrorist attack took place just when the media was full of stories of “saffron terrorism” may be a coincidence, but the killing of Hemant Karkare, the chief of the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS), gives the event an anti-climactic turn
India's Leaders Need To Look Closer To Home
By Tariq Ali
Indian intelligence outfits are well aware of all this and they should not encourage the fantasies of their political leaders. Its best to come out and accept that there are severe problems inside the country. A billion Indians: 80 percent Hindus and 14 percent Muslims. A very large minority that cannot be ethnically cleansed without provoking a wider conflict
Zero Tolerance Time
By Zafar Sobhan
It is unclear what, if any, links exist between terrorists in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (to say nothing of links between Maoist extremists across South Asia), but what is incontrovertible is that all three countries of the Indian sub-continent have active terrorist networks, and given the porosity of our borders and the ideological affinities of many of the groups, it would be unlikely if cross-border networks and support structures did not exist
Friday, November 28, 2008
The only way that we can fight the demon of terrorism is by revealing the truth and thus uniting the people across religions and nations for our common struggle against imperialism and for a global human society based on the principles of secularsim, democracy and social justice.
The battle is for the very Soul of India !
The battle is for the very Idea of India !
The battle if for the very Unity of India !
We the People will win the war for Peace !
दहशतवाद्यांची 'मराठी बोली'?
दहशतवाद्यांची 'मराठी बोली'?
28 Nov 2008, 0204 hrs IST टीम मटा ।
मुंबई
एटीएसचे प्रमुख हेमंत करकरे यांच्यासह तिघा वरिष्ठ पोलिस अधिका-यांची हत्या करणारे ‘ कामा हॉस्पीटल ’ मध्ये बुधवारी रात्री घुसलेले दहशतवादी अस्खलित मराठीत बोलत होते... कामाच्याच एका कर्मचा-याने ही माहिती दिल्याने पोलिसही चक्रावून गेले आहेत. ' कामा' हॉस्पिटलमध्ये बुधवारी रात्री घुसलेल्या दहशतवाद्यांनी तेथील दोघा वॉचमनवर गोळ्या झाडल्यानंतर तिथेच जवळ असलेल्या व युनिफॉर्ममध्ये नसलेल्या तिस-या कर्मचा-याच्या पोटाला एके-४७ रायफल लावून 'तू इथे काम करणारा कर्मचारी आहेस का', असे अस्खलित मराठीत विचारल्याचे कळते. त्यावर कर्मचा-याने अतिरेक्यांचे पाय धरले आणि 'मी येथे काम करीत नाही... हार्टअॅटॅक आलेल्या माझ्या पत्नीला येथे अॅडमिट केले आहे', असे सांगितले. तेव्हा 'खरे सांगतो का खोटे' असे दहशतवाद्यांनी दरडावून विचारले. त्यावर 'नाही साहेब, आईशप्पथ खरे सांगतो', असे उत्तर दिल्याने दहशतवाद्यांनी त्याला सोडून दिल्याचे कळते. ही माहिती याच कर्मचा-याने कामा हॉस्पिटलचे अधिकारी आणि आरोग्य खात्याला दिली. दहशतवादी अस्खलित मराठी बोलत असल्याचे कळल्याने पोलिस चक्रावले आहेत. याच तीन दहशतवाद्यांनी अतिरिक्त पोलिस आयुक्त अशोक कामटे, एटीएसचे प्रमुख हेमंत करकरे तसेच विजय साळसकर यांची हत्या केल्याचे समजते. कारवाईला वेळ का? दरम्यान, दहशतवादीविरोधी कारवाईची सगळी सूत्रे एनसएसजीचे डायरेक्टर जनरल हलवत असून ओबेरॉय, ताज आणि नरीमन बिल्डिंग येथे मोठ्या प्रमाणात नागरिक असल्याने त्यांना इजा होऊ नये, याची खबरदारी घेत कारवाई केली जात असल्याने अतिरेक्यांविरोधातील कारवाईला वेळ लागत आहे. दहशतवाद्यांना हुसकावून लावल्यानंतर एनएसजीचे कमांडो हॉटेलांचा एकएक मजला रिकामा करीत आहेत, असे मुख्यमंत्री विलासराव देशमुख यांनी सांगितले.
http://maharashtratimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3767093.cms
28 Nov 2008, 0204 hrs IST टीम मटा ।
मुंबई
एटीएसचे प्रमुख हेमंत करकरे यांच्यासह तिघा वरिष्ठ पोलिस अधिका-यांची हत्या करणारे ‘ कामा हॉस्पीटल ’ मध्ये बुधवारी रात्री घुसलेले दहशतवादी अस्खलित मराठीत बोलत होते... कामाच्याच एका कर्मचा-याने ही माहिती दिल्याने पोलिसही चक्रावून गेले आहेत. ' कामा' हॉस्पिटलमध्ये बुधवारी रात्री घुसलेल्या दहशतवाद्यांनी तेथील दोघा वॉचमनवर गोळ्या झाडल्यानंतर तिथेच जवळ असलेल्या व युनिफॉर्ममध्ये नसलेल्या तिस-या कर्मचा-याच्या पोटाला एके-४७ रायफल लावून 'तू इथे काम करणारा कर्मचारी आहेस का', असे अस्खलित मराठीत विचारल्याचे कळते. त्यावर कर्मचा-याने अतिरेक्यांचे पाय धरले आणि 'मी येथे काम करीत नाही... हार्टअॅटॅक आलेल्या माझ्या पत्नीला येथे अॅडमिट केले आहे', असे सांगितले. तेव्हा 'खरे सांगतो का खोटे' असे दहशतवाद्यांनी दरडावून विचारले. त्यावर 'नाही साहेब, आईशप्पथ खरे सांगतो', असे उत्तर दिल्याने दहशतवाद्यांनी त्याला सोडून दिल्याचे कळते. ही माहिती याच कर्मचा-याने कामा हॉस्पिटलचे अधिकारी आणि आरोग्य खात्याला दिली. दहशतवादी अस्खलित मराठी बोलत असल्याचे कळल्याने पोलिस चक्रावले आहेत. याच तीन दहशतवाद्यांनी अतिरिक्त पोलिस आयुक्त अशोक कामटे, एटीएसचे प्रमुख हेमंत करकरे तसेच विजय साळसकर यांची हत्या केल्याचे समजते. कारवाईला वेळ का? दरम्यान, दहशतवादीविरोधी कारवाईची सगळी सूत्रे एनसएसजीचे डायरेक्टर जनरल हलवत असून ओबेरॉय, ताज आणि नरीमन बिल्डिंग येथे मोठ्या प्रमाणात नागरिक असल्याने त्यांना इजा होऊ नये, याची खबरदारी घेत कारवाई केली जात असल्याने अतिरेक्यांविरोधातील कारवाईला वेळ लागत आहे. दहशतवाद्यांना हुसकावून लावल्यानंतर एनएसजीचे कमांडो हॉटेलांचा एकएक मजला रिकामा करीत आहेत, असे मुख्यमंत्री विलासराव देशमुख यांनी सांगितले.
http://maharashtratimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3767093.cms
Mumbai Terror attacks 26, 27 / 11 - masterminded by the Sangh Pariwar
AWAMI BHARAT
The dastardly Mumbai terror attack of November 26 & 27, has claimed the lives of over a 125 people and injured scores more. This terror attack in our analysis has been planned & orchestrated by the Sangh Pariwar and its allies within the security apparatus to counter the investigation of the ATS led by Hemant Karkare, so as to nullify and deflect attention from the expose' of the BJP-RSS Parivar's involvement in formenting terror attacks in the country. The basic aim was to totally subvert every attempt by the ATS (Anti-Terror Sqad) that was undoubtedly uncovering the nefarious terrorist cells within the various branches of the Sangh Pariwar as well as their RSS abettors & sympathizers within the army, IB, RAW and the entire security apparatus. The Mumbai terror attacks will thus draw away attention, as well as serve to justify the terrorist activities of the Sadhvi Pragnya's and the Purohit's and futher lend to their glorification. It will basically shore up the sagging credibilty of the BJP-RSS, especially that of L. K. Advani, who had taken a public posture of both defending the alleged terror cells and attacking the ATS. This was utterly myopic on the part of a leader who is unfortunately considered to be the next PM. Also L. K. Advani who has vehemently and publicly attacked Hemant Karkare, is now cynically praising the man after he was murdered. Moreover we also question as to why PM Manmohan Singh chose to accompany L.K. Advani to Mumbai and have only him by his side to the exclusion of every other national & regional leader ?? Also similar to the Jaipur terror attacks (March 13, 2008) which undoubtedly aided the BJP to win a majority in Karnataka, the Mumbai terror attacks could also prove useful to the fortunes of the BJP in the upcoming elections across 5 states.
One of the most disheartening events was the deaths or rather the murders of the courageous ATS Chief Hemant Karkare as well his associates, Ashok Kamte & Salaskar, who were spearheading the investigation. Hemant Karkare was not shot in the chest as was reported, but was shot in the neck. Even prior to this terror attack, Hemant Karkare was recieving a series of threats to his life for persisting with the investigation which was and has infact unravelled a terror network with deep roots in the various organization of the RSS and included the BJP, ABVP, VHP and the Abhinav Bharat amongst others. The cousin sister of Hemant Karkare as well the mother of Salaskar have appeared on TV and have expressed strong doubts about the deaths of their loved ones and have strongly hinted at other possibilities. It was also reported that when the death of Karkare was announced, the RSS members rejoiced and celebrated. We thus demand a judicial inquiry to look into the deaths of the three courageous ATS officers whose deaths are a blow to the morale of the entire police force. The feeling that Karkare and his comrades were the prime victims of this plot is now widespread amongst the people and is matter of serious popular discussion and a number of TV channels are discussing this possibilty.The death of Karkare and his comrades has sent out a strong signal to all those who would dare to challenge this diabolical Hindutva nexus within our security apparatus. This again is not unique to India as we are witness to the phenomenon of the religious right and its influence within the military establishment in countries as diverse as Pakistan (Islamist Right), USA (Christian Right) and Israel (Jewish Zionists). There is thus a need to weed out all such individuals and groups from within our security apparatus. The Zia's, Sharon's and Bush's have all proved far too detrimental for their respective nations and the world at large.
The first media reports began to inform us of a previously unheard of group called the "Deccan Mujahedeen". Let it be made clear that neither the Deccan or the "Indian Mujahedeen" exist. The Indian Mujahedeen is a creation & the front organization of the Indian security apparatus. The role of the "IM" is to seek to entrap Muslim youth. Organizations like the IM are created with the backing of criminal elements from within the Muslim community as well as informers. The IM is known to be linked to the Fazlulrehman gang as well as the Bhatkal brothers with similar criminal antecedents. We believe that it is fairly easy to entrap 15 odd Muslim youth annually out of a population of 15 crores, by showing them CD's of Gujarat and Ayodhya and by emotionally drawing them to "avenge" the oppression and exploitation of a beleaugured minority. Intelligence agents in the garb of Muslim clergy have been known to indulge in this activity, whilst informers like Safdar Nagori have also helped in this process.As far as the terrorists who attacked Mumbai are concerned, they are in all likelihood highly indoctrinated and extremely well trained terrorists, determined to die for their "cause" & are basically controlled by the American CIA, the Pakistani ISI and the Israeli MOSSAD. There is a long and recorded history of the CIA and the MOSSAD along with the intelligence agencies of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, deploying these groups in Afghanistan, Chechenya, Bosnia and Kosovo amongst others. The stunning report that stated that Indresh Kumar a senior RSS operative in Nepal recieved Rs 3 CR was known to Togadia, Purohit and Vaidya the ex-RSS chief. This till date has not been denied by the RSS. This hints of a collusion between the ISI and the RSS at certain mutually beneficial levels and should come as no surprise and needs further investigation.It was clear to the BJP-RSS that the threat that lay from the ATS investigation could destroy them as it went to the core of the leadership and names such as Advani, Modi, Togadia, Rajnath Singh and Vaidya began to appear.
Thus they would have to organize a major spectacular terrorist attack to thwart the investigation. In our estimation, the MOSSAD and the CIA have aided and abeted the BJP-RSS in the planning and execution of this terror attack. What was required in this extended sordid drama was the need for a genuine terrorist group of Pakistani origin, which was provided for by the ISI with a bit of prodding from its masters in the CIA and the MOSSAD if required. The ISI is a mercenary organization with no scruples and is out there for the highest bidder. Moreover there exists various factions within the ISI, some which are baically controlled and paid for by the CIA and the MOSSAD. The terrorist group would have no clue to the larger plot and would only be a pawn in the entire episode in which it would be given to believe that it was serving the cause of Islam by waging Jehad against Hindu India.The terrorists were also given targets which included nationals of the US, UK and Israel as an added incentive. In one such announcement the terrorist spokesperson announced that they were here in Mumbai as part of their battle against the Jewish people and the faith of Judaism. Thus the Nariman House building in Colaba, that unkown to most is inhabited by Israeli-Jewish families was also attacked and hostages taken. This incident will only serve to cement ties between the Zionist elites of Israel and the Brahmanical elites of India.The fact of the matter is that there exists a strong ideological bonding between Zionism & Brahmanism. Both are committed to racial, religious & caste superiority. Both also have a history of collaboration with Imperialism and the exploitation of their people.Let it be clear to one and all, that Muslims have never had any sort of antipathy or hatred for the Jewish people or for Judaism for that matter and history is proof of this fact. What Muslims like all other peoples and nations are oppossed to is Zionism and its colonial aparthied state called Israel. The fact of the matter is that at the heart of International politics lies the Palestine / Israel conflict and only a just solution will finally bring peace to the world.
Till then Israel will continue to destabilise Muslim societies across the world so as to spread Islamophobia and further weaken and isolate the Muslim community as is very apparent in India. The key is to understand the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Judaism represents the ethical and moral vlaues of the Jewish faith whilst Zionism is a rascist, fascist and colonial ideology.Both India and the world stand at the crossroads. The scourge of terrorism has become the political and social challenge of our times and needs to be fought as it is we the ordinary people who are the victims of terror. The politics of terror has replaced the politics of communal riots and is the new strategy of communal fascism.
One of the most disheartening events was the deaths or rather the murders of the courageous ATS Chief Hemant Karkare as well his associates, Ashok Kamte & Salaskar, who were spearheading the investigation. Hemant Karkare was not shot in the chest as was reported, but was shot in the neck. Even prior to this terror attack, Hemant Karkare was recieving a series of threats to his life for persisting with the investigation which was and has infact unravelled a terror network with deep roots in the various organization of the RSS and included the BJP, ABVP, VHP and the Abhinav Bharat amongst others. The cousin sister of Hemant Karkare as well the mother of Salaskar have appeared on TV and have expressed strong doubts about the deaths of their loved ones and have strongly hinted at other possibilities. It was also reported that when the death of Karkare was announced, the RSS members rejoiced and celebrated. We thus demand a judicial inquiry to look into the deaths of the three courageous ATS officers whose deaths are a blow to the morale of the entire police force. The feeling that Karkare and his comrades were the prime victims of this plot is now widespread amongst the people and is matter of serious popular discussion and a number of TV channels are discussing this possibilty.The death of Karkare and his comrades has sent out a strong signal to all those who would dare to challenge this diabolical Hindutva nexus within our security apparatus. This again is not unique to India as we are witness to the phenomenon of the religious right and its influence within the military establishment in countries as diverse as Pakistan (Islamist Right), USA (Christian Right) and Israel (Jewish Zionists). There is thus a need to weed out all such individuals and groups from within our security apparatus. The Zia's, Sharon's and Bush's have all proved far too detrimental for their respective nations and the world at large.
The first media reports began to inform us of a previously unheard of group called the "Deccan Mujahedeen". Let it be made clear that neither the Deccan or the "Indian Mujahedeen" exist. The Indian Mujahedeen is a creation & the front organization of the Indian security apparatus. The role of the "IM" is to seek to entrap Muslim youth. Organizations like the IM are created with the backing of criminal elements from within the Muslim community as well as informers. The IM is known to be linked to the Fazlulrehman gang as well as the Bhatkal brothers with similar criminal antecedents. We believe that it is fairly easy to entrap 15 odd Muslim youth annually out of a population of 15 crores, by showing them CD's of Gujarat and Ayodhya and by emotionally drawing them to "avenge" the oppression and exploitation of a beleaugured minority. Intelligence agents in the garb of Muslim clergy have been known to indulge in this activity, whilst informers like Safdar Nagori have also helped in this process.As far as the terrorists who attacked Mumbai are concerned, they are in all likelihood highly indoctrinated and extremely well trained terrorists, determined to die for their "cause" & are basically controlled by the American CIA, the Pakistani ISI and the Israeli MOSSAD. There is a long and recorded history of the CIA and the MOSSAD along with the intelligence agencies of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, deploying these groups in Afghanistan, Chechenya, Bosnia and Kosovo amongst others. The stunning report that stated that Indresh Kumar a senior RSS operative in Nepal recieved Rs 3 CR was known to Togadia, Purohit and Vaidya the ex-RSS chief. This till date has not been denied by the RSS. This hints of a collusion between the ISI and the RSS at certain mutually beneficial levels and should come as no surprise and needs further investigation.It was clear to the BJP-RSS that the threat that lay from the ATS investigation could destroy them as it went to the core of the leadership and names such as Advani, Modi, Togadia, Rajnath Singh and Vaidya began to appear.
Thus they would have to organize a major spectacular terrorist attack to thwart the investigation. In our estimation, the MOSSAD and the CIA have aided and abeted the BJP-RSS in the planning and execution of this terror attack. What was required in this extended sordid drama was the need for a genuine terrorist group of Pakistani origin, which was provided for by the ISI with a bit of prodding from its masters in the CIA and the MOSSAD if required. The ISI is a mercenary organization with no scruples and is out there for the highest bidder. Moreover there exists various factions within the ISI, some which are baically controlled and paid for by the CIA and the MOSSAD. The terrorist group would have no clue to the larger plot and would only be a pawn in the entire episode in which it would be given to believe that it was serving the cause of Islam by waging Jehad against Hindu India.The terrorists were also given targets which included nationals of the US, UK and Israel as an added incentive. In one such announcement the terrorist spokesperson announced that they were here in Mumbai as part of their battle against the Jewish people and the faith of Judaism. Thus the Nariman House building in Colaba, that unkown to most is inhabited by Israeli-Jewish families was also attacked and hostages taken. This incident will only serve to cement ties between the Zionist elites of Israel and the Brahmanical elites of India.The fact of the matter is that there exists a strong ideological bonding between Zionism & Brahmanism. Both are committed to racial, religious & caste superiority. Both also have a history of collaboration with Imperialism and the exploitation of their people.Let it be clear to one and all, that Muslims have never had any sort of antipathy or hatred for the Jewish people or for Judaism for that matter and history is proof of this fact. What Muslims like all other peoples and nations are oppossed to is Zionism and its colonial aparthied state called Israel. The fact of the matter is that at the heart of International politics lies the Palestine / Israel conflict and only a just solution will finally bring peace to the world.
Till then Israel will continue to destabilise Muslim societies across the world so as to spread Islamophobia and further weaken and isolate the Muslim community as is very apparent in India. The key is to understand the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Judaism represents the ethical and moral vlaues of the Jewish faith whilst Zionism is a rascist, fascist and colonial ideology.Both India and the world stand at the crossroads. The scourge of terrorism has become the political and social challenge of our times and needs to be fought as it is we the ordinary people who are the victims of terror. The politics of terror has replaced the politics of communal riots and is the new strategy of communal fascism.
The only way that we can fight the demon of terrorism is by revealing the truth and thus uniting the people across religions and nations for our common struggle against imperialism and for a global human society based on the principles of secularsim, democracy and social justice.
The battle is for the very Soul of India !
The battle is for the very Idea of India !
The battle if for the very Unity of India !
andWe the People will win the war for Peace !
Feroze Mithiborwala, Kishore jagtap, Sayeed Khan, Varsha V V, Amol Madame, Arif Kapadia, Afaq Azad, Chetna Birje, Reshma Jagtap, Irfan Mulla, Jagdish Nagarkar, Mulniwasi Mala, Ghazala azad, Munawar Khan, Saeeda Khan, Noorjehan Momin, Tito Eapen, Winnie Thomas, Inayat, Jyoti Bedekar, Anil Hate, Avinash Kamble, Chand & Harshwardhan Vartak
Feroze Mithiborwala, Kishore jagtap, Sayeed Khan, Varsha V V, Amol Madame, Arif Kapadia, Afaq Azad, Chetna Birje, Reshma Jagtap, Irfan Mulla, Jagdish Nagarkar, Mulniwasi Mala, Ghazala azad, Munawar Khan, Saeeda Khan, Noorjehan Momin, Tito Eapen, Winnie Thomas, Inayat, Jyoti Bedekar, Anil Hate, Avinash Kamble, Chand & Harshwardhan Vartak
Monday, November 24, 2008
Hindu Terrorism
By Badri Raina
Zmag
Epigraph:
"underlying these religions were a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act, not just for yourself but also for the greater good"
(Obama in his interview about Religion given to Cathleen Falsani, March,27,2004; cf. to his mother's teaching about the validity of diverse faiths and the value of tolerance.)
I
So, now, India is home to "Hindu" terrorism.
Departing from the more usual banner-appelation, "Saffron Terror", I wish the fact to be registered that saffron is drawn from the stamin of a delicate and indescribably pretty mauve flower grown exclusively in my home valley of Kashmir, and exclusively by Muslims. My inherited memories of it are thereby sweet and secular to the core.
Also, saffron when used to grace milk products, Biryani, or to brew the heavenly Kehwa is a thing of the gods truly.
It is only when it is coerced against the use of nature to colour politics that it rages against the sin. Then, don't we know, what gruesome consequences begin.
I think it proper, therefore, to stick with the more direct and honest description "Hindu" terrorism, since, much against their grain, even India's premier TV channels are now bringing us news of "Hindu" terrorism, so compelling the materials gathered by the investigating agencies thus far.
This despite the fact that in my view the term "Hindu" trerrorism is as erroneous as the term "Muslim" terrorism. Even though not a religious man myself, I am able to see that being Hindu or Muslim by accident of birth has no necessary connect with how one's politics turn out to be in adult life. A plethora of specific contexts and shaping histories are here provenly more to the point.
II
It was way back in 1923 that Savarkar, never a practicing Hindu (indeed a self-confessed atheist) had first understood that from this benign term, "Hindu," could be drawn the toxic racial concept Hindutva, and made to serve a forthrightly fascist purpose. That Brahminism had always been a socially toxic form of Hinduism was of course an enabling prehistory to the new project.
He it was who established Abhinav Bharat in Pune (1904), that theoretical hotbed of twice-born Brahminical casteism against which low-caste social reformers such as Phule, Periyar, and Ambedkar were to struggle their whole lives long.
Such casteism was made the instrument of communalist politics to serve two major objectives: one, to overwhelm and negate the specific cultural and material oppressions of the low-caste within the Hindu Varna system , and two, to elevate the low-caste as a warrior of a common "Hindutva" army against the chief common "enemy," the Muslim.
Such an army has been seen to be needed to salvage the "real" nation from this so-called common enemy who continues to be represented to this day by the RSS and its hydra-headed "educational" front organizations as an "invader" still bent on seeking to convert India into an Islamic theocratic state.
Aided in these mythical fears and constructions by the British during the crucial decades leading upto Independence, India's majoritarian fascists continue thus to keep at bay all consideration of secular oppressions based entirely in the brutal social order of Capitalist expropriation.
Savarkar thus counseled how a resurgent nation could result only if "Hinduism was militarized, and the military Hinduised."
Clearly enough, the serving army Colonel, S.P. Purohit and the other retired Major, one Upadhyay, who the Mumbai ATS (Anti-Terrorist Squad) tells us, are at the centre of the Malegaon terrorist blasts of September 29, 2008, alongwith Sadhvi Pragya and the rogue-sadhu, Amreetanand—and very possibly complicit in half a dozen other blasts as well—seem to have heeded Savarkar's advice to the hilt.
Indeed, in his Narco-test confessions, Colonel Purohit, sources have told some TV channels (Times Now), admits to his guilt and justifies his actions as retribution for what he thinks SIMI (Student's Islamic Movement of India) have been doing. He is understood to have further indicated that the rogue sadhu, Amreetanand, nee Dayanand etc., has been the kingpin and chief coordinator and devisor of several other blasts carried out by this cell, including the blasts at the revered Ajmer Dargah (Mausoleum of the 12th century Sufi saint, Chisti, which to this day draws devotees across faiths the world-over), and at Kanpur.
The ATS are now busy exploring the routes through which huge sums of money have been brought into the country for such terrorist activity as Hawala transactions, and whether the RDX, suspected to be used in the Malegaon blast, was procured by Colonel Purohit through army connections. It is to be noted that Purohit has been in Military Intelligence, and serving in Jammu & Kashmir, where it is thought he made contact with the rogue sadhu, Amreetanand.
(Indeed, as I write, news comes of the ATS claiming that Purohit actually stole some 60 kilos of RDX which was in his custody while doing duty at Deolali, and that in his Narco-test confession he admits to passing it on to one "Bhagwan" for use in the blast on the Samjhauta Express train in Feb.,2007.)
Needless to say, that alongwith the courts, we will also require that the ATS is actually able to obtain convictions rather than merely pile on evidence which may not be admissible in law.
To return to the argument:
As I suggested in my last column, "Notions of the Nation" (Znet, Nov.,4), Hindutva militarism since the establishment of the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS has been inspired by the desire to emulate and then better Muslim "aggressiveness" seen as a racial characteristic that defined "Muslim" rule in India, and rendered Hindus "limp" and "cowardly."
Thus, if Savarkar established Ahninav Bharat, Dr.Moonje, an avowed Mussolini admirer who in turn inspired Dr.Hedgewar to establish the RSS on Vijay Dashmi of 1924 (victory day, denoting the liquidation of the Dravidian Ravana by the Aryan Kshatriya warrior, Ram) established the Bhondsala Military Academy at Indore (1937). It now transpires that this academy has been playing host to the Bajrang Dal for militarist training routines etc., and its director, one Raikar, has put in his papers.
Unsurprisingly enough, both these institutions are now under the scanner.
III
Over the last decade, terrorist blasts have occurred in India across a wide variety of sites and in major cities and towns.
Many of these blasts have taken place outside mosques and known Muslim- majority locations, as well outside cinema halls that were thought to be showing movies inimical to Hindu glory.
Briefly, these sites are: cinemas in Thane and Vashi in Maharashtra, Jalna, Purna, Parbhani, and Malegaon towns, again all in Maharashtra—and all areas of high Muslim density, in Hyderabad outside a famous old mosque, and in Ahmedabad and Surat in Gujarat.
Curiously, in the Surat episode, some sixteen odd bombs were found placed along the main thoroughfare in tree branches, on house-tops, on electric poles and so forth. Not one of them however exploded. This was thought to be the result of defective switches. Curious circumstance that; besides the wonder that Ahmedabad's Muslims could find such sprawling access to such strategic locations without Modi knowing a thing.
Yet, regardless of where the blasts have taken place, almost without exception the Pavlovian response of state agencies as well as, sad to say, media channels has been invariably to point fingers of suspicion and culpability towards one or the other "Islamic" outfit.
Often, young Muslims men have been rounded up in the scores and held for days of brutal questioning without the least prima facie evidence. Nearly in all such cases, however reluctantly, they have had to be let off.
The most recent case is that of some fifteen young Muslims picked up after the Hyderabad blasts. Tortured with electric shocks, they have nevertheless been found to be innocent and let go.
Indeed, after the gruesome blasts in the Samjhauta Express—a train service of reconciliation and confidence-building between India and Pakistan—in which some 68 people were burnt to cinders, 45 of them Pakistani citizens, fingers were immediately pointed towards the SIMI.
Yet, the ATS of Mumbai now suspects that this may also be the doing of the "Hindu" terrorists in custody. These speculations have been raised by the circumstance that the suitcases that held the bombs had Indore labels on them.
Just as the ATS now suspects that more than half a dozen blasts (the two at Malegaon, in 2006 and 2008, at the cinemas in Thane and Vashi, at Jalna, at Purna, at Parbhani, provenly at Nanded and Kanpur) have all been the handiwork of "Hindu" terror groups.
IV
For some years, reputed civil and human rights organizations, and individual members of civil society that have included journalists, judges, lawyers, writers, artists, teachers, students, and labour organizations, besides organized Muslim fora and Left parties, have been cautioning both state agencies and media conglomerates to:
-- desist from the Pavlovian haste with which some one or other Muslim group is immediately named and labeled literally within an hour of the occurrence of a blast, thus contributing to the maligning of the entire Muslim community;
--to consider the possibility that groups other than those involving Muslims could be involved;
--to refrain from covering up prima facie evidence which points to such possibilities; indeed, where such evidence seems conclusive, as the complicity of the Bajrang Dal at Nanded and Kanpur;
--to ponder the question as to why Muslims should effect blasts within their own localities or outside their mosques;
--to weigh the consequences for the Muslim psyche of the failure of the state to prevent repeated pogroms against them, and to find or punish the guilty; not to speak of active state connivance in those pogroms (Moradabad, 198o; Nellie, 1983; Hashimpura, 1987; Bhagalpur, 1989; Mumbai, 1992-93; Gujarat, 2002, to cite just the more recent ones);
--to permit transparency in the matter of police investigations with due regard for the Constitutional rights of those held in custody—such as visitation, access to legal defence, norms of the recording of confession and other evidence etc.,
--to respect the obligatory presumption of innocence until anyone is juridically found guilty;
Time and again these cautions and rightful prerogatives have been trampled under foot.
Aided by the loud biases of the corporate media which have tended to reflect the predilections both of free-market imperialism and comprador urban middle class sentiments in India's metropolitan towns, India's state agencies and that "all-knowing" species, the Intellegence expert, who seems ever present to reinforce anti-Muslim prejudice, have tended to feed massively into the politics of the Hindu right-wing.
For years on end, India's chief malady has been sought to be seen to reside in "Islamic" terrorism, and in the complicit refusal of the secularists to allow draconian preventive laws to be brought back on the books. Not in poverty, malnutrition, disease, absence of health care or clean drinking water, or lack of steady work among the urban poor, or the ousted tribals, disenfranchised farmers, chronic failure of primary schooling and so forth among some 75% of Indians. And most of them belonging to the Muslim, Dalit, and Tribal communities.
And to repeat for the nth time, this three-fourths of Indians able to spend just or under Rupees Twenty a day, all according to the governments' own Arjun Sengupta Committee Report.
Not to speak of the venomous communalization of the polity, the alienation and ghettoisation of the minorities, and the state's failure or unwillingness to carry through schemes that could redress these maladies.
As to new terror laws, the government of the day may protest that it has all the laws it wants, and more; as well as the fact that the worst terrorist attacks took place when laws like the dreaded POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) was on the books during the tenure of the NDA regime led by the ultra-"nationalist", BJP. Small dent is made by any regime of empirically-founded facts, or fair-minded arguments on the right-wing fascists and their fattened constituency.
V
Now, of course, a radically transformed milieu is unraveling.
Photos and Videos are doing the rounds that show the "Hindu" terrorists currently under investigation in close and intimate proximity to top leaders of the RSS, the VHP, and the BJP as well.
Had POTA indeed been on the books today, such evidence would have authorized the police to put them all behind bars on the charge of associating with those under investigation for "terrorism." And all that without any recourse to bail either.
Predictably, nonetheless, after some days of dumbfounded crestfallenness (remember that the main electoral plank of the BJP in the elections now under way in several states and in the soon-to-be-held parliamentary polls is the failure of the Congress to eradicate "terrorism" because of its "minority appeasement" policies), the right-wing fascists are back to brazen form.
Even as the projected Prime Ministerial candidate, Advani (the high-point of whose career remains the successful demolition of the Babri mosque), party hard-liners have taken to peddling outrageous theories.
As a complement to the well-known Pavlovian hunch that "all terrorists are Muslims," we are now told by the likes of Rajnath Singh, the party President, that "no Hindu can be a terrorist," that is to say even when he or she is found to be one.
This for the reason that what the ordinary man calls "terrorism" is infact "nationalism" where any Hindu be involved. Live and learn.
Other than that, it is both interesting and laughable that spokesmen and women of the BJP are today reduced to gurgitating every single argument that Muslims and civil rights organizations have to this day voiced:
--presume innocence until found guilty;
--desist from the "political conspiracy" to malign a whole community;
--do not let enemies of the Hindu -right propagate fake evidence against them, since all evidence against them must be fake in principle;
--and most outlandishly, do not communalise terrorism; that from India's rank communalists who have done nothing but communalise terrorism ever since we remember!
VI
Even as these new developments point to a potentially mortal combat among "Hindu" and "Muslim" terror groups, I venture to think that the situation also offers opportunities of far-reaching redressal for all three axes that matter: the state and its agencies, the party-political system, and the polity generally.
First off, if, as has been the case, the Congress's secular credentials have consistently been vitiated by, willy nilly, playing second-fiddle to Hindu-communalist appeasement, the denuding of the Hindu- right offers it the opportunity of a lifetime to assert the supremacy of the Constitutional scheme of things, without fear or favour.
It is indeed a circumstance that can now help the Congress and other secular parties to come down like a ton on communalism of all shades that underpin the fatal subversion of the secular republic without the need for apology.
In this endeavour, its greatest inspiration must come from two factors on the Muslim side of the issue:
one, that over the last year every single major and influential Muslim cultural and religious organization has publicly, and repeatedly, denounced through speech, act, and fatwa "terrorism" as un-Islamic and a rightful candidate for punishment under law;
and, two, that without exception they have pleaded only and ever for fair and just treatment at the hands of the authorized instruments of state, both when victimized by pogroms and suspected as culprits; and for credible pursuit of those that persecute them.
Not once has any Muslim organization worth the name suggested that Muslims have any claims that override the Cosntitutional regime of laws and procedures pertaining to all citizens of the Republic.
All that in stark contrast to the refusal, however camouflaged or strategised, of the RSS and its affiliates to accept either the secular Constitution or the notion of secular citizenship.
It is to be recalled that the RSS tactically acquiesced to acknowledging the primacy of the national flag over its own saffron one in 1949 as a quid pro quo to its release from the ban imposed on it after Gandhi's murder.
To this day it seeks to overthrow the Republic as Constituted by law and to replace it by a theocratic Hindu Rashtra wherein the prerogatives of citizenship will be determined not by secular, democratic equality but racial difference among Indians (all that brutally codified in Golwalker's two books, We, Our Ntionhood Defined; and, the later Bunch of Thoughts which explicitly designates Muslims as the nations's "Enemy Number One" in an exclusive chapter.)
However Hindu cultural politics may have come to infect sections of the fattened urbanites, the Congress must show the conviction that none of these in this day and age would be willing to back what is explicitly "terrorist" activity, indistinguishable from any other, once the matter is proven.
This then is a fine moment to release a new energetic politics that recharges the conviction and inspiration of the non-discriminatory humanism that informed the leaders of the freedom movement, and thus to disengage whatever popular base the Hindu- right has built over the years since the demolition of the Babri mosque from its fascist leaderships and cadres.
Just as, infact, many BJP supporters are busy thinking whether they are indeed willing to carry their love of Muslim-haters quite to the point where those other dreams of Indian super-powerdom are seriously jeopardized by a war of competing terrorisms.
It is also a golden opportunity for the Congress-led UPA, should it come back to power, to take a hard look at the communalist virus that has infected law-enforcement agencies over the decades, and to make bold to effect reforms of a far-reaching character, such as include the recruitment of Muslims and other "minorities" in due proportion to the forces, and not just among the lower ranks.
Speaking of the army, some 3% Muslims are today among its ranks—some sixty years after Independence. And I won't make a guess as to how abysmal might infact be its share among the officer core, colonel and above. And wouldn't I dearly like to take a peek into what sort of Indian History is taught India's future officers at Khadakvasla and Dehradun. Truly; and who does the teaching as well.
VII
As to the BJP: it has another opportunity as well; namely to reconstitute itself as a secular party on the right, bearing full allegiance to the Constitution in letter and spirit (remember now that among other things on the street-level, the NDA regime led by the BJP did constitute a Constitution Review Committee—an ominous enough move that, thankfully, was duly aborted in course), and shunning once and for all its enslavement to the RSS and its fascist vision of India, its history, culture and state.
Failing to do so, the BJP may succeed in causing further mayhem; but it is highly unlikely now to attain the sort of ascendance it seeks through fair means and foul.
Most of all, the BJP must understand that the Muslims of India, and Christians as well, have the inalienable right to live and work in the country on the terms set by the Constitution, not by the RSS or the Sangh Parivar.
And, conversely, that the BJP itself is as subject to those Constitutional stipulations as any another collective of Indians who practice their beliefs and politics.
Let the BJP notice the epigraph chosen for this column; it comes from the new President-Elect of the one country that the BJP adores. Or will it now, with a black man at the helm?
A different voice floats from there.
Time for the BJP to change its langoti, and say "yes we can" also be peaceable and law-abiding citizens of the Republic of India. And to prize and protect its magnificent plurality like all sensible and humane Indians.
badri.raina@gmail.com
Zmag
Epigraph:
"underlying these religions were a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act, not just for yourself but also for the greater good"
(Obama in his interview about Religion given to Cathleen Falsani, March,27,2004; cf. to his mother's teaching about the validity of diverse faiths and the value of tolerance.)
I
So, now, India is home to "Hindu" terrorism.
Departing from the more usual banner-appelation, "Saffron Terror", I wish the fact to be registered that saffron is drawn from the stamin of a delicate and indescribably pretty mauve flower grown exclusively in my home valley of Kashmir, and exclusively by Muslims. My inherited memories of it are thereby sweet and secular to the core.
Also, saffron when used to grace milk products, Biryani, or to brew the heavenly Kehwa is a thing of the gods truly.
It is only when it is coerced against the use of nature to colour politics that it rages against the sin. Then, don't we know, what gruesome consequences begin.
I think it proper, therefore, to stick with the more direct and honest description "Hindu" terrorism, since, much against their grain, even India's premier TV channels are now bringing us news of "Hindu" terrorism, so compelling the materials gathered by the investigating agencies thus far.
This despite the fact that in my view the term "Hindu" trerrorism is as erroneous as the term "Muslim" terrorism. Even though not a religious man myself, I am able to see that being Hindu or Muslim by accident of birth has no necessary connect with how one's politics turn out to be in adult life. A plethora of specific contexts and shaping histories are here provenly more to the point.
II
It was way back in 1923 that Savarkar, never a practicing Hindu (indeed a self-confessed atheist) had first understood that from this benign term, "Hindu," could be drawn the toxic racial concept Hindutva, and made to serve a forthrightly fascist purpose. That Brahminism had always been a socially toxic form of Hinduism was of course an enabling prehistory to the new project.
He it was who established Abhinav Bharat in Pune (1904), that theoretical hotbed of twice-born Brahminical casteism against which low-caste social reformers such as Phule, Periyar, and Ambedkar were to struggle their whole lives long.
Such casteism was made the instrument of communalist politics to serve two major objectives: one, to overwhelm and negate the specific cultural and material oppressions of the low-caste within the Hindu Varna system , and two, to elevate the low-caste as a warrior of a common "Hindutva" army against the chief common "enemy," the Muslim.
Such an army has been seen to be needed to salvage the "real" nation from this so-called common enemy who continues to be represented to this day by the RSS and its hydra-headed "educational" front organizations as an "invader" still bent on seeking to convert India into an Islamic theocratic state.
Aided in these mythical fears and constructions by the British during the crucial decades leading upto Independence, India's majoritarian fascists continue thus to keep at bay all consideration of secular oppressions based entirely in the brutal social order of Capitalist expropriation.
Savarkar thus counseled how a resurgent nation could result only if "Hinduism was militarized, and the military Hinduised."
Clearly enough, the serving army Colonel, S.P. Purohit and the other retired Major, one Upadhyay, who the Mumbai ATS (Anti-Terrorist Squad) tells us, are at the centre of the Malegaon terrorist blasts of September 29, 2008, alongwith Sadhvi Pragya and the rogue-sadhu, Amreetanand—and very possibly complicit in half a dozen other blasts as well—seem to have heeded Savarkar's advice to the hilt.
Indeed, in his Narco-test confessions, Colonel Purohit, sources have told some TV channels (Times Now), admits to his guilt and justifies his actions as retribution for what he thinks SIMI (Student's Islamic Movement of India) have been doing. He is understood to have further indicated that the rogue sadhu, Amreetanand, nee Dayanand etc., has been the kingpin and chief coordinator and devisor of several other blasts carried out by this cell, including the blasts at the revered Ajmer Dargah (Mausoleum of the 12th century Sufi saint, Chisti, which to this day draws devotees across faiths the world-over), and at Kanpur.
The ATS are now busy exploring the routes through which huge sums of money have been brought into the country for such terrorist activity as Hawala transactions, and whether the RDX, suspected to be used in the Malegaon blast, was procured by Colonel Purohit through army connections. It is to be noted that Purohit has been in Military Intelligence, and serving in Jammu & Kashmir, where it is thought he made contact with the rogue sadhu, Amreetanand.
(Indeed, as I write, news comes of the ATS claiming that Purohit actually stole some 60 kilos of RDX which was in his custody while doing duty at Deolali, and that in his Narco-test confession he admits to passing it on to one "Bhagwan" for use in the blast on the Samjhauta Express train in Feb.,2007.)
Needless to say, that alongwith the courts, we will also require that the ATS is actually able to obtain convictions rather than merely pile on evidence which may not be admissible in law.
To return to the argument:
As I suggested in my last column, "Notions of the Nation" (Znet, Nov.,4), Hindutva militarism since the establishment of the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS has been inspired by the desire to emulate and then better Muslim "aggressiveness" seen as a racial characteristic that defined "Muslim" rule in India, and rendered Hindus "limp" and "cowardly."
Thus, if Savarkar established Ahninav Bharat, Dr.Moonje, an avowed Mussolini admirer who in turn inspired Dr.Hedgewar to establish the RSS on Vijay Dashmi of 1924 (victory day, denoting the liquidation of the Dravidian Ravana by the Aryan Kshatriya warrior, Ram) established the Bhondsala Military Academy at Indore (1937). It now transpires that this academy has been playing host to the Bajrang Dal for militarist training routines etc., and its director, one Raikar, has put in his papers.
Unsurprisingly enough, both these institutions are now under the scanner.
III
Over the last decade, terrorist blasts have occurred in India across a wide variety of sites and in major cities and towns.
Many of these blasts have taken place outside mosques and known Muslim- majority locations, as well outside cinema halls that were thought to be showing movies inimical to Hindu glory.
Briefly, these sites are: cinemas in Thane and Vashi in Maharashtra, Jalna, Purna, Parbhani, and Malegaon towns, again all in Maharashtra—and all areas of high Muslim density, in Hyderabad outside a famous old mosque, and in Ahmedabad and Surat in Gujarat.
Curiously, in the Surat episode, some sixteen odd bombs were found placed along the main thoroughfare in tree branches, on house-tops, on electric poles and so forth. Not one of them however exploded. This was thought to be the result of defective switches. Curious circumstance that; besides the wonder that Ahmedabad's Muslims could find such sprawling access to such strategic locations without Modi knowing a thing.
Yet, regardless of where the blasts have taken place, almost without exception the Pavlovian response of state agencies as well as, sad to say, media channels has been invariably to point fingers of suspicion and culpability towards one or the other "Islamic" outfit.
Often, young Muslims men have been rounded up in the scores and held for days of brutal questioning without the least prima facie evidence. Nearly in all such cases, however reluctantly, they have had to be let off.
The most recent case is that of some fifteen young Muslims picked up after the Hyderabad blasts. Tortured with electric shocks, they have nevertheless been found to be innocent and let go.
Indeed, after the gruesome blasts in the Samjhauta Express—a train service of reconciliation and confidence-building between India and Pakistan—in which some 68 people were burnt to cinders, 45 of them Pakistani citizens, fingers were immediately pointed towards the SIMI.
Yet, the ATS of Mumbai now suspects that this may also be the doing of the "Hindu" terrorists in custody. These speculations have been raised by the circumstance that the suitcases that held the bombs had Indore labels on them.
Just as the ATS now suspects that more than half a dozen blasts (the two at Malegaon, in 2006 and 2008, at the cinemas in Thane and Vashi, at Jalna, at Purna, at Parbhani, provenly at Nanded and Kanpur) have all been the handiwork of "Hindu" terror groups.
IV
For some years, reputed civil and human rights organizations, and individual members of civil society that have included journalists, judges, lawyers, writers, artists, teachers, students, and labour organizations, besides organized Muslim fora and Left parties, have been cautioning both state agencies and media conglomerates to:
-- desist from the Pavlovian haste with which some one or other Muslim group is immediately named and labeled literally within an hour of the occurrence of a blast, thus contributing to the maligning of the entire Muslim community;
--to consider the possibility that groups other than those involving Muslims could be involved;
--to refrain from covering up prima facie evidence which points to such possibilities; indeed, where such evidence seems conclusive, as the complicity of the Bajrang Dal at Nanded and Kanpur;
--to ponder the question as to why Muslims should effect blasts within their own localities or outside their mosques;
--to weigh the consequences for the Muslim psyche of the failure of the state to prevent repeated pogroms against them, and to find or punish the guilty; not to speak of active state connivance in those pogroms (Moradabad, 198o; Nellie, 1983; Hashimpura, 1987; Bhagalpur, 1989; Mumbai, 1992-93; Gujarat, 2002, to cite just the more recent ones);
--to permit transparency in the matter of police investigations with due regard for the Constitutional rights of those held in custody—such as visitation, access to legal defence, norms of the recording of confession and other evidence etc.,
--to respect the obligatory presumption of innocence until anyone is juridically found guilty;
Time and again these cautions and rightful prerogatives have been trampled under foot.
Aided by the loud biases of the corporate media which have tended to reflect the predilections both of free-market imperialism and comprador urban middle class sentiments in India's metropolitan towns, India's state agencies and that "all-knowing" species, the Intellegence expert, who seems ever present to reinforce anti-Muslim prejudice, have tended to feed massively into the politics of the Hindu right-wing.
For years on end, India's chief malady has been sought to be seen to reside in "Islamic" terrorism, and in the complicit refusal of the secularists to allow draconian preventive laws to be brought back on the books. Not in poverty, malnutrition, disease, absence of health care or clean drinking water, or lack of steady work among the urban poor, or the ousted tribals, disenfranchised farmers, chronic failure of primary schooling and so forth among some 75% of Indians. And most of them belonging to the Muslim, Dalit, and Tribal communities.
And to repeat for the nth time, this three-fourths of Indians able to spend just or under Rupees Twenty a day, all according to the governments' own Arjun Sengupta Committee Report.
Not to speak of the venomous communalization of the polity, the alienation and ghettoisation of the minorities, and the state's failure or unwillingness to carry through schemes that could redress these maladies.
As to new terror laws, the government of the day may protest that it has all the laws it wants, and more; as well as the fact that the worst terrorist attacks took place when laws like the dreaded POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) was on the books during the tenure of the NDA regime led by the ultra-"nationalist", BJP. Small dent is made by any regime of empirically-founded facts, or fair-minded arguments on the right-wing fascists and their fattened constituency.
V
Now, of course, a radically transformed milieu is unraveling.
Photos and Videos are doing the rounds that show the "Hindu" terrorists currently under investigation in close and intimate proximity to top leaders of the RSS, the VHP, and the BJP as well.
Had POTA indeed been on the books today, such evidence would have authorized the police to put them all behind bars on the charge of associating with those under investigation for "terrorism." And all that without any recourse to bail either.
Predictably, nonetheless, after some days of dumbfounded crestfallenness (remember that the main electoral plank of the BJP in the elections now under way in several states and in the soon-to-be-held parliamentary polls is the failure of the Congress to eradicate "terrorism" because of its "minority appeasement" policies), the right-wing fascists are back to brazen form.
Even as the projected Prime Ministerial candidate, Advani (the high-point of whose career remains the successful demolition of the Babri mosque), party hard-liners have taken to peddling outrageous theories.
As a complement to the well-known Pavlovian hunch that "all terrorists are Muslims," we are now told by the likes of Rajnath Singh, the party President, that "no Hindu can be a terrorist," that is to say even when he or she is found to be one.
This for the reason that what the ordinary man calls "terrorism" is infact "nationalism" where any Hindu be involved. Live and learn.
Other than that, it is both interesting and laughable that spokesmen and women of the BJP are today reduced to gurgitating every single argument that Muslims and civil rights organizations have to this day voiced:
--presume innocence until found guilty;
--desist from the "political conspiracy" to malign a whole community;
--do not let enemies of the Hindu -right propagate fake evidence against them, since all evidence against them must be fake in principle;
--and most outlandishly, do not communalise terrorism; that from India's rank communalists who have done nothing but communalise terrorism ever since we remember!
VI
Even as these new developments point to a potentially mortal combat among "Hindu" and "Muslim" terror groups, I venture to think that the situation also offers opportunities of far-reaching redressal for all three axes that matter: the state and its agencies, the party-political system, and the polity generally.
First off, if, as has been the case, the Congress's secular credentials have consistently been vitiated by, willy nilly, playing second-fiddle to Hindu-communalist appeasement, the denuding of the Hindu- right offers it the opportunity of a lifetime to assert the supremacy of the Constitutional scheme of things, without fear or favour.
It is indeed a circumstance that can now help the Congress and other secular parties to come down like a ton on communalism of all shades that underpin the fatal subversion of the secular republic without the need for apology.
In this endeavour, its greatest inspiration must come from two factors on the Muslim side of the issue:
one, that over the last year every single major and influential Muslim cultural and religious organization has publicly, and repeatedly, denounced through speech, act, and fatwa "terrorism" as un-Islamic and a rightful candidate for punishment under law;
and, two, that without exception they have pleaded only and ever for fair and just treatment at the hands of the authorized instruments of state, both when victimized by pogroms and suspected as culprits; and for credible pursuit of those that persecute them.
Not once has any Muslim organization worth the name suggested that Muslims have any claims that override the Cosntitutional regime of laws and procedures pertaining to all citizens of the Republic.
All that in stark contrast to the refusal, however camouflaged or strategised, of the RSS and its affiliates to accept either the secular Constitution or the notion of secular citizenship.
It is to be recalled that the RSS tactically acquiesced to acknowledging the primacy of the national flag over its own saffron one in 1949 as a quid pro quo to its release from the ban imposed on it after Gandhi's murder.
To this day it seeks to overthrow the Republic as Constituted by law and to replace it by a theocratic Hindu Rashtra wherein the prerogatives of citizenship will be determined not by secular, democratic equality but racial difference among Indians (all that brutally codified in Golwalker's two books, We, Our Ntionhood Defined; and, the later Bunch of Thoughts which explicitly designates Muslims as the nations's "Enemy Number One" in an exclusive chapter.)
However Hindu cultural politics may have come to infect sections of the fattened urbanites, the Congress must show the conviction that none of these in this day and age would be willing to back what is explicitly "terrorist" activity, indistinguishable from any other, once the matter is proven.
This then is a fine moment to release a new energetic politics that recharges the conviction and inspiration of the non-discriminatory humanism that informed the leaders of the freedom movement, and thus to disengage whatever popular base the Hindu- right has built over the years since the demolition of the Babri mosque from its fascist leaderships and cadres.
Just as, infact, many BJP supporters are busy thinking whether they are indeed willing to carry their love of Muslim-haters quite to the point where those other dreams of Indian super-powerdom are seriously jeopardized by a war of competing terrorisms.
It is also a golden opportunity for the Congress-led UPA, should it come back to power, to take a hard look at the communalist virus that has infected law-enforcement agencies over the decades, and to make bold to effect reforms of a far-reaching character, such as include the recruitment of Muslims and other "minorities" in due proportion to the forces, and not just among the lower ranks.
Speaking of the army, some 3% Muslims are today among its ranks—some sixty years after Independence. And I won't make a guess as to how abysmal might infact be its share among the officer core, colonel and above. And wouldn't I dearly like to take a peek into what sort of Indian History is taught India's future officers at Khadakvasla and Dehradun. Truly; and who does the teaching as well.
VII
As to the BJP: it has another opportunity as well; namely to reconstitute itself as a secular party on the right, bearing full allegiance to the Constitution in letter and spirit (remember now that among other things on the street-level, the NDA regime led by the BJP did constitute a Constitution Review Committee—an ominous enough move that, thankfully, was duly aborted in course), and shunning once and for all its enslavement to the RSS and its fascist vision of India, its history, culture and state.
Failing to do so, the BJP may succeed in causing further mayhem; but it is highly unlikely now to attain the sort of ascendance it seeks through fair means and foul.
Most of all, the BJP must understand that the Muslims of India, and Christians as well, have the inalienable right to live and work in the country on the terms set by the Constitution, not by the RSS or the Sangh Parivar.
And, conversely, that the BJP itself is as subject to those Constitutional stipulations as any another collective of Indians who practice their beliefs and politics.
Let the BJP notice the epigraph chosen for this column; it comes from the new President-Elect of the one country that the BJP adores. Or will it now, with a black man at the helm?
A different voice floats from there.
Time for the BJP to change its langoti, and say "yes we can" also be peaceable and law-abiding citizens of the Republic of India. And to prize and protect its magnificent plurality like all sensible and humane Indians.
badri.raina@gmail.com
Extrajudicial Assassinations As Official Israeli Policy
Extrajudicial Assassinations As Official Israeli Policy
By Stephen Lendman
Throughout its history, Israel willfully and systematically committed premeditated extrajudicial killings of Palestinians and other Arabs as official state policy - carried out with explicit high-level political, judicial and military authorization and allegedly in "self-defense" against individuals threatening Israeli security. Government officials even admit that certain persons are targeted, and Dan Haluts, former Israeli Army Chief of Staff, once told the Washington Post (in August 2006) that "Targeted killing is the most important method in the fight against 'terrorism.' " In other words, premeditated murder is acceptable as long as it's properly classified
Humanitarian Disaster And News Blackout In Gaza
Israel has imposed a virtual news blackout on the Gaza Strip. For the last ten days no foreign journalists have been able to enter the besieged territory to report on the escalating humanitarian crisis caused by Israel's complete closure of Gaza's borders for the last two weeks
Obama And The Prospects ForIsraeli-Palestinian Peace
By Ali Abunimah
United States President-elect Barack Obama's election victory has revived hopes that stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations could finally lead to a two-state solution. Few new presidents have been greeted with such optimism and associated high expectations
By Stephen Lendman
Throughout its history, Israel willfully and systematically committed premeditated extrajudicial killings of Palestinians and other Arabs as official state policy - carried out with explicit high-level political, judicial and military authorization and allegedly in "self-defense" against individuals threatening Israeli security. Government officials even admit that certain persons are targeted, and Dan Haluts, former Israeli Army Chief of Staff, once told the Washington Post (in August 2006) that "Targeted killing is the most important method in the fight against 'terrorism.' " In other words, premeditated murder is acceptable as long as it's properly classified
Humanitarian Disaster And News Blackout In Gaza
Israel has imposed a virtual news blackout on the Gaza Strip. For the last ten days no foreign journalists have been able to enter the besieged territory to report on the escalating humanitarian crisis caused by Israel's complete closure of Gaza's borders for the last two weeks
Obama And The Prospects ForIsraeli-Palestinian Peace
By Ali Abunimah
United States President-elect Barack Obama's election victory has revived hopes that stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations could finally lead to a two-state solution. Few new presidents have been greeted with such optimism and associated high expectations
Sangh Parivar's Double Talk: Beware Perverse Patriotism
Sangh Parivar's Double Talk: Beware Perverse Patriotism
By B G Verghese
What is surprising, however, is the response of the spokesmen of the Parivar. They disown any association with sadhvi Pragya and other civil suspects held for the Malegaon bombing. Yet they take the line that Hindus cannot be terrorists and that the armed forces are a part of Indian society which has been horrified by the pusillanimous and apologetic approach of the UPA government to terror attacks and cannot therefore be blamed for patriotic reactions.This apologia comes close to showing sympathy for and indirectly condoning what is undoubtedly a grave dereliction of duty and rank indiscipline
Saffron Terror
By Praful Bidwai
Sadhvi Pragya Thakur’s arrest and the questioning of Hindutva extremists for the Malegaon blasts point to the need for action against majoritarian extremism
Fighting Fascism
By Yoginder Sikand
Last month, the New Delhi-based human rights’ group Anhad, along with some 90 other organizations, held a two-day national convention on the theme, ‘Countering Fascism: Defending the Idea of India’. It was attended by scores of social activists from various parts of the country. Predictably, it received hardly any mention in the so-called ‘mainstream’ Indian media
By B G Verghese
What is surprising, however, is the response of the spokesmen of the Parivar. They disown any association with sadhvi Pragya and other civil suspects held for the Malegaon bombing. Yet they take the line that Hindus cannot be terrorists and that the armed forces are a part of Indian society which has been horrified by the pusillanimous and apologetic approach of the UPA government to terror attacks and cannot therefore be blamed for patriotic reactions.This apologia comes close to showing sympathy for and indirectly condoning what is undoubtedly a grave dereliction of duty and rank indiscipline
Saffron Terror
By Praful Bidwai
Sadhvi Pragya Thakur’s arrest and the questioning of Hindutva extremists for the Malegaon blasts point to the need for action against majoritarian extremism
Fighting Fascism
By Yoginder Sikand
Last month, the New Delhi-based human rights’ group Anhad, along with some 90 other organizations, held a two-day national convention on the theme, ‘Countering Fascism: Defending the Idea of India’. It was attended by scores of social activists from various parts of the country. Predictably, it received hardly any mention in the so-called ‘mainstream’ Indian media
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
ज़िन्दा है इंसान ज़िन्दा है...
ज़िन्दा है इंसान ज़िन्दा है...ज़िन्दा है इंसान ज़िन्दा है...कोई लाख हमें पाबन्द करे इंसानियत कि दावत ज़िन्दा है... ज़िन्दा है इंसान ज़िन्दा है...
हर गाव में अपनी राहों में मकतल है कहीं ज़ंजीरें है...हम दावत-ए-हक से बाज़ रहे ज़ालिम कि यहीं तदबीरें है...ज़ालिम से समजौता नामुमकिन, "लड़ने का जज़्बा ज़िन्दा है..."यह दौर ज़ुल्म का दौर सहीं, हर ओर खौफ का शोर सहीं...ज़ालिम का बज़ाहिर ज़ोर सहीं, हम लोग बडे कमज़ोर सहीं...इंसानियत पे मर मिटने के लिए, "जज़्बा-ए-शहादत ज़िन्दा है..."तसलीम हमें इनकार नहीं, यह इश्क गुलो का हार नहीं...इन राहों में गुलज़ार नहीं, कांटे है कहीं तख्लीफे है...हम सच्चाई के मजनू है, "यह अहद हमारा ज़िन्दा है..."हम अहले-वफ़ा-हक कहने से, बाज़ आये है ना आएंगे...हर ज़ख्म पे जशन मनाएंगे, हर सूली पर मुस्कायेंगे...रघ रघ में लहू कि वो गर्मी, "ज़ालिम से बगावत ज़िन्दा है..."सुन ज़ुल्मी दौर के ऍ हाकिम तकदीर पे अपनी कर मातम...इन ज़ंजीरों को तोड़ेंगे, ज़ालिम को अब ना छोडेंगे..."इंसाफ को कायम करने का, वो ख्वाब हमारा ज़िन्दा है...इंसाफ को कायम करने का, वो ख्वाब हमारा ज़िन्दा है...इंसाफ को कायम करने का, वो ख्वाब हमारा ज़िन्दा है...ज़िन्दा है इंसान ज़िन्दा है...ज़िन्दा है इंसान ज़िन्दा है...कोई लाख हमें पाबन्द करे इंसानियत कि दावत ज़िन्दा है...ज़िन्दा है इंसान ज़िन्दा है...
Obama, Emanuel and Israel
The Promised Land?
Obama, Emanuel and Israel
By JOHN V. WHITBECK
In the first major appointment of his administration, President-elect Barack Obama has named as his chief of staff Congressman Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran whose father, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was a member of Menachem Begin's Irgun forces during the Nakba. Continue
Obama, Emanuel and Israel
By JOHN V. WHITBECK
In the first major appointment of his administration, President-elect Barack Obama has named as his chief of staff Congressman Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran whose father, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was a member of Menachem Begin's Irgun forces during the Nakba. Continue
Break Political Silence On MalnutritionBy
Sachin Kumar Jain
07 November, 2008Countercurrents.org
The issues on which politics decides to go silent owing to compromise often become the “no action needed zone” for the bureaucracy. Nine children died in duration of a week in three villages of Satna district of Madhya Pradesh. The issue came to light when someone got wind of it. The health department issued report that the deaths were owing to malnutrition. However, the Women and Child Development Department (WCD) immediately denied the report, saying that the children had succumbed to various diseases (means it is not Dept’s responsibility). No responsible officer deemed it fit to visit the spot and the WCD Department managed to alter the report mentioning that the children were above six years of age and thus outside the purview of its care, Very simple but so apathetic.
Children are not looked upon as living being in integrated form but in piecemeal manner according to age, department and problems. The issue is not confined to Satna. Nutritious food has not been delivered to 24000 Anganwadi Centers (AWC) in the State and this is a regular feature. Children continue to die, but the issue does not have enough edge to provide a basis for debate in the political circles. It also proves that the issues of malnutrition deaths are outside political priorities' list. The kindergartens have become very important for the affluent people and the AWCs are being demolished because the market forces do not want State to play any role as Child rights protector.The meaning of the malnutrition in children is the starvation arising out of the political apathy towards the child rights, corruption, unaccountability and the current priorities of development. It is important to note that about 16 percent of the population in state is below age of six years, which means that about 1.10 crore populace falls in this category, but only one scheme is being implemented for them. More shockingly, only 0.9 pc of the expenditure is made on this Integrated Child Development Scheme. Before we set aside malnutrition as non-issue, let us understand that the GDP growth rate of the country lags behind by three to four percent because of this problem because owing to malnutrition, half of the populace in country becomes incapable contributor to the development and progress of nation with full vigour.The extent of inhuman and emotionally violent attitude of our politics towards malnutrition and its victim children could be gauged from the fact that let alone implementation, even the basic structure of the ICDS (Anganwadi scheme) in the 11th five year plan (2007-12) has not yet been decided. No sign of any progress in implementation could be seen in budget of 2008-09, probably because as per the wish of the Union Minister, the work of supply of nutritious food could not be handed over to private companies, which will provide Biscuits in meal, in place of hot-cooked and culturally acceptable nutritious food. The Supreme Court of India, in a decision of December 13, 2006, had ordered the universalisation of the ICDS scheme. Till then only four crore children in country were benefited by the scheme and out of 14 lakh habitations, localities and villages, eight lakh did not have AWCs. The Supreme Court made it very clear that every child, every pregnant woman, every lactating mother and every adolescent girl should have access to the anganwadi centres and should get its benefits including nutritious food, health check up, pre-school education, vaccination and others. The order of the apex court mandated the State that the work of universalisation should be completed by December 2008. However there is no political movement visible in this direction. No political party moved out of their non-issue based politics and not talking on prospects of this order at all. If we take the example of MP, here only 67770 anganwadis are being operational against the actual need of 1.26 lac centers, while is dearth of as many as 58000 children are still deprived of the ICDS services. However the political attitude towards opening of new centers seems totally apathetic. We have seen those guidelines that mention the checklist for the ministers and bureaucrats should review during the visit to the filed. But the issue is not of guidelines, but the ground realities and ground realities make it clear that neither the politicians, nor the bureaucrats make any effort to check functioning of AWCs. In fact they should write their comments on the Anganwadi registers, but a recent study of Right to Food Campaign finds ‘No Comment”. The scheme basics make it very clear that every child, pregnant woman, lactating mother and adolescent girl should get the benefit of nutritious food and other services for 300 days in year without any limiting criteria. However in MP, the budget is given only for 130 days and out of this, the provision for 60 days fall victim to corruption. The report of Comptroller and Auditor General mentions that the scheme is not only prey to corruption in MP but also children do not get the necessary 300 calories and 8 to 10 gm of protein and as much as 59 pc children are totally deprived of the scheme. It is really a poser as to why the schemes in India are chalked out in a way that the common people cannot have any hopes from it. If one talks of government hospitals then they are centres that are filthy, totally degenerated with foul talking personnel and if one talks of anganbadi centres then they are 8x10 ft rooms where 80 children, 20 pregnant woman and 30 adolescent girls are expected to sit. The beneficiaries are made to feel totally beggar-like during distribution of nutritious food so that they do not have any feel of being Rights Holder. The worst luck is the fact that the development visionaries who consider Sensex and Gross Domestic Product as the most important indicator of Development feel that the governments need not to worry about the Hungry children, and even political parties should talk about the Growth based development, and should stop spending subsidies on issues like child protection. They should invest this money for Market development and their (State’s) subsidies to the Big Money Making Corporations will create employment and eliminate Chronic Hunger and all kinds of in-equality in the Society. Their argument that these schemes are waste of resources and it leads to the community becoming dependant on government and developing habit of eating out of spoon. They say that people should be taught to work hard, but forget that if one is afflicted by malnutrition in childhood and 80 pc of mental and physical growth is stunted and they cannot contribute to process of development in adulthood. In such situation, the development visionaries in the political lobbies would have to talk on child malnutrition as one of the major political issues, but the concern is that it should not be too late by time they decide to do so. Unfortunately MP could not get politicians like K. Kamraj or M G Ramchandran of Tamil Nadu, who considered nutrition of children as basic indicator of development and thus the ICDS is one of the best run scheme in Tamil Nadu.We should understand that principally we believe in a democracy, where any change can come through political process, but presently the system is becoming tolerant to the extent of being salient on the continuous child deaths. The system is totally silent in political context on the issue of death of children due to malnutrition. Some violent protests are visible but majority of them are personal cases where some scenes are made in hospital premises when children from powerful families die, but it is limited to that. There is no demand or protest beyond that. The issue sometimes finds mention in comfort zones, some researchers and thinkers are working on it, but no political movement is visible on the issue. Children are dying to see their right to nutrition on the pages of election manifesto.
Sachin Kumar Jain is a Development Journalist . He can be reached at sachinwrites@gmail.com
07 November, 2008Countercurrents.org
The issues on which politics decides to go silent owing to compromise often become the “no action needed zone” for the bureaucracy. Nine children died in duration of a week in three villages of Satna district of Madhya Pradesh. The issue came to light when someone got wind of it. The health department issued report that the deaths were owing to malnutrition. However, the Women and Child Development Department (WCD) immediately denied the report, saying that the children had succumbed to various diseases (means it is not Dept’s responsibility). No responsible officer deemed it fit to visit the spot and the WCD Department managed to alter the report mentioning that the children were above six years of age and thus outside the purview of its care, Very simple but so apathetic.
Children are not looked upon as living being in integrated form but in piecemeal manner according to age, department and problems. The issue is not confined to Satna. Nutritious food has not been delivered to 24000 Anganwadi Centers (AWC) in the State and this is a regular feature. Children continue to die, but the issue does not have enough edge to provide a basis for debate in the political circles. It also proves that the issues of malnutrition deaths are outside political priorities' list. The kindergartens have become very important for the affluent people and the AWCs are being demolished because the market forces do not want State to play any role as Child rights protector.The meaning of the malnutrition in children is the starvation arising out of the political apathy towards the child rights, corruption, unaccountability and the current priorities of development. It is important to note that about 16 percent of the population in state is below age of six years, which means that about 1.10 crore populace falls in this category, but only one scheme is being implemented for them. More shockingly, only 0.9 pc of the expenditure is made on this Integrated Child Development Scheme. Before we set aside malnutrition as non-issue, let us understand that the GDP growth rate of the country lags behind by three to four percent because of this problem because owing to malnutrition, half of the populace in country becomes incapable contributor to the development and progress of nation with full vigour.The extent of inhuman and emotionally violent attitude of our politics towards malnutrition and its victim children could be gauged from the fact that let alone implementation, even the basic structure of the ICDS (Anganwadi scheme) in the 11th five year plan (2007-12) has not yet been decided. No sign of any progress in implementation could be seen in budget of 2008-09, probably because as per the wish of the Union Minister, the work of supply of nutritious food could not be handed over to private companies, which will provide Biscuits in meal, in place of hot-cooked and culturally acceptable nutritious food. The Supreme Court of India, in a decision of December 13, 2006, had ordered the universalisation of the ICDS scheme. Till then only four crore children in country were benefited by the scheme and out of 14 lakh habitations, localities and villages, eight lakh did not have AWCs. The Supreme Court made it very clear that every child, every pregnant woman, every lactating mother and every adolescent girl should have access to the anganwadi centres and should get its benefits including nutritious food, health check up, pre-school education, vaccination and others. The order of the apex court mandated the State that the work of universalisation should be completed by December 2008. However there is no political movement visible in this direction. No political party moved out of their non-issue based politics and not talking on prospects of this order at all. If we take the example of MP, here only 67770 anganwadis are being operational against the actual need of 1.26 lac centers, while is dearth of as many as 58000 children are still deprived of the ICDS services. However the political attitude towards opening of new centers seems totally apathetic. We have seen those guidelines that mention the checklist for the ministers and bureaucrats should review during the visit to the filed. But the issue is not of guidelines, but the ground realities and ground realities make it clear that neither the politicians, nor the bureaucrats make any effort to check functioning of AWCs. In fact they should write their comments on the Anganwadi registers, but a recent study of Right to Food Campaign finds ‘No Comment”. The scheme basics make it very clear that every child, pregnant woman, lactating mother and adolescent girl should get the benefit of nutritious food and other services for 300 days in year without any limiting criteria. However in MP, the budget is given only for 130 days and out of this, the provision for 60 days fall victim to corruption. The report of Comptroller and Auditor General mentions that the scheme is not only prey to corruption in MP but also children do not get the necessary 300 calories and 8 to 10 gm of protein and as much as 59 pc children are totally deprived of the scheme. It is really a poser as to why the schemes in India are chalked out in a way that the common people cannot have any hopes from it. If one talks of government hospitals then they are centres that are filthy, totally degenerated with foul talking personnel and if one talks of anganbadi centres then they are 8x10 ft rooms where 80 children, 20 pregnant woman and 30 adolescent girls are expected to sit. The beneficiaries are made to feel totally beggar-like during distribution of nutritious food so that they do not have any feel of being Rights Holder. The worst luck is the fact that the development visionaries who consider Sensex and Gross Domestic Product as the most important indicator of Development feel that the governments need not to worry about the Hungry children, and even political parties should talk about the Growth based development, and should stop spending subsidies on issues like child protection. They should invest this money for Market development and their (State’s) subsidies to the Big Money Making Corporations will create employment and eliminate Chronic Hunger and all kinds of in-equality in the Society. Their argument that these schemes are waste of resources and it leads to the community becoming dependant on government and developing habit of eating out of spoon. They say that people should be taught to work hard, but forget that if one is afflicted by malnutrition in childhood and 80 pc of mental and physical growth is stunted and they cannot contribute to process of development in adulthood. In such situation, the development visionaries in the political lobbies would have to talk on child malnutrition as one of the major political issues, but the concern is that it should not be too late by time they decide to do so. Unfortunately MP could not get politicians like K. Kamraj or M G Ramchandran of Tamil Nadu, who considered nutrition of children as basic indicator of development and thus the ICDS is one of the best run scheme in Tamil Nadu.We should understand that principally we believe in a democracy, where any change can come through political process, but presently the system is becoming tolerant to the extent of being salient on the continuous child deaths. The system is totally silent in political context on the issue of death of children due to malnutrition. Some violent protests are visible but majority of them are personal cases where some scenes are made in hospital premises when children from powerful families die, but it is limited to that. There is no demand or protest beyond that. The issue sometimes finds mention in comfort zones, some researchers and thinkers are working on it, but no political movement is visible on the issue. Children are dying to see their right to nutrition on the pages of election manifesto.
Sachin Kumar Jain is a Development Journalist . He can be reached at sachinwrites@gmail.com
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Sampradayik Dange aur Aatankwad ki Rajniti ka parda fash !!
PUBLIC MEETING
MARATHI PATRAKAR SANGH, CST, AZAD MAIDAN, MUMBAI NOVEMBER 6, 2008 / 5.30 - 8PM
SPEAKERS: ADV. MUKUL SINHA (NEW SOCIALIST MOVEMENT) - GUJARAT
MAHESH BHATT (FILM MAKER & HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST)
ADV. AMRESH PATEL ((NEW SOCIALIST MOVEMENT) )- GUJARAT
COM. SANJAY SINGHVI (CPI-ML)
FEROZE MITHIBORWALA (RASHTRIYA SAMAJ PAKSH)
FARID KHAN (SAMAJWADI PARTY)
DILIP BANSODE (BHARIP BAHUJAN MAHASANGH)
Organized By
SAMPRADAYIK RAJNITI VIRODHI MANCH
AWAMI BHARAT,
PHULE-AMBEDKARI VICHAR MANCH,
VIDYARTHI BHARTI,
MAJLIS-I-MUSHAWARAT,
INDIAN FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS,
TRADE UNION CENTRE OF INDIA,
JAMAAT-I-ISLAMI,
INDIAN SOCIAL MOVEMENT,
MOVEMENT FOR PEACE & JUSTICE.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Defending The Idea Of India
Defending The Idea Of India
Political Resolution
29 October, 2008Countercurrents.org
The two day national convention - Countering Fascist Forces: Defending the Idea of India, 25-26 October 2008- was attended by over 750 activists' and intellectuals from 18 states (Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Delhi, Harayana, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Gujarat, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, J & K, Punjab, Maharashtra and Chattisgarh).
POLITICAL RESOLUTION PASSED AT THE CONVENTION
The urgency to intervene in defence of democracy, secularism and justice has never been more pressing than in the conditions prevailing in the country today.
The rise of communal fascism has emerged as a threat not only to its immediate victims but to the very long-term survival of India as a unified nation of diverse religious, linguistic and ethnic groups. The mysterious and condemnable acts of terrorism that have shaken different parts of the country have engendered a climate of fear, insecurity and fuelled the politics of communal division.
In recent months, vicious attacks have been mounted across India against religious minorities by Hindutva fascist organizations and communalism has even become the dominant tenor of public discourse. In Maharashtra the regional chauvinist forces of Bal and Raj Thackeray, both offsprings of the Hindutva politics of hate, has targeted north Indians in a bid to drive them out of the state.
The BJP, RSS and their allies in the Sangh Parivar have mounted a vicious campaign against the Christian community across India. Orissa and over 10 states have seen violent attacks on the Christian community, their institutions, religious places, property and businesses on the basis of fabricated stories and hate campaigns.
Throughout the country Muslim youth are being targeted, without any or little evidence, as responsible for the various bomb blasts taking place in the country. There is a concerted attempt by the Indian police, intelligence agencies and certain political parties to portray all members of the Muslim community as 'terrorists and extremists' - to be arbitrarily arrested, tortured and killed in fake encounters. Sections of the media instead of investigating the truth are blindly parroting these sensational and unsubstantiated claims.
Even more disturbingly the accused are being systematically denied their basic right to legal defence by some bar associations themselves which have threatened, expelled and even violently attacked lawyers brave enough to take up these cases. The Indian judiciary has failed to take suo moto cognizance of such attacks as being contempt of court.
All this while hard evidence available against Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other Sangh outfits of their direct involvement in terror attacks is not only being ignored but actively pushed under the carpet by the Indian state. The Hindutva terrorist groups like the Bajrang Dal are openly claiming responsibility for this communal violence against Christians and are yet being allowed to go scot-free.
There is a growing feeling among religious minority communities that the Indian state and judiciary is biased against them and unwilling to provide impartial justice even in cases such as the demolition of the Babri Masjid. No action has been taken on the recommendations of the Srikrishna Commission report following the anti-Muslim pogrom in Mumbai of 1993. On the other hand some members of the judiciary are now willing to be puppets of communal forces, a dangerous trend set by the Nanavati Commission, which has exonerated the Narendra Modi government of responsibility for the Gujarat Genocide of 2002.
Instead of confronting these fascist forces the Indian state is cracking down hard on 'soft targets' like human rights and social activists. The fundamental rights of life, liberty, freedom of speech, religion and dissent guaranteed to all citizens by the Indian Constitution are being shred to pieces right in front of our eyes.
Entire swathes of the Indian North-East and Kashmir are covered by the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) that authorises even the lowest soldier to shoot and kill civilians on mere suspicion of their being 'militants'. In Chhattisgarh, large numbers of citizens continue to be detained using the highly restrictive Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act (CSPSA). Those defending the rights of the poor, Dalit, Adivasis and other marginalised people are being falsely branded as 'extremists' and 'anti-nationals'. The state sponsored, unconstitutional 'Salwa Judum' campaign, which has unleashed horrific violence on innocent tribal populations over the past four years in the name of countering Maoism, is being justified by none other than the National Human Rights Commission itself.
All this is happening even as the forces of imperialism led by the United States, under the pretext of the so-called Global War on Terror, are busy re-colonising entire nations from Iraq to Afghanistan and are now targeting Pakistan in the immediate neighbourhood of India. The global media is contributing to this politics of hatred by demonizing Muslims worldwide and frightening ordinary citizens into giving up their basic democratic rights everywhere.
Within the country, the pattern of elitist development has turned a vast majority of the population into second-class citizens, reinforcing with misguided policies the apartheid of the ancient and racist caste system. The ghost of the East India Company, buried long ago, is being resurrected in myriad forms and those who run the Indian state are willfully abetting the return of a neo-colonial order.
It is a state of affairs that calls upon all those who value Indian independence, democratic rights and social justice to come forward, take responsibility and resist the onslaught by fascist and imperialist forces on the foundations of our national values and existence. We also urge all anti-communal activists and secular political parties to forge alliance to defeat fascism and communalism. We, the delegates and participants of the National Convention on Countering Fascism: Defending the Idea of India in New Delhi held on 25-26 October 2008 resolve as follows to:
1) Call for the resignation of Shivraj Patil, Home Minister of India for his abject failure to prevent bomb attacks in major Indian cities; take action against Hindutva terrorists despite evidence provided to him by civil society groups; stop the Sangh Parivar's attacks on Christian populations in Orissa, Karnataka and other parts of India; and for using fake police encounters and false evidence against Muslim youth to save his political career;
2) Call for the dismissal of M.K.Narayanan, National Security Adviser for incompetence and all the intelligence lapses leading to rise in to both terrorist and communal violence;
3) Demand prosecution of all members of the Bharatiya Janata Party and ABVP who have links with Hindutva terrorist organisations, such as the ones implicated in the Malegaon bomb blasts.
4) Condemn the UPA government for falling prey to the Hindutva agenda while paying lip service to secularism.
5) Demand the setting up of a time-bound judicial inquiry into the Jamia Nagar 'encounter' headed by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court;
6) Review major cases of 'terrorist' attacks and immediately release those against whom there is no evidence of any kind; implementation of NHRC instruction regarding independent investigation into all deaths in police custody and in police encounters over the last 5 years;
7) Call for a ban on RSS, the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad for terrorist, anti-national activities and seizure of their national and international assets; a White Paper on the terrorist activities of these organizations;
8) Demand the presentation of a White Paper on the scope of India's "war on terrorism" and the level of its cooperation and collaboration with the US-led war on terror;
9) Enact the Communal Violence Bill after thorough revision in consultation with citizen's bodies, human rights groups and anti-communal organisations across India;
10) Provide immediate relief and compensation to the victims of communal terrorism in Orissa and other states including reconstruction of destroyed private property and restoration of livelihood. Set up a permanent statutory body to deal with such issues in future.
11) Demand the formation of a strong statutory body like election commission (or extend the scope of the EC) to monitor pre-election conduct of political parties and their leaders which generally leads up to polarization of vote banks. Such a body should have a right to disqualify party and/or its functionaries or elected representatives in the legislature in the wake of a breach of conduct;
12) The immediate release of Human Rights Defenders, such as Dr Binayak Sen, who have been arrested for exposing police atrocities and state violence against innocent citizens.
13) Demand a White Paper on misuse of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Kashmir and the Indian North-East and the immediate withdrawal; search for a political rather than military solution to the Kashmir problem;
14) A national commission of inquiry into the misuse of special security laws by the police to arrest members of the minority community in false cases of terrorism
Convention Organised by:
Academy of Public Understanding of Science, All India Christian Council, All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch, All India Quami Mahaz, All India Secular Forum, Alternatives, Aman Biradari, Aman Samudaya, ANHAD, Antarik Visthapit Hak Rakshak Samiti, Anweshi, Arya Samaj, ASHA Pariwar, Ashraya Adhikar Abhiyan, Asmita Collective, Awaz e- Niswana, Bandhua Mukti Morcha, Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, Bihar Social Institute, BUILD, Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms, Centre for Youth Development and Activities, Chattisgarh Jan Vigyan Vikas Sangthan, Centre for Information, Training, Research and Action, Commission for Religious Harmony, Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights , Countercurrents.org, Centre for Studies in Society and Secularism, Danish Publishers, Darpana Academy, Disha Social Organization , Ekta, Foundation for Educational Innovations in Asia, Global Gandhi Forum, GRAVIS, Holy Cross Convent, Human Rights Law Network, Indian Social Institute, Indian Social Action Forum ,INSAF Bulletin, Institute for Minority Women, Institute for Social Democracy, Jadugoda, Janadhikar Samuh, Jananeethi, Janvikas, JUDAV, Lok Sangharsh Morcha, Lokshakti Abhiyan, Mahatma Gandhi Foundation, MASUM, Media Action Group, Medico Friend Circle, Minorities Council, Muslim Women's Forum, National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights, National Economic Forum for Muslims, Nazareth Mahila Samiti, NCHRO, Nishan, North East Support Centre & Helpline, Orissa Development Action Forum, Orissa Seek, Save & Development Society, Oxfam India, Popular Education & Action Centre ,People's Movement against Nuclear Energy, People's Research Society, People's Watch, PRASHANT, Religious Harmony Commission (CBCI), Roshan Vikas, Saheli, Sahrwaru, Sajhi Duniya, Sama, Samarpan, Sanchetana, Sandarbh, Sangat, Sarva Dharam Sansad, Shambhavi, South Asia Citizens Web, South Asians for Human Rights , SUTRA, Tamilnadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam, Udayan, Urja Ghar, Vikas Adhyan Kendra, Yuv Shakti
Political Resolution
29 October, 2008Countercurrents.org
The two day national convention - Countering Fascist Forces: Defending the Idea of India, 25-26 October 2008- was attended by over 750 activists' and intellectuals from 18 states (Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Delhi, Harayana, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Gujarat, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, J & K, Punjab, Maharashtra and Chattisgarh).
POLITICAL RESOLUTION PASSED AT THE CONVENTION
The urgency to intervene in defence of democracy, secularism and justice has never been more pressing than in the conditions prevailing in the country today.
The rise of communal fascism has emerged as a threat not only to its immediate victims but to the very long-term survival of India as a unified nation of diverse religious, linguistic and ethnic groups. The mysterious and condemnable acts of terrorism that have shaken different parts of the country have engendered a climate of fear, insecurity and fuelled the politics of communal division.
In recent months, vicious attacks have been mounted across India against religious minorities by Hindutva fascist organizations and communalism has even become the dominant tenor of public discourse. In Maharashtra the regional chauvinist forces of Bal and Raj Thackeray, both offsprings of the Hindutva politics of hate, has targeted north Indians in a bid to drive them out of the state.
The BJP, RSS and their allies in the Sangh Parivar have mounted a vicious campaign against the Christian community across India. Orissa and over 10 states have seen violent attacks on the Christian community, their institutions, religious places, property and businesses on the basis of fabricated stories and hate campaigns.
Throughout the country Muslim youth are being targeted, without any or little evidence, as responsible for the various bomb blasts taking place in the country. There is a concerted attempt by the Indian police, intelligence agencies and certain political parties to portray all members of the Muslim community as 'terrorists and extremists' - to be arbitrarily arrested, tortured and killed in fake encounters. Sections of the media instead of investigating the truth are blindly parroting these sensational and unsubstantiated claims.
Even more disturbingly the accused are being systematically denied their basic right to legal defence by some bar associations themselves which have threatened, expelled and even violently attacked lawyers brave enough to take up these cases. The Indian judiciary has failed to take suo moto cognizance of such attacks as being contempt of court.
All this while hard evidence available against Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other Sangh outfits of their direct involvement in terror attacks is not only being ignored but actively pushed under the carpet by the Indian state. The Hindutva terrorist groups like the Bajrang Dal are openly claiming responsibility for this communal violence against Christians and are yet being allowed to go scot-free.
There is a growing feeling among religious minority communities that the Indian state and judiciary is biased against them and unwilling to provide impartial justice even in cases such as the demolition of the Babri Masjid. No action has been taken on the recommendations of the Srikrishna Commission report following the anti-Muslim pogrom in Mumbai of 1993. On the other hand some members of the judiciary are now willing to be puppets of communal forces, a dangerous trend set by the Nanavati Commission, which has exonerated the Narendra Modi government of responsibility for the Gujarat Genocide of 2002.
Instead of confronting these fascist forces the Indian state is cracking down hard on 'soft targets' like human rights and social activists. The fundamental rights of life, liberty, freedom of speech, religion and dissent guaranteed to all citizens by the Indian Constitution are being shred to pieces right in front of our eyes.
Entire swathes of the Indian North-East and Kashmir are covered by the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) that authorises even the lowest soldier to shoot and kill civilians on mere suspicion of their being 'militants'. In Chhattisgarh, large numbers of citizens continue to be detained using the highly restrictive Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act (CSPSA). Those defending the rights of the poor, Dalit, Adivasis and other marginalised people are being falsely branded as 'extremists' and 'anti-nationals'. The state sponsored, unconstitutional 'Salwa Judum' campaign, which has unleashed horrific violence on innocent tribal populations over the past four years in the name of countering Maoism, is being justified by none other than the National Human Rights Commission itself.
All this is happening even as the forces of imperialism led by the United States, under the pretext of the so-called Global War on Terror, are busy re-colonising entire nations from Iraq to Afghanistan and are now targeting Pakistan in the immediate neighbourhood of India. The global media is contributing to this politics of hatred by demonizing Muslims worldwide and frightening ordinary citizens into giving up their basic democratic rights everywhere.
Within the country, the pattern of elitist development has turned a vast majority of the population into second-class citizens, reinforcing with misguided policies the apartheid of the ancient and racist caste system. The ghost of the East India Company, buried long ago, is being resurrected in myriad forms and those who run the Indian state are willfully abetting the return of a neo-colonial order.
It is a state of affairs that calls upon all those who value Indian independence, democratic rights and social justice to come forward, take responsibility and resist the onslaught by fascist and imperialist forces on the foundations of our national values and existence. We also urge all anti-communal activists and secular political parties to forge alliance to defeat fascism and communalism. We, the delegates and participants of the National Convention on Countering Fascism: Defending the Idea of India in New Delhi held on 25-26 October 2008 resolve as follows to:
1) Call for the resignation of Shivraj Patil, Home Minister of India for his abject failure to prevent bomb attacks in major Indian cities; take action against Hindutva terrorists despite evidence provided to him by civil society groups; stop the Sangh Parivar's attacks on Christian populations in Orissa, Karnataka and other parts of India; and for using fake police encounters and false evidence against Muslim youth to save his political career;
2) Call for the dismissal of M.K.Narayanan, National Security Adviser for incompetence and all the intelligence lapses leading to rise in to both terrorist and communal violence;
3) Demand prosecution of all members of the Bharatiya Janata Party and ABVP who have links with Hindutva terrorist organisations, such as the ones implicated in the Malegaon bomb blasts.
4) Condemn the UPA government for falling prey to the Hindutva agenda while paying lip service to secularism.
5) Demand the setting up of a time-bound judicial inquiry into the Jamia Nagar 'encounter' headed by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court;
6) Review major cases of 'terrorist' attacks and immediately release those against whom there is no evidence of any kind; implementation of NHRC instruction regarding independent investigation into all deaths in police custody and in police encounters over the last 5 years;
7) Call for a ban on RSS, the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad for terrorist, anti-national activities and seizure of their national and international assets; a White Paper on the terrorist activities of these organizations;
8) Demand the presentation of a White Paper on the scope of India's "war on terrorism" and the level of its cooperation and collaboration with the US-led war on terror;
9) Enact the Communal Violence Bill after thorough revision in consultation with citizen's bodies, human rights groups and anti-communal organisations across India;
10) Provide immediate relief and compensation to the victims of communal terrorism in Orissa and other states including reconstruction of destroyed private property and restoration of livelihood. Set up a permanent statutory body to deal with such issues in future.
11) Demand the formation of a strong statutory body like election commission (or extend the scope of the EC) to monitor pre-election conduct of political parties and their leaders which generally leads up to polarization of vote banks. Such a body should have a right to disqualify party and/or its functionaries or elected representatives in the legislature in the wake of a breach of conduct;
12) The immediate release of Human Rights Defenders, such as Dr Binayak Sen, who have been arrested for exposing police atrocities and state violence against innocent citizens.
13) Demand a White Paper on misuse of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Kashmir and the Indian North-East and the immediate withdrawal; search for a political rather than military solution to the Kashmir problem;
14) A national commission of inquiry into the misuse of special security laws by the police to arrest members of the minority community in false cases of terrorism
Convention Organised by:
Academy of Public Understanding of Science, All India Christian Council, All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch, All India Quami Mahaz, All India Secular Forum, Alternatives, Aman Biradari, Aman Samudaya, ANHAD, Antarik Visthapit Hak Rakshak Samiti, Anweshi, Arya Samaj, ASHA Pariwar, Ashraya Adhikar Abhiyan, Asmita Collective, Awaz e- Niswana, Bandhua Mukti Morcha, Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, Bihar Social Institute, BUILD, Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms, Centre for Youth Development and Activities, Chattisgarh Jan Vigyan Vikas Sangthan, Centre for Information, Training, Research and Action, Commission for Religious Harmony, Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights , Countercurrents.org, Centre for Studies in Society and Secularism, Danish Publishers, Darpana Academy, Disha Social Organization , Ekta, Foundation for Educational Innovations in Asia, Global Gandhi Forum, GRAVIS, Holy Cross Convent, Human Rights Law Network, Indian Social Institute, Indian Social Action Forum ,INSAF Bulletin, Institute for Minority Women, Institute for Social Democracy, Jadugoda, Janadhikar Samuh, Jananeethi, Janvikas, JUDAV, Lok Sangharsh Morcha, Lokshakti Abhiyan, Mahatma Gandhi Foundation, MASUM, Media Action Group, Medico Friend Circle, Minorities Council, Muslim Women's Forum, National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights, National Economic Forum for Muslims, Nazareth Mahila Samiti, NCHRO, Nishan, North East Support Centre & Helpline, Orissa Development Action Forum, Orissa Seek, Save & Development Society, Oxfam India, Popular Education & Action Centre ,People's Movement against Nuclear Energy, People's Research Society, People's Watch, PRASHANT, Religious Harmony Commission (CBCI), Roshan Vikas, Saheli, Sahrwaru, Sajhi Duniya, Sama, Samarpan, Sanchetana, Sandarbh, Sangat, Sarva Dharam Sansad, Shambhavi, South Asia Citizens Web, South Asians for Human Rights , SUTRA, Tamilnadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam, Udayan, Urja Ghar, Vikas Adhyan Kendra, Yuv Shakti
Just The Tip Won't Do: Expose The Whole Iceberg
Just The Tip Won't Do: Expose The Whole Iceberg
By Kavita Krishnan
No longer can the Sangh Parivar and BJP ever disown its role in terrorism. A former firebrand ABVP leader and so-called 'sadhvi', Pragya Singh Thakur, has been arrested for her role in the Malegaon blasts of September 2006 as well as in the more recent Modasa blasts. Even more ominously, two ex-Army officers are implicated in the blasts, and it has come to light that an institution called the 'Bhonsala Military Academy' in Nagpur has been imparting arms training to the Bajrang Dal
By Kavita Krishnan
No longer can the Sangh Parivar and BJP ever disown its role in terrorism. A former firebrand ABVP leader and so-called 'sadhvi', Pragya Singh Thakur, has been arrested for her role in the Malegaon blasts of September 2006 as well as in the more recent Modasa blasts. Even more ominously, two ex-Army officers are implicated in the blasts, and it has come to light that an institution called the 'Bhonsala Military Academy' in Nagpur has been imparting arms training to the Bajrang Dal
Neoliberalism And Hindutva
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Fascism, free markets and the restructuring of Indian capitalism
By Shankar Gopalakrishnan
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Message Of Massacre Lives On For Palestinians
Message Of Massacre Lives On For Palestinians
By Jonathan Cook
In a conflict that has produced more than its share of suffering and tragedy, the name of Kafr Qassem lives on in infamy more than half a century after Israeli police gunned down 47 Palestinian civilians, including women and children, in the village. Continue
By Jonathan Cook
In a conflict that has produced more than its share of suffering and tragedy, the name of Kafr Qassem lives on in infamy more than half a century after Israeli police gunned down 47 Palestinian civilians, including women and children, in the village. Continue
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