The Ultimate Guide

Salman Rushdie Had To Pay For Hurting Muslim Feelings

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:46:00 +0000

By: Pavan K. Varma

No individual can claim in the name of freedom of speech the absolute right to insult without reason legitimate articles of faith of anyone.

The alchemy of globalisation is such that western nations and societies manage to project an image of superior ethics and freedom even while they dissemble and display double standards themselves. It is as if they can lay down the rules for 'civilised' and 'progressive' behaviour, but need not follow these themselves.

Without doubt the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) has assumed a proportion that its organisers could never have imagined when it began some six years ago.

I had attended the first edition in 2006 and there were a hundred people or so in the Durbar Hall, which was the only venue. Today, peak crowds are estimated at over 50,000; there are multiple events going on simultaneously; a dozen food outlets find it difficult to cope with the rush; book signing sessions have queues that stretch endlessly; college and school students attend in huge numbers. It is in every sense an unprecedented carnival.

The organisers - Namita Gokhale, Sanjoy Roy and William Dalrymple - deserve to be congratulated for this feat. There is no other cultural festival in the country that attracts such an attendance from all parts of the country and the world. Our international film festival in Goa is mostly a damp squib and the art triennale is equally lacklustre. The JLF is the only event that on its own strength can pull in the most famous international talent.

But the Diggy Palace, where the event is held, is showing definitive signs of creaking under the pressure of the crowd. This year, my session with Gulzar Saheb was moved from the smaller but more intimate Durbar Hall to the Mughal Tent, which has a capacity of 800. But 1,500 people turned up; it took some time for the aisles to be cleared before we could reach the podium to speak.

Unfortunately, for all the transparent enthusiasm of the audience, this year's festival was overshadowed by the Salman Rushdie controversy. I am afraid I do not subscribe to the somewhat hysterical view that his failure to participate signifies the end of democracy, freedom, free expression and values in India. It is beyond a tiny fig of doubt that Rushdie wrote a gratuitously blasphemous text in The Satanic Verses and has since flamboyantly defended his right to do so.

We all value freedom of speech but no society anywhere in the world believes in absolute freedom of speech. If you put something deliberately and provocatively in the public realm that hurts the sentiments of people on something as sacrosanct as faith, you must face the consequences of your action.

The West may lionise Rushdie and uphold his freedom of speech, but what has been its own track record? When the film The Last Temptation of Christ was made, it provoked in Europe a public outcry unprecedented in the history of religious films. Similarly, when The Passover Plot portrayed Christ as a charlatan, it was picketed out of existence in only a few weeks and never heard of again. In 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a dozen cartoons caricaturing Prophet Mohammad. In spite of protestsby Muslims, and other liberal-minded people, the paper defended its decision on grounds of freedom of speech. But it was reported that the same editor had earlier turned down caricatures of Jesus as too offensive.

The alchemy of globalisation is such that western nations and societies manage to project an image of superior ethics and freedom even while they dissemble and display double standards themselves. It is as if they can lay down the rules for 'civilised' and 'progressive' behaviour, but need not follow these themselves.

Unfortunately, the English-speaking intelligentsia in our country often unthinkingly internalises these biases without independent and judicious application of mind. That is why I refuse to be straitjacketed into this ridiculous simplification that if you are critical of Rushdie you are anti-freedom of speech.

We must endeavour steadfastly to build a liberal society that values freedom of expression. No fringe fundamentalist or extremist group should hold a society to ransom. No individual, however, can claim in the name of freedom of speech the absolute right to insult without reason legitimate articles of faith of anyone.

Rushdie is a PIO and can come to India anytime, and has done so in the past. If he believes what he wrote was right, he can brave the reactions he has unleashed and fight for his cause here, rather than from a luxury brownstone abroad guarded by dozens of gunmen. Similarly, the authors who read out at the festival from the banned book, and who mostly live abroad, could have stayed on and fought for their convictions rather than parachuting in and out of India.

In any case, I believe that the JLF this year was a huge success even if Rushdie did not attend. It is, to say the least, going a bit overboard to judge it by a uni-dimensional issue of whether Rushdie came or not.

Source: www.indiatoday.in

Five Reasons Why India Inc. Can't Censor The Internet

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:17:00 +0000

Kapil Sibal knows all this, right? So why is this bright star from Harvard Law School and St. Stephen's college now sounding so anachronistic in the Internet age? Is it the old "thou shalt display higher loyalty to the royal family than the prince himself" mantra?

In just 24 hours, in the Facebook alumni group of St Stephen's College, Communications Minister Kapil Sibal's ratings crashed faster than that of US President Barack

Obama or what former telecom minister A. Raja, now in judicial custody over second generation (2G) spectrum case, ever had.

In a survey to pick star alumni for a big debating clash with counterparts from the rival college across the road, Sibal was on the top five a week ago -- among other

stellar Stephanians like Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, former federal minister Mani Shankar Aiyar or former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor.

No longer!

As the #Idiot hash-tag topped Twitter trends, some withdrew their votes for Sibal, and there were posts like "Chuck him across the road" -- a scathing insult, equivalent to the Parsis' excommunication.

Just a preview of the global firestorm over the next two days!

The fire wasn't from anonymous teens. Seasoned analysts blasted Sibal. Investor Mahesh Murthy posted: "Censor this! :) ! Five of the top 10 Twitter trends in India

right now are: #IdiotKapilsibal, #KapilSibal, #Censorship, #FreeSpeech and #FreedomOfSpeech."

All this, for just one statement from a politician not unknown for his foot-in-mouth disease? Not quite. For, he has the power to misuse and try to make it happen.

During the Anna Hazare movement, Sibal summoned representatives of the social networks. In a king-and-subjects interaction, he kept them waiting, then kept them standing in his room; gave them a pre-emptive dressing down; and snapped: "I don't want any anti-government stuff on your networks. Fix it." There was no room for discussion.

So here's a five-point Internet 101 for the illustrious Mr. Sibal.

1. The Internet cannot be edited: Duh! In an early Dilbert strip, the pointy-haired boss demanded that Dilbert "download" the Internet and fax it to him. A decade down, it's not so funny any more.

The Internet is not traditional media. India's 1975 emergency and the media clampdown was possible because of the linear, broadcast nature of the old media. New media is distributed. No copy desk or censor board can "fix" it. There is no editor to arrest. And, most content is hosted outside India's jurisdiction.

2. User-generated content cannot be filtered: That would slow down the global Internet to a crawl, with posts appearing after days -- even assuming so many "editors" could be hired by, say, a Facebook or a Twitter.

Are phone operators responsible for "content" carried on their networks -- or their CEOs arrested if someone made a terror threat over a phone call? No, the telco is simply asked to help with the investigation -- into who made the call.

Yes, Internet content has the permanence and public-impact potential that a phone call does not, but equally, it lends itself brilliantly to self-regulation.

3. Peer review works: Wikipedia is the best example. Who could have imagined that a user-created encyclopedia could be so objective, and comprehensive? Yes, anyone can go in and edit anything (barring entries like "Kapil Sibal", which have been locked due to vandalism!).

If you make an inappropriate change, someone will come in and correct it. And so it is on Facebook or Twitter. Abusive posts will be reported, blocked, and the individuals knocked out of the site.

4. Draconian controls are not necessary: In this age of global cooperation on terror, companies cooperate. A rational request from India to Google or Facebook to bring down offensive content will be heard -- regardless of jurisdiction.

5. Yes, there are precedents for Internet control, but...: Such censorship is in countries India doesn't want to be -- China, Pakistan, Myanmar or Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan became a laughing stock when it issued a list of banned words for SMS messages. (That list is now standard reading for anyone wanting a quick lesson in present and future abuses that aren't in any dictionary.)

The big daddy of "regulation" is China, where everything is filtered, and if you break those filters, you are charged with treason. What a role model.

But wait.

Kapil Sibal knows all this, right? So why is this bright star from Harvard Law School and St. Stephen's college now sounding so anachronistic in the Internet age? Is it the old "thou shalt display higher loyalty to the royal family than the prince himself" mantra?

If Kapil Sibal is to defend himself against the charge of sycophancy, he is on a weak footing. There were many prior potential triggers for tackling social media, including fanatic religious posts, derogatory comments by Pakistan sympathisers, Anna Hazare, and more. That he finally picked a post that targeted Sonia Gandhi suggests that this was not out of serious, objective concern about India's stability, security or secular fabric.

Mayans Never Predicted World To End in 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 07:59:00 +0000

If you are worried the world will end next year 2012 based on the Mayan calendar, relax: the end of time is still far off.

So say Mayan experts who want to dispel any belief that the ancient Mayans predicted a world apocalypse next year.

The Mayan calendar marks the end of a 5,126 year old cycle around December 12, 2012 which should bring the return of Bolon Yokte, a Mayan god associated with war and creation.

Author Jose Arguelles called the date "the ending of time as we know it" in a 1987 book that spawned an army of Mayan theorists, whose speculations on a cataclysmic end abound online. But specialists meeting at this ancient Mayan city in southern Mexico say it merely marks the termination of one period of creation and the beginning of another.

"We have to be clear about this. There is no prophecy for 2012," said Erik Velasquez, an etchings specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "It's a marketing fallacy."

The National Institute of Anthropological History in Mexico has been trying to quell the barrage of forecasters predicting the apocalypse. "The West's messianic thinking has distorted the world view of ancient civilizations like the Mayans," the institute said in a statement.

In the Mayan calendar, the long calendar count begins in 3,114 BC and is divided into roughly 394-year periods called Baktuns. Mayans held the number 13 sacred and the 13th Baktun ends next year.

Sven Gronemeyer, a researcher of Mayan codes from La Trobe University in Australia, who has been trying to decode the calendar, said the so-called end day reflects a transition from one era to the next in which Bolon Yokte returns.

"Because Bolon Yokte was already present at the day of creation ... it just seemed natural for the Mayan that Bolon Yokte will again be present," he said.

Of the approximately 15,000 registered glyphic texts found in different parts of what was then the Mayan empire, only two mention 2012, the Institute said.

"The Maya did not think about humanity, global warming or predict the poles would fuse together," said Alfonso Ladena, a professor from the Complutense University of Madrid. "We project our worries on them."

Source: Reuters

Towards An Asian Century

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 05:21:00 +0000

By Raghu Dayal*

China's amazingly rapid and increasingly assertive rise with its vigorous 'smile diplomacy' towards countries in Asia and Africa has been in contrast with India's slothful energies generally generating wariness, even indignation, among several of its South Asian neighbours. Nevertheless some of the most recent initiatives such as the accords with Myanmar, Vietnam and Bangladesh augur well for India to win and influence friends in the region around.

Myanmar, the size of France and Britain combined, strangely outside the eight-nation Saarc fold, commands a strategic location with the potential to change the geography in the sub-region. Recognising Myanmar as a natural bridge between the Asean and India, the Indian side reiterated during the recent state visit of President U Thein Sein its intention of building upon the commonalities and synergies between the two countries. This could advance its Look East policy, which itself signifies hope for the idea of an Asian Century.

Let India shed its hallmark lethargy and stupor, and infuse the requisite vitality and pace in its programmes; for example, build Myanmar's infrastructure and develop human capital.

For most of the past 2,000 years, it was India, not China, that enjoyed the closest connections with Southeast Asia. Burma, now Myanmar, was for over 50 years a part of the Bri-tish Indian empire, although it never formed an integral part of India. In the early 20th century, Myanmar enjoyed a higher standard of living than India. As its economy grew, there was a need for labour as well as entrepreneurial and professional skills, all of which came from India. By the 1920s, the influx from India turned Rangoon, now Yangon, into an 'Indian city'.

But much water has flown down the Irrawaddy since then. Tens of thousands of ethnic Indians had left at Myanmar's independence, while about 400,000 others were compelled to leave in 1964 following the ultra-nationalist army regime coming to power in 1962. The Indian population in Myanmar is now only a fraction of what it once was.

On the contrary, Myanmar is being drawn into the Chinese economic orbit. Mandalay is like a Chinese city now; of its population of about a million, at least a third are Chinese. China's forays into Myanmar have often been exploitative: the forests of its north andeast chopped down, the jade mines of the Kachin Hills denuded, many endangered species hunted and shipped.

Unrestrained China is ubi-quitous in infrastructure projects such as a deep sea port for oil tankers to take gas from the offshore Shwe field through 1,000-mile-long oil and gas pipelines. Like the huge hydroelectric projects on the Irrawaddy and Salween, this also has a strategic dimension, a part of resolving what President Hu Jintao in 2003 called 'The Malacca Dilemma', referring to China's dependence on the Straits of Malacca as its primary energy transit route. Despite this flurry of diverse activities, few jobs have been created for local people; a more unequal society has been established.

There is no historical precedent for the epic moves that are now unfolding. In the context of global economic power inexorably shifting to the east, and the changing geography of Asia, the triangular dynamic involving Beijing, New Delhi and Naypyidaw bristles with immense possibilities. China's string of pearls policy has, to many, meant a covert encirclement of India. Its tightening hold over Myanmar alarms India andother states in the region.

Even so, destined to be perhaps the two most important countries, home to more than one-third of the world's population, China and India are billed for stellar roles on the world stage of tomorrow - and have this great responsibility to be a part of, as much as a trigger for, a stable and peaceful world. In the 16 {+t} {+h} century, China and India together formed half the world's economy. Within a generation, this could well be the case again.

There is a history of Burma becoming a bridge between India and China. It appears that the time has come once again for the virtually defunct road to be reopened. The long sea route for vessels between several countries in the region via the Straits of Malacca could be replaced by a considerably shorter land route. The effect would be a mini version of what the Suez Canal did for the old Cape of Good Hope route.

With welcome winds of change now blowing through Myanmar, the time seems conducive to initiate these measures. To answer the obvious objections of geopolitical stra-tegists that road and rail links to China will raise the spectre of a militant China virtually invited to invade India, it can only be said that Chinese military superiority in any case makes that possible, with or without linkages.

What happened in India's last armed conflict with China happened without any such bridges. In any case, the Chinese rail link from Tibet to Kathmandu is a near reality; once that is through, they are at our doorstep.

Hope, not fear, is the creative impulse in life. Wisdom demands both sides realise there can be no war that either can really win - and there can be no peace that they can lose.

* The writer is a current affairs analyst and former CEO of a public sector company.

A Few Words For Anna Supporters

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:27:00 +0000

At a time when disagreeing with Anna Hazare is tantamount to treason, punishable with instant lynching by belligerent netizens, I choose to stick my neck out in the hope that somewhere out there, some people still have enough balance left to listen to a contrary view.

While I am unequivocally in favour of a scrupulously apolitical movement against corruption, Anna’s latest fast is terribly disillusioning.

It’s as if the citizens have rallied behind a deceptive ‘shortcut’ in the fight against corruption and ‘outsourced’ the same to the ‘do-gooder’ firm of Team Anna. Item numbers by Bollywood stars and spiritual gurus have added spice to the circus. Finally, 24-hour television has gleefully packaged this ‘reality show’, providing a perfect cathartic experience for a pathologically passive civil society, to believe they are ‘actively’ participating in a historic people’s struggle that has resulted in a great triumph within days.

Alas, the fight against corruption is nowhere that easy.

It takes no personal courage to join an anti-corruption rally, but how many of us are ready to stand up in our daily lives to resist everyday corruption that one comes up against? How many of us take the trouble to lend more than moral support to a friend, neighbour, acquaintance who seeks to remedy an injustice? How many of us aren’t corrupt ourselves either as ‘givers’ or ‘takers’ of bribe in some form or the other? How many of us are completely untouched by the culture of ‘doing and seeking favours’ for mutual benefit even in the private sector?

Make no mistake, the only way the culture of rampant corruption will ever be rooted out is by the refusal of every citizen to compromise and pay up, every single time. Not by lazy, big ticket, populist measures like fasts unto death and dharnas.

It’s no profound truth, just simple common sense. When you refuse to pay bribe, why is it that the person demanding it simply brushes you aside? Because he knows you are in a miniscule minority. Your fellow citizens are more than willing to oblige the bribe-taker, so he sees no need to humour you.

It is this kind of corruption that most of us face and need deliverance from. Sadly, that cannot be tackled by the Jan Lokpal Bill.

For, do you think that if a mammoth organisation like the Jan Lokpal Bill envisages is set up it is going to be staffed from top to bottom by angels? Pray where are we going to find these angels? Going by Indian society’s corruption quotient, we might end up with by far the most extortionist institution ever. For what better avenue of palm greasing and blackmail exists than dealing with complaints against anyone?

Thus Anna Hazare’s fast has the fatal potential of putting people’s faith in the wrong kind of impersonal solutions.
Moreover, can such so-called people’s movements be considered truly representative?

Figures floating around suggest that 4.4 million net users supported Anna, while the total number of netizens in India is nearly 40 million. What then about the ones who chose to be silent and outnumber the vocal ones several times over?

Apparently, a million people have protested in the metros in the last few days. Well, what about the 153,482,356 (153 million) Indians who voted for the current government? In any representative system, should 5.4 million people be allowed to dictate to a government elected by 153 million people?

Sorry, that’s simply not enough in a constitutional democracy. Not the least because the media has itself been guilty of over-hyped and rabidly one-sided coverage. If the fourth estate starts playing to the gallery and passes off propaganda as reportage, it loses its right to be considered a credible opinion-maker. For how do we know whether the credentials of Team Anna have not been ‘sexed up’?

Why does the media handle Team Anna with kid gloves? Why are no tough questions asked? Why is there no healthy skepticism about their credentials, their methods, their world view, their logic, their thoughts? Why this cloying worship of Anna Hazare? What if he turns out to be a flawed god?

By: Salil Desai

Who was “Great”? Alexander of Macedonia or Hazrat Umar Farooq of Islam?

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 07:24:00 +0000

"The name of Alexander is now only in books whereas the systems devised by Umar (R.A) are still prevalent in at least 245 countries of the world in some form. Even today, when a letter leaves a post office, when a policeman wears a uniform, when a soldier goes on a leave after six months of duty, when a government pays a stipend to a child, a destitute, a widow or a helpless person, the society automatically accepts Umar (R.A) as “The Great” and acknowledged him to be the biggest “Sikandar” ever."

Who was “Great”? The Alexander of Macedonia or Hazrat Umar Farooq (Radhiallaho-Anhu-R.A.) of Islam? Historians of the world are duty‐bound to answer this question.

We had read as a child that the Alexander of Macedonia became a king at the age of twenty and ventured out of Macedonia at 23. He first conquered the whole of Greece. Then he entered Turkey. After this he defeated Darius of Persia, entered Syria, moved to Jerusalem and then Babylon and Egypt and India. In India he fought King Porus and founded the city of Phalia in memory of his favorite horse. He started his return through Makran. He contacted typhoid on his way back and died in the year 323 B.C. at the age of 33 in the palace of Bakht Nasr (Nebuchadnezzar) at Babylon.

We have been told that he was a great general, conqueror and king in human history and was given the title of “Alexander, the Great”. We made him “Sikander-E-Azam”, the king of kings. But, today, on the eleventh year of the twenty‐first century, I question all the historians of the world if Alexander deserves this title when we have Umar Farooq (R.A). I am inviting all the historians of the world to compare the conquests and the achievements of Alexander and Umar Farooq (R.A.).

Now compare. Alexander was the son of a king ‐‐ the best instructors taught him how to ride a horse, he had tutors like Aristotle and was offered the throne at the age of twenty. On the other hand, Umar Farooq (R.A.) did not have any royal ancestor even in his seven previous generations, grew up minding herds of goats and sheep and had not got trained in the art of war from anyone.

Alexander had conquered 1.7 million square miles of land in ten years with an organized army Umar Farooq (R.A.), in ten years, conquered 2.2 million square miles of land including the Roman and Persian super powers with an un‐organized army. Even in these days of satellites and missiles and submarines, no ruler has a domain as vast as that of Umar (R.A.) which he had not only got conquered on mere horseback but had also managed and ruled it.

Alexander got many of his own generals killed during his conquests, many generals and soldiers deserted him, there were rebellions against him and his army even refused to proceed in India, but no companion of Umar (R.A) ever had the courage to disobey him. He was the commander who deposed the strongest general of Islam, Khalid bin Waleed (R.A.) right in the battleground and no one dared to disobey. He removed Saa’d bin Abi Waqas (R.A.) from the governorship of Kufa, fired Harith bin Kaab (R.A) as a governor, confiscated the wealth of Amro bin al Aas (R.A) and recalled the governor of Hamas and assigned him to grazing the camels. No one dared to disobey.

Alexander conquered 1.7 million square miles of land but could not give any system to the world, whereas Umar (R.A) gave such systems as are still prevalent the world over. He added the phrase “prayer is better than sleep” to the Fajr azaan, the taravih prayers were formally initiated during his rule, he instituted punishment for the consumption of liquor, started the Hijra system of accounting for dates, gave the concept of the jail, fixed salaries for the muezzins, arranged for light in the masjids, formed the department of police, laid the foundations for a complete system for the delivery of justice, got the irrigation system implemented and established military cantonments and the formal army.

Umar (R.A), for the first time ever in the world, granted stipends for the infants, the handicapped, widows and the helpless. He was the first ever to give the concept of the declaration of assets by the rulers, the government officials and the rich.

He established the institution of punishing the judges who didn’t do justice. He, for the first time, made the rulers accountable. He used to protect the trade caravans at night. He used to say that rulers, who deliver justice, sleep fearlessly at night. His saying is that “the leader of the nation is actually its servant”. His stamp read “Umar, death is enough of an admonition”. He never had two dishes on his table. He used to go to sleep with a brick as a pillow. While travelling, he would just stretch a sheet on a tree to make a shadow and go to sleep whenever sleepy.

He used to sleep on bare ground at night. His shirt had 14 patches, among them one of red leather. He used to wear thick coarse cloth and hated soft fine one. Whenever he appointed someone on a government position, he would get an estimate of his wealth and keep it with himself. If the wealth of that person increased during his tenure, he would be held accountable. Whenever he appointed anyone as a governor, he would advise him to never to ride a Turkish horse, wear fine cloth, consume fine flour, have a gatekeeper or close his doors to the distressed. He used to say that “pardoning a tyrant is injustice to the oppressed”.

His sentence “mothers give birth to free children, since when have you enslaved them” is still considered the charter of human rights. He said that he often wondered “how did Umar (R.A.) change?” He was the first Caliph of Islam who was given the title of “Ameer‐ul‐Momineen”.

Every religion of the world has a special characteristic, the special characteristic of Islam is justice, and Umar (R.A) is one who makes this true. His justice gave rise to the term “Adl‐e‐Farooqui” (the justice of Farooq). He was in debt when martyred and his loan was paid off by selling his only property according to his will. He was the only ruler ever to admit that even if a dog died of hunger on the banks on river Tigris during his rule, he would have to bear the punishment for this.

His Justice was such that when he died, a herdsman came running in a far off land in his domain shouting “men, Umar has died”. People asked him in astonishment who, thousands of miles from Medina, informed him of this in a jungle. The herdsman said “as long as Umar (R.A) was alive my sheep used to move around fearlessly in the jungle and no beast dared to even look at them. Today, for the first time, a wolf has taken away my goat. The fearlessness of the wolf indicates to me that Umar is no more”.

I invite all the historians of the world to think again, who was great, Alexander or Umar (R.A). I am sure enough, you will find Alexander to be gravel in front of a mountain, because the empire founded by Alexander vanished just five years after his death whereas the areas where Umar (R.A) planted the flag of Islam still echo with the sound of “Allah is the Greatest” and people still bow before the Allah of Umar (R.A).

The name of Alexander is now only in books whereas the systems devised by Umar (R.A) are still prevalent in at least 245 countries of the world in some form. Even today, when a letter leaves a post office, when a policeman wears a uniform, when a soldier goes on a leave after six months of duty, when a government pays a stipend to a child, a destitute, a widow or a helpless person, the society automatically accepts Umar (R.A) as “The Great” and acknowledged him to be the biggest “Sikandar” ever, except for those Muslims who, in their deep sense of inferiority, look around in fear even when reciting the words of faith.

The Muslims of Lahore had once dared the English that if they once decided to act, they will remind them of Changez Khan. Upon this Jawaharlal Nehru had smiled and said that “sadly these Muslims citing the example of Changez Khan had forgotten that there was an Hazrat Umar (R.A.) also in their history”. We are also forgetting today that among us was one Umar Farooq (R.A.) about whom the Prophet Mohammd - Peace be Upon Him (PBUH) had said that “if there could be a prophet after him, he would have been Hazrat Umar (Radiallaho Anhu-R.A.)”.

M F Hussain : 1915 - 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 06:02:00 +0000

'Mother' by M. F. Hussain

Osama Bin Laden - A Brief Profile

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 02 May 2011 05:14:00 +0000

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was one of the world's most wanted fugitive, blamed for many atrocities by the United States.

Alleged to be one of the main architects of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, he was in hiding ever since in the Pakistan-Afghan border areas.

The Taliban, who were ousted from power in Afghanistan after US launched military operation against them in 2001, were believed to be sheltering Laden.

Brief Profile: Osama bin Laden

The US had also accused him of masterminding a series of bombings against many US installations across the globe.

After 9/11, the US launched a global hunt for Osama bin Laden, the son of a billionaire Saudi businessman.

In 2007, the US Senate doubled the reward for the death or capture of the al-Qaeda chief to $50m.

Interestingly, Osama’s first foray into the internecine Afghanistan conflict was allegedly via US intelligence agency Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] when he was involved in the fight against the then Soviet Union's invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

Though the Russians were driven out by the Afghan mujahidin backed by the US and Pakistan, Osama's love affair with global fight against so called western influence further blossomed and culminated in the deadly 9/11 attack.

After the Taliban were overthrown, he joined cause with them in their guerilla war against US-led troops in Afghanistan.

He had also called for the overthrow of many autocratic Arab rulers, who he accused of siding with the US. In fact, he was banished from the Saudi terrritory for going openly against the monarch.

Osama was born in 1957 in Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh. He was the 17th of over 50 children born to his Yemeni father, Muhammad and Syria-born mother Alia Ghanem.

There has been conflicting reports about his death in the past too, the first time being in 2001 when a section of Pakistan media reported that Osama died of lung complications.

The US had alleged that Pakistan knew about his whereabouts, a charge Pakistan always denied.

Barack Obama, the US president, said bin Laden was killed in Pakistani city of Abbottabad, about 150km north of Islamabad.

After Obama became president in 2008, he intensified the search against Laden and launched Predator drone attacks inside Pakistan, a constant point of acrimony between the two countries.

A Fast Unto Life

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 04:56:00 +0000

"Anna Hazare’s fast in Delhi is not meant to bring down a government, its solitary purpose is, or should be, to resurrect an India that had become so supine that it slept indolently while the wealth of this nation was being looted by a handful of politicians and their acolytes."

Mahatma Gandhi flagellated himself with 17 fasts. They were not all fasts unto the death; they could be time-specific. This did not reduce the risk to his life, for 21 days without any nourishment or medical intervention could drag a frail man with an average weight of some 110 pounds to death’s door.

Gandhi was a visionary, but not one ever trapped by illusion. He did not believe that a fast would persuade the British to pack up and leave the most lucrative part of their far-flung empire, the jewel of their crown, just because one obstinate, half-clad, toothless native had decided to stop drinking goat’s milk for a few days.

The British establishment always treated Gandhi with contempt (exceptions like Lord Irwin apart); and as defeat loomed in the 1940s this evolved into unmitigated loathing, not least because an extraordinary arsenal of non-violence, moral momentum, and an unprecedented national awakening had driven history’s mightiest empire into limp impotence.

When Gandhi started his liberation movement, the ranking Indian within the establishment, Lord Sinha, confidently averred that the British Raj would last for 400 years.

Thirty years later, the last Viceroy with any authority Lord Wavell (Mountbatten was a mere midwife, and left the motherland bleeding) had this to say in his diary on September 26, 1946: “The more I see of that old man (Gandhi) the more I regard him as an unscrupulous old hypocrite; he would shrink from no violence or bloodletting to achieve his ends... he is an exceeding cunning man to achieve his ends… he is an exceedingly shrewd, obstinate, domineering, double-tongued, single-minded politician”. You have to hate someone with unbelievable intensity to stitch together such a farrago of lies. Wavell wrote this just after his beloved British Raj had killed some four million Bengalis through another man-made famine.

Paradoxically, many of the British on the second rung admired the man who had made it his life’s work to destroy their empire. They understood that if they had been born Indian they would have been with Gandhi. On January 11, 1924, the superintendent of Pune jail, where Gandhi was interned, rushed the Mahatma to Sassoon hospital for an emergency appendicitis operation. The electricity went off when Colonel Maddock, the surgeon-general, was operating on the night of January 12, with the help of a British nurse; he completed his duty with torchlight. Gandhi thanked them for saving his life, and they were proud to do so.

The British constituted only half the challenge before Gandhi; the other, and bitter, half were fellow Indians. Gandhi knew that unless he could exorcise, or at least contain, the evil of communal violence between Hindus and Muslims, even success could become ash in his mouth. He had no instrument of coercion to use against fellow Indians, but he had a secret weapon: moral blackmail.

Fear of sin

He could hold his own life hostage through a fast while Indians sorted out between themselves whether the ransom, Gandhi’s life, was worth paying. Over and over again, India paid up, for no Indian, Hindu or Muslim, wanted the sin of a Mahatma’s death on his head.

It was in 1924, the same year as his appendicitis, that Gandhi went on a 21-day fast after the Kohat riots. Very deliberately, he chose to fast at the home of the great leader of the Khilafat movement, Maulana Mohammad Ali, in Delhi. By the time he sipped some orange juice on October 8, the fever of violence had passed, at least for the moment.

The instinctive reaction of governments to any such fast is cynicism. A government might be, in fact, as weak as a terminal patient in cancer ward, but will delude itself, till its dying breath, that to surrender before a man ready to sacrifice his life will make future governance impossible. The Congress, which had wept through Gandhi’s fasts, refused to compromise when a Gandhian went on a fast unto death to demand the creation of Andhra Pradesh in 1950.

The Gandhian died, and Andhra was born. The Akali Sants put fasts to effective public use during their movement for a Sikh-majority Punjab. The Marxists laughed about Mamata Banerjee’s weight when she went on a fast in Kolkata to protest against their land policy; on May 13, when the Assembly election results are out, Mamata will have the last laugh.

A fast succeeds not because it bends a government to its will, but because it is the yeast that foments the rise of a populace. Anna Hazare’s fast in Delhi is not meant to bring down a government, its solitary purpose is, or should be, to resurrect an India that had become so supine that it slept indolently while the wealth of this nation was being looted by a handful of politicians and their acolytes.

Anna Hazare is not waiting to see how many corrupt, hypocritical ministers come to his side; he wants to know how many Anna Hazares have emulated him on a street corner in front of their homes. He has asked just one question: do you, fellow Indians, have a conscience? If the answer is yes, then rise and save your nation from the death-grip of corruption. This is a fast for India’s life.

The Fatal Flaws in The Government's Lokpal Bill

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 05:26:00 +0000

India Against Corruption, a group formed by Anna Hazare and other social activists and former judges, has given 17 reasons why the Jan Lokpal Bill drafted by former Supreme Court judge Santosh Hegde, now the Karnataka Lokayukta, is far better than the Bill prepared by the union government.

The Jan Lokpal Bill, hailed as a civil society initiative, provides for a jail sentence to the corrupt within two years of filing a complaint and seizure of wealth acquired through illegal means. The Bill proposes that the Lokpal under it would have jurisdiction not only over politicians but also on Supreme Court and High Court judges and bureaucrats. The government Bill limits itself to the Prime Minister, ministers and Members of Parliament and proposes a probe by different agencies.

As Hazare told reporters in New Delhi, the Lokpal Bill has been introduced in Parliament eight times in the past four decades, the first time in 1969. But, it has never been passed apparently because politicians do not want to be held accountable.

The India Against Corruption group said it regrets that the latest draft of the Lokpal Bill prepared by the current UPA government demolishes whatever little exists in the name of the anti-corruption mechanism in the country and seeks to insulate politicians from action. This, its members say, is the reason why it has come out with another version of the Bill. The group argues that the Lokayukta Acts enacted by 18 states have proved to be quite ineffective.

On its website <http://www.indiaagainstcorruption.org/>, the group presents a critique of the government Bill and gives 17 reasons why it is an eyewash. Here are some of the points raised by Hazare’s group:

1. The government Bill provides for nothing to recover ill-gotten wealth. A corrupt politician or bureaucrat can come out of jail and enjoy the money. The Jan Lokpal Bill seeks to recover from the accused the loss caused to the government due to corruption. It also increases punishment for the corrupt from a minimum of six months and a maximum of seven years to a minimum of five years and a maximum of life imprisonment.

2. The Jan Lokpal Bill seeks to empower the Lokpal to initiate probe suo motu and directly entertain public complaints. The government Bill requires complaints to be routed through the Speaker and the Rajya Sabha Chairperson.

3. The government Bill makes the Lokpal only an advisory body, vesting powers in the Prime Minister for action on its reports against cabinet ministers and in Parliament for action against the Prime Minister and MPs. The Jan Lokpal Bill gives the Lokpal powers to initiate prosecution after completing investigations. It also gives the Lokpal police powers to register FIRs, proceed with criminal investigations and launch prosecution.

4. It would be impossible for the Prime Minister to act against a cabinet minister on the basis of the Lokpal's report due to the compulsion of coalition politics. It gives the example of former telecom minister A Raja.

5. The Jan Lokpal Bill proposes merger of the Central Vigilance Commission with a part of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to create a single point of investigation in cases of corruption. The government Bill proposes to take away powers from the CBI to investigate politicians, thereby insulating them from investigations.

6. The government Bill gives power to the Lokpal to send to jail through summary trial anybody filing false and frivolous complaints, but it does not give the Lokpal power to send corrupt politicians to jail.

7. The government Bill proposes that all three Lokpal members should be retired judges, which could make retiring judges vulnerable to government influence just before retirement.

8. The government Bill proposes to have the Vice-President, the Prime Minister, leaders of both houses of Parliament, leaders of the Opposition in both houses, law minister and home minister in the selection panel for the Lokpal member. Barring the first one, the rest are politicians whose offices the Lokpal can investigate for corruption. Also, the committee will have a majority members from the ruling party or coalition.

9. Civil society has suggested that the committee consist of members with judicial background, the Chief Election Commissioner, the Comptroller and Auditor General and international awardees, like Nobel and Magsaysay awardees, of Indian origin.

10. It would become impossible for the Lokpal to investigate a case like the Bofors scam if the government Bill is enacted, as it proposes that the Lokpal will have no powers to probe a case against the Prime Minister, if the case deals with foreign affairs, security and defence.

11. The government Bill prescribes a time limit of six months to a year for the Lokpal to complete the inquiry. There is no time limit suggested for the completion of trial. The Jan Lokpal Bill, however, proposes that the investigations be completed within a year and the trial be over within the next year.

12. The government Bill gives no powers to the Lokpal to provide protection to those exposing political corruption, while the Jan Lokpal Bill empowers the Lokpal to provide protection to whistleblowers.

By: Iftikhar Gilani

Cash-For-Votes Cables Are Authentic: Assange To NDTV

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 05:06:00 +0000

In an exclusive interview to NDTV's Prannoy Roy, Julian Assange says that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is wrong to have questioned the authenticity of the WikiLeaks cable that stormed the Indian Parliament last week. However, he also stressed the charges are worth investigating.

A cable in 2008 sent from a US diplomat in Delhi says that the Congress bought MPs ahead of its crucial vote of confidence. The Left had pulled out of the government over the nuclear deal with the US.

Speaking to NDTV, Assange says the PM's statements "seem like a deliberate attempt to mislead the public by suggesting that governments around the world do not accept the material and it is not verified."

The WikiLeaks founder also says, "the cables are authentic but the contents of the cables may or may not be correct. They need to be investigated, interrogated."

Here is an excerpt from that interview.

NDTV: There is of course an alternate point of view that what you revealed in these cables is a set of opinions and assessments made by some American diplomats in the US embassy. And you were just saying that 'my task ends there in revealing these secret cables' but there are other points of view that says that it leaves a lot of collateral damage where opinions and assessments by these officials are taken as facts to embarrass and weaken their states. And people ask you is that a fair thing to do, just leave this out and wash your hands off it?

Assange: Absolutely not....it is not correct to say that all these cables are mere opinions by US diplomats...that is not true. These are official correspondence sent by Ambassadors, sent in their official capacity back to Washington. Their motivations are to improve their career prospects generally. So they want Washington to understand that they are engaged in the country. They are getting good sources of information and they are reporting back. This seems to be the predominant thing. But they report what they say are facts and they also present opinions...it is important to keep these two different. In the cases of these Indian cables which are causing such a furor about bribery...such an interesting case...it is very hard to understand why the US Embassy official would lie about that to Washington. What is more interesting is under what basis was he told that information? That the US Embassy official was shown that cash? Could it have been that it is a US issue? Could it have been to demonstrate how compliant certain parts of Indian Parliament work with US interest? Or it could have been to set up or frame another group? It is hard to see what benefit there would be in framing another group to Washington through that method. It is not clear what benefit it would be. ...Of course what the officials say and how they gain their knowledge too must be investigated and interrogated. But the comment I have been hearing from Prime Minister Singh....these, to me, seem like a deliberate attempt to mislead the public by suggesting that governments around the world do not accept the material and it is not verified ...absolutely false! Hillary Clinton last year December spoke to the Indian government last year, perhaps to Prime Minister Singh or that level to forewarn that this material would be coming out. There is no doubt that these are bonafide reports sent by the American Ambassador back to Washington and these should be seen in that context. That does not mean every fact in them is correct, you have to look at their sources and how they gave this information.

Never Fight a Land War in Asia

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:28:00 +0000

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking at West Point, said last week that “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.”

In saying this, Gates was repeating a dictum laid down by Douglas MacArthur after the Korean War, who urged the United States to avoid land wars in Asia. Given that the United States has fought four major land wars in Asia since World War II — Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — none of which had ideal outcomes, it is useful to ask three questions: First, why is fighting a land war in Asia a bad idea? Second, why does the United States seem compelled to fight these wars? And third, what is the alternative that protects U.S. interests in Asia without large-scale military land wars?

The Hindrances of Overseas Wars
Let’s begin with the first question, the answer to which is rooted in demographics and space. The population of Iraq is currently about 32 million. Afghanistan has a population of less than 30 million. The U.S. military, all told, consists of about 1.5 million active-duty personnel (plus 980,000 in the reserves), of whom more than 550,000 belong to the Army and about 200,000 are part of the Marine Corps. Given this, it is important to note that the United States strains to deploy about 200,000 troops at any one time in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that many of these troops are in support rather than combat roles. The same was true in Vietnam, where the United States was challenged to field a maximum of about 550,000 troops (in a country much more populous than Iraq or Afghanistan) despite conscription and a larger standing army. Indeed, the same problem existed in World War II.

When the United States fights in the Eastern Hemisphere, it fights at great distances, and the greater the distance, the greater the logistical cost. More ships are needed to deliver the same amount of materiel, for example. That absorbs many troops. The logistical cost of fighting at a distance is that it diverts numbers of troops (or requires numbers of civilian personnel) disproportionate to the size of the combat force.

Regardless of the number of troops deployed, the U.S. military is always vastly outnumbered by the populations of the countries to which it is deployed. If parts of these populations resist as light-infantry guerrilla forces or employ terrorist tactics, the enemy rapidly swells to a size that can outnumber U.S. forces, as in Vietnam and Korea. At the same time, the enemy adopts strategies to take advantage of the core weakness of the United States — tactical intelligence. The resistance is fighting at home. It understands the terrain and the culture. The United States is fighting in an alien environment. It is constantly at an intelligence disadvantage. That means that the effectiveness of the native forces is multiplied by excellent intelligence, while the effectiveness of U.S. forces is divided by lack of intelligence.

The United States compensates with technology, from space-based reconnaissance and air power to counter-battery systems and advanced communications. This can make up the deficit but only by massive diversions of manpower from ground-combat operations. Maintaining a helicopter requires dozens of ground-crew personnel. Where the enemy operates with minimal technology multiplied by intelligence, the United States compensates for lack of intelligence with massive technology that further reduces available combat personnel. Between logistics and technological force multipliers, the U.S. “point of the spear” shrinks. If you add the need to train, relieve, rest and recuperate the ground-combat forces, you are left with a small percentage available to fight.

The paradox of this is that American forces will win the engagements but may still lose the war. Having identified the enemy, the United States can overwhelm it with firepower. The problem the United States has is finding the enemy and distinguishing it from the general population. As a result, the United States is well-suited for the initial phases of combat, when the task is to defeat a conventional force. But after the conventional force has been defeated, the resistance can switch to methods difficult for American intelligence to deal with. The enemy can then control the tempo of operations by declining combat where it is at a disadvantage and initiating combat when it chooses.

The example of the capitulation of Germany and Japan in World War II is frequently cited as a model of U.S. forces defeating and pacifying an opposing nation. But the Germans were not defeated primarily by U.S. ground troops. The back of the Wehrmacht was broken by the Soviets on their own soil with the logistical advantages of short supply lines. And, of course, Britain and numerous other countries were involved. It is doubtful that the Germans would have capitulated to the Americans alone. The force the United States deployed was insufficient to defeat Germany. The Germans had no appetite for continuing a resistance against the Russians and saw surrendering to the Americans and British as sanctuary from the Russians. They weren’t going to resist them. As for Japan, it was not ground forces but air power, submarine warfare and atomic bombs that finished them — and the emperor’s willingness to order a surrender. It was not land power that prevented resistance but air and sea power, plus a political compromise by MacArthur in retaining and using the emperor. Had the Japanese emperor been removed, I suspect that the occupation of Japan would have been much more costly. Neither Germany nor Japan are examples in which U.S. land forces compelled capitulation and suppressed resistance.

The problem the United States has in the Eastern Hemisphere is that the size of the force needed to occupy a country initially is much smaller than the force needed to pacify the country. The force available for pacification is much smaller than needed because the force the United States can deploy demographically without committing to total war is simply too small to do the job — and the size needed to do the job is unknown.

U.S. Global Interests
The deeper problem is this: The United States has global interests. While the Soviet Union was the primary focus of the United States during the Cold War, no power threatens to dominate Eurasia now, and therefore no threat justifies the singular focus of the United States. In time of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States must still retain a strategic reserve for other unanticipated contingencies. This further reduces the available force for combat.

Some people argue that the United States is insufficiently ruthless in prosecuting war, as if it would be more successful without political restraints at home. The Soviets and the Nazis, neither noted for gentleness, were unable to destroy the partisans behind German lines or the Yugoslav resistance, in spite of brutal tactics. The guerrilla has built-in advantages in warfare for which brutality cannot compensate.

Given all this, the question is why the United States has gotten involved in wars in Eurasia four times since World War II. In each case it is obvious: for political reasons. In Korea and Vietnam, it was to demonstrate to doubting allies that the United States had the will to resist the Soviets. In Afghanistan, it was to uproot al Qaeda. In Iraq, the reasons are murkier, more complex and less convincing, but the United States ultimately went in, in my opinion, to convince the Islamic world of American will.

The United States has tried to shape events in the Eastern Hemisphere by the direct application of land power. In Korea and Vietnam, it was trying to demonstrate resolve against Soviet and Chinese power. In Afghanistan and Iraq, it was trying to shape the politics of the Muslim world. The goal was understandable but the amount of ground force available was not. In Korea, it resulted in stalemate; in Vietnam, defeat. We await the outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan, but given Gates’ statement, the situation for the United States is not necessarily hopeful.

In each case, the military was given an ambiguous mission. This was because a clear outcome — defeating the enemy — was unattainable. At the same time, there were political interests in each. Having engaged, simply leaving did not seem an option. Therefore, Korea turned into an extended presence in a near-combat posture, Vietnam ended in defeat for the American side, and Iraq and Afghanistan have turned, for the time being, into an uncertain muddle that no reasonable person expects to end with the declared goals of a freed and democratic pair of countries.

Problems of Strategy
There are two problems with American strategy. The first is using the appropriate force for the political mission. This is not a question so much of the force as it is of the mission. The use of military force requires clarity of purpose; otherwise, a coherent strategy cannot emerge. Moreover, it requires an offensive mission. Defensive missions (such as Vietnam and Korea) by definition have no terminal point or any criteria for victory. Given the limited availability of ground combat forces, defensive missions allow the enemy’s level of effort to determine the size of the force inserted, and if the force is insufficient to achieve the mission, the result is indefinite deployment of scarce forces.

Then there are missions with clear goals initially but without an understanding of how to deal with Act II. Iraq suffered from an offensive intention ill suited to the enemy’s response. Having destroyed the conventional forces of Iraq, the United States was unprepared for the Iraqi response, which was guerrilla resistance on a wide scale. The same was true in Afghanistan. Counterinsurgency is occupation warfare. It is the need to render a population — rather than an army — unwilling and incapable of resisting. It requires vast resources and large numbers of troops that outstrip the interest. Low-cost counter-insurgency with insufficient forces will always fail. Since the United States uses limited forces because it has to, counterinsurgency is the most dangerous kind of war for the United States. The idea has always been that the people prefer the U.S. occupation to the threats posed by their fellow countrymen and that the United States can protect those who genuinely do prefer the former. That may be the idea, but there is never enough U.S. force available.

Another model for dealing with the problem of shaping political realities can be seen in the Iran-Iraq war. In that war, the United States allowed the mutual distrust of the two countries to eliminate the threats posed by both. When the Iraqis responded by invading Kuwait, the United States responded with a massive counter with very limited ends — the reconquest of Kuwait and the withdrawal of forces. It was a land war in Asia designed to defeat a known and finite enemy army without any attempt at occupation.

The problem with all four wars is that they were not wars in a conventional sense and did not use the military as militaries are supposed to be used. The purpose of a military is to defeat enemy conventional forces. As an army of occupation against a hostile population, military forces are relatively weak. The problem for the United States is that such an army must occupy a country for a long time, and the U.S. military simply lacks the ground forces needed to occupy countries and still be available to deal with other threats.

By having an unclear mission, you have an uncertain terminal point. When does it end? You then wind up with a political problem internationally — having engaged in the war, you have allies inside and outside of the country that have fought with you and taken risks with you. Withdrawal leaves them exposed, and potential allies will be cautious in joining with you in another war. The political costs spiral and the decision to disengage is postponed. The United States winds up in the worst of all worlds. It terminates not on its own but when its position becomes untenable, as in Vietnam. This pyramids the political costs dramatically.

Wars need to be fought with ends that can be achieved by the forces available. Donald Rumsfeld once said, “You go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” I think that is a fundamental misunderstanding of war. You do not engage in war if the army you have is insufficient. When you understand the foundations of American military capability and its limits in Eurasia, Gates’ view on war in the Eastern Hemisphere is far more sound than Rumsfeld’s.

The Diplomatic Alternative
The alternative is diplomacy, not understood as an alternative to war but as another tool in statecraft alongside war. Diplomacy can find the common ground between nations. It can also be used to identify the hostility of nations and use that hostility to insulate the United States by diverting the attention of other nations from challenging the United States. That is what happened during the Iran-Iraq war. It wasn’t pretty, but neither was the alternative.

Diplomacy for the United States is about maintaining the balance of power and using and diverting conflict to manage the international system. Force is the last resort, and when it is used, it must be devastating. The argument I have made, and which I think Gates is asserting, is that at a distance, the United States cannot be devastating in wars dependent on land power. That is the weakest aspect of American international power and the one the United States has resorted to all too often since World War II, with unacceptable results. Using U.S. land power as part of a combined arms strategy is occasionally effective in defeating conventional forces, as it was with North Korea (and not China) but is inadequate to the demands of occupation warfare. It makes too few troops available for success, and it does not know how many troops might be needed.

This is not a policy failure of any particular U.S. president. George W. Bush and Barack Obama have encountered precisely the same problem, which is that the forces that have existed in Eurasia, from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Korea to the Taliban in Afghanistan, have either been too numerous or too agile (or both) for U.S. ground forces to deal with. In any war, the primary goal is not to be defeated. An elective war in which the criteria for success are unclear and for which the amount of land force is insufficient must be avoided. That is Gates’ message. It is the same one MacArthur delivered, and the one Dwight Eisenhower exercised when he refused to intervene in Vietnam on France’s behalf. As with the Monroe Doctrine, it should be elevated to a principle of U.S. foreign policy, not because it is a moral principle but because it is a very practical one.

Source: STRATFOR

The Hypocrisy Behind Wars For Democracy

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:17:00 +0000

First Tunisia, then Egypt and now its spreading through out the various countries in the Middle East. This region has been the hot bed for political upheavals ever since World War 2, but what has been happening in the past couple of weeks sure has made this region even more unstable or perhaps this is just the winds of change.

The power of the common man has been showcased more than ever perhaps in the events that have now become to called as the “facebook revolution”. The wide spread usage of the social networking sites, in order to unite, co ordinate and plan out on how to go about in trying to attain democratic rights, cannot be missed. The younger generation of the citizens who cannot be bought over by empty promises, they were the ones to step up and boldly speak out against the policies. In both the cases we see that the demand was not supporting any particular leader but instead it was simply against the present form of government and the policies that it had taken in the past. Poverty, unemployment and the disparity between the rich and the poor is what tipped over citizens to seek for change.

But what is strange in all of this is why America, the democratic police of the world, have not come in open support for the protesters. In Egypt’s case, they were seen to be actually backing the president till the very moment they figured that the protesters were very serious about their demands of change and were not willing to back down. What I really cant put my head around is the fact that this is the same country which is fighting a war in this very region for the same cause - Democracy, since after it was proved that there was no WMDs, this was what they thought of. So if I understand the American foreign policy right, they decide on which country will have democracy and which do not?

America has had a long history of putting up puppet governments in various parts of the world in various periods of time according to their need for control. The had succeeded in putting such governments in various South American countries in the middle of last century. But there too change came and the people voted for left leaning governments, which by policy would have dictated that they would be against the Americans. But in reality, even though the people had suffered under the oppressive regimes for many years and they would have been perfectly right to blame the US for all of this, they decided to focus on rebuilding the countries, the economy and to hope to give their citizens a better tomorrow. The cold war might be over, the war between the left and right is right now very superficial because right now what every country wants is resources.

The country that holds sway in the Middle East is one of the utmost importance. Oil for one is big motivator for a country to fabricate evidence and go into war which has raged on with no end in sight. This is one resource that the entire world is trying to grab. Alternate fuels are still a while away in the future. right now, petroleum is more important than anything else. The other obvious reason of that area is Israel. Yes, to be surrounded by nations who could identify themselves with the Palestinian rights for land and acceptance, they have to be on the constant look out for any developments in the region. But every country right now have their own problems to deal with and I feel that the internal affairs of the countries will be the first priority right now. Israel should use this time to find amicable solution to the problems, and to find if not allies or sympathisers both of which they will not find among the Arabs, but for peace in the region.

When the governments stop listening to the very people that they are supposed to govern, then it is the right of the people to demand for a change in the system. Any form of government should know that there is only so much the the common man will take. And yes, the public will bow down and take abuse, but not forever. Modern democracy has to change, to accommodate the voices of the downtrodden and the general masses. The masses that have been flooding the streets in Egypt are not just a section of the society that wants redemption, but instead it is poor, the rich, the young, the aged, every strata of society is being represented in that crowd. A governing system should not be shackled by the interests of few, nor should it ignore the voices of the majority. Change is biological, it evolves with time and as we see today and tomorrow, this time change is here and it is about time the leaders that we allow to govern us know that. A perfect system is quixotic, and it will never be possible, but from this anarchy that is spreading through the streets of Cairo, a leadership will arise, but will it stand, only the sands of time will tell.

Prayers to those fallen, prayers for peace and prayers that this change is for the better.

Egypt: How India Should Respond To The Uprising

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 04:50:00 +0000

It is obviously in our interest to be on the right side of the new forces that will emerge to prominence in Egypt. They will remember who supported them in their hour of history and who sat on the fence.

As a general rule, it is advisable in diplomacy to be cautious in responding to events in foreign countries, especially when they occur in faraway places about which we may not be fully in the picture or where we may not have too many interests. There are occasions, however, when too much caution would not be necessary and might not be helpful in safeguarding and furthering our current and future interests. Silence might indicate not just caution but lack of clarity in our thinking. The evolving situation in Egypt is one such occasion. We ought to have expressed sympathy and support for the people of Egypt in what is undoubtedly their great moment in history.

It has been obvious, certainly from the second day of the protests in Egypt, that this was a genuinely people's movement, not engineered by external elements such as the Al Qaeda, nor by the Muslim Brotherhood, let alone any foreign government. It has also been clear that as and when the revolution reaches its denouement, President Mubarak, if he manages to survive in office, will no longer be able to continue to exercise unfettered power, as he has done for 30 years, that the people will have to be empowered in some way and that it would simply not be possible to restore the status quo ante in the political governance of the country. While the ‘jasmine' revolution in Tunisia might have provided the immediate spark, the spontaneity and scale of protests suggest that the Egyptian people have been nursing their grievances and rage for a long time. People from all strata of society, rich and poor, young and old, have been on the streets, demanding reforms and ouster of Mr. Mubarak. Modern means of communication such as facebook, internet and twitter have greatly facilitated the launching and sustaining of the revolution.

India is not, and must not be, in the business of promoting democracy abroad, either by itself or in association with anyone else. We have rightly taken the position that it is not up to us to tell others what type of government they should have; we will deal with whichever government is in power and is able to take decisions on behalf of their people, decisions that the government concerned is able to implement. This does not mean, when genuine democratic impulses propel a people to take to the streets in a peaceful manner that we should not respond to them positively. There would be absolutely no risk in doing so, especially if our assessment suggests, as it ought to have in this case, that there was no question of things going back to what they were earlier and that in the end, Egypt will end up having more democracy.

India is and must remain a strong votary of the principle of non-interference and non-intervention. Expression of support for the demonstrators will not amount to interference in Egypt's internal affairs. In any case, the principle of non-interference has to be superseded by the principle of national interest. It is obviously in our interest to be on the right side of the new forces that will emerge to prominence in Egypt when all this is over. They will remember who supported them in their hour of history and who sat on the fence. This is a good example of a situation when principle and national interest coincide.

Why is India Afraid of Dr. Binayak Sen?

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 08:16:00 +0000

By Nandini Krishnan

A child molester is sentenced to a year and a half in jail twenty years after his victim killed herself, and gets out on bail within four months.

A man, who is responsible for the continuing suffering of millions of victims 26 years after a gas tragedy, is allowed to lead a cosy life in the United States of America.

A man who cost the government lakhs of crores is raided by the CBI after ample notice that would've given him time to get rid of incriminating evidence.

A convicted terrorist is fed biriyani, while the hangman finishes up his backlog.

Yet, in this very same nation, a human rights activist is almost summarily sentenced to life imprisonment - the maximum penalty for most rapists and murderers.

Dr Binayak Sen, it must be remembered, has been hailed across the world and in his own nation for his stellar work in the rural healthcare field.

Here is a man who has clearly stated that he doesn't condone Naxalites or approve of their violent methods. Yet, after being initially jailed for more than a year without trial, he has now been convicted, on the basis of an unsigned letter, of waging war against the government.

So, what makes this 60-year-old an enemy of the nation?

The fact that one of his patients was a Maoist ideologue? Or the efforts of his fact-finding team in exposing the atrocities committed by the Salwa Judum?

Each one of Dr Sen's 33 visits to Narayan Sanyal in Raipur Jail was carried out with prior police permission. The postcard penned by Sanyal, which was used as evidence to arrest Dr Sen in May 2007, was signed and sealed by the jail authorities.

But where were the lawyer and the impartial witness when the state authorities were rifling through Binayak Sen's computer?

As one of India's most high-profile criminal lawyers, Ram Jethmalani, 'embarrasses' his party by offering to represent Dr Sen (incidentally, for the second time, after securing his bail in 2009), and the global chorus protesting against the sentence gets louder, the Indian government is beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to its Eastern neighbour.

Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo was in prison, unable to receive news of his winning the Nobel Prize this year. Startlingly reminiscent of Dr Sen's Jonathan Mann Award in 2008, eh?

Why is India so scared of people who talk?

Take the sedition charge against Arundhati Roy. Frankly, there isn't much she says that I agree with, mostly because her speeches are poorly-researched, vituperative, ambiguous and, sometimes, funny. But that doesn't mean I believe she ought to be arrested and tried, simply for mouthing off the government.

What makes an Indian who questions the running of the country less of an Indian citizen than the Prime Minister? Chances are that the 'activist' - oh yes, the word is always within quotes - in question has been a citizen of this country far longer than the Chairperson of the UPA coalition.

But in India, there seems to be a rule that one cannot speak against any action of the government unless one is a part of the state machinery. And, it seems, a state agent can get away with anything, including the molestation of a child.

How far are we from turning into China or Iran or Sri Lanka, where most political prisoners are journalists and activists, held for criticising the government? How different are we from the Thought Police of George Orwell's 1984?

The historical rebellions that took place in this country are considered landmarks in nation building, and their perpetrators eulogised as heroes. Has anyone read of the Revolt of 1857, or the Dandi Salt March, or the Indian National Army, or the Quit India movement, in unflattering terms? Would anyone condemn Mangal Pandey or the Rani of Jhansi or Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or Subhash Chandra Bose as an enemy of the state?

Does the fact that India is now run by Indians make it illegal to speak out against the government? Worse, does daring to defy the government mean one could be sentenced to a life-term in jail, without possibility of bail?

If so, our nation is in a perpetual state of Emergency.

India's Muslims Largely Unattached To Extremism: WikiLeaks

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 07:55:00 +0000

India's over 150 million Muslim population is largely unattached to extremism, US diplomatic cables have said, endorsing India's vibrant democracy, inclusive culture and nationalistic nature of the minority community. "Separatism and religious extremism have little appeal to Indian Muslims, and the overwhelming majority espouses moderate doctrines," Former US envoy to India, David Mulford said in a cable released by whistle blower website WikiLeaks.

"India's growing economy, vibrant democracy, and inclusive culture, encourage Muslims to seek success and social mobility in the mainstream and reduces alienation.

With Indian Muslim youth increasingly comfortable in the mainstream, the pool of potential recruits is shrinking, while Muslim families and communities provide little sanction or support to extremist appeals," the cable said.

India is home to a wide variety of extremist groups, including religious extremists (Hindu, Muslim and Sikh).

The vast majority (of Muslims) remain committed to the Indian state and seek to participate in mainstream political and economic life, it said.

"India's vibrant democracy, inclusive culture and growing economy have made it easier for Muslim youth to find a place in the mainstream, reduced the pool of potential recruits, and the space in which Islamic extremist organizations can operate," the leaked WikiLeaks cable said, according to Guardian.

Although there are a wide variety of Islamic religious, political and social organizations, most Muslims join or support secular groups without a specific Islamic identity.

No exclusively Muslim organization has succeeded in mobilizing more than a small portion of the Muslim faithful.

India's vibrant democracy has ensured that the large Muslim community has a voice in politics and recent elections have demonstrated that Muslim voters are courted actively by political parties, the leaked cable said.

"With a Muslim President (APJ Abdul Kalam) occupying the highest political position in the country, Muslims have been encouraged to seek political power in electoral and parliamentary politics, all but eliminating the appeal of violent extremism," the cable added.

India's secular education system increasingly integrates Muslim students into the mainstream and has spawned a growing and prosperous Muslim middle class.

The cable said, "Young and dynamic Muslims are popular culture heroes in sports (Sania Mirza) and Bollywood (Sharrukh Khan and many others). The message for young Muslims is that they are Indians first and Muslims second, and that they can fully participate in Indian society and culture and win the adulation and respect of other Indians, regardless of religion."

The Beginning Of A New War - 'Anonymous' Cyber War

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 05:22:00 +0000

The “infowar” has pitted amateur hackers against some of the western world’s greatest institutions. But a more significant, perhaps fearsome, war would be one that succeeded in marshalling the full muscle and might of Anonymous behind its campaigns.

It is being described as the first great cyber war: an online collision between some of the world’s greatest brands and a little-known, poorly understood group of “hacktivists” trying to bring down companies from the comfort of their bedrooms.

The hacker group behind the attacks goes by the name of Anonymous. This week it declared its goal to be “infowar” and said: “In war, there are bystanders that get hit.” As the name suggests, Anonymous is not a group with high-profile members. Its composition is multinational: a 16-year-old Dutch boy was arrested this week on suspicion of bringing down the websites of MasterCard and Visa in support of WikiLeaks. The family computer he is suspected of using has been seized.

Although its attacks seem co-ordinated, it is not clear who is leading the group and its members have only the faintest of ideas about its goals. It’s most audacious effort, an attempt to bring down Amazon, was thwarted after members could not agree which site to attack next.

Described by one insider as “complex, puerile, bizarre and chaotic”, Anonymous propelled itself into the public consciousness this week with a succession of attacks on major U.S. institutions — but it has been striking fear into the heart of Scientologists and copyright enforcement agencies for years. Earlier this year, members forced the Ministry of Sound websites offline after the dance music group tried to prevent piracy of its catalogue.

Anonymous was born on the influential Internet messageboard 4chan, a forum popular with hackers and gamers, in 2003. The group’s name is a nod to 4chan’s early days, when any individuals who posted to its forums and chose not to identify themselves were automatically dubbed “Anonymous”. But the ephemeral group, which picks up causes “whenever it feels like it”, has now “gone beyond 4chan into something bigger”, an active Anonymous member told the Guardian.

Anonymous has no command structure. Members communicate using secure chat-rooms, the location of which constantly moves to evade detection. The movement works through “organised chaos” where individuals post ideas and new targets to attack, and wait to see the response. Eventually popular ideas generate action.

The technique is simple. Members target a website with repeated requests to load its pages until the site under attack can no longer cope. A site can be hit with thousands of requests a second, and this week MasterCard was among the companies that found its website could not cope. These are known as “distributed denial of service attacks” — DDoS, an acronym that is ubiquitous in the hacker community. Those wanting to participate download a special software package — LOIC, or low orbit ion cannon — which takes only a few minutes to be ready to use.

Coldblood, a British member, set up chat servers for Anonymous so the group could plan attacks on the Church of Scientology in January 2008 when it attempted to remove from the Internet parts of an interview with Tom Cruise, its most famous member.

“The Scientology stuff was a couple of thousand people at its peak. But we’ve just seen it spiral into what it is now. It’s actually astounding me that it’s grown this quickly,” says Coldblood.

Downloads of the LOIC software have grown 60-fold, from 390 to 23,479 in the last week.

For the targets, which this week also included the Swedish prosecution authority — which is pursuing sexual assault cases against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — and the PayPal payments system, it can mean their business is halted for hours if not days.

The Anonymous movement is approaching a tipping point in its campaign. So unwieldy, reactive and vitriolic is the group that members often turn their weaponry on each other. Factions “attack each other regularly,” Coldblood says.

The group can swell and contract, splinter and re-form — then muster an illegal attack that severely disables expensively administered websites owned by multinational corporations. It is the newest form of anarchic rebellion.

“It is political activism to an extent,” the 22-year-old hacker explains. “But lots of the people just do it for a laugh really — there’s the whole mentality of ‘did it for the lulz’.” Lulz, for the uninitiated, is short for laugh out loud misspelt, but its meaning is closer to schadenfreude.

However, Coldblood believes that the days of sheer anarchism are numbered, and that Anonymous is becoming more organised. “Now it’s moved more to the political side, which wants to take things a bit more seriously. It already has effectively split inside but it hasn’t on the outside. You cut one section off and it’ll grow back.” When their sites go down, multinational victims can do little but wait for the bombardment to subside - and invest in more attack-proof servers. Microsoft will next week release a tranche of security updates in an attempt to stem the propagation of DDoS attacks.

More than 1,000 sites are mirroring WikiLeaks to ensure it stays online in the face of capitulation attempts. The “infowar” has pitted amateur hackers against some of the western world’s greatest institutions. But a more significant, perhaps fearsome, war would be one that succeeded in marshalling the full muscle and might of Anonymous behind its campaigns.

Source: Guardian News Service

Lost Children of Ummah

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 05:32:00 +0000

In many ways, madrassas are a cornerpiece in Islamic community life. They are seminaries where children go for religious education, and in poor neighbourhoods, for non-formal schooling. In keeping with this tradition, the Darul Ujloom Madrassa, set up in 1992 by three maulvis of the Barelvi sect, is supposed to house 150 poor Muslim children and provide them with shelter, education and food. Far from doing this though, in a disturbing twist, Tehelka found that the Darul Ujloom Madrassa was illegally sending its minor children out to work harrowing twelve hour shifts at nearby factories and sweatshops.

In Shakurpur Basti, a teeming Muslim-dominated, workingclass neighbourhood in North Delhi, there is a four-storey building with a mosque on the ground floor. This is the Darul Ujloom Nizamia Ghausul Uloom Madrassa. On the face of it, there is nothing to set this madrassa apart from an estimated 35,000 madrassas in the country. But unknown to the community, the Darul Ujloom madrassa is subverting its foundational pact with both Allah and his followers.

In many ways, madrassas are a cornerpiece in Islamic community life. They are seminaries where children go for religious education, and in poor neighbourhoods, for non-formal schooling. Most madrassas in India are affiliated either to the Deobandi, Barelvi or Ahl-i-Hadith sects and are funded by zakat — the com- passionate Islamic practice of people donating 2.5 percent of their income to support hospitals, charities or Islamic schools. Zakat donated to madrassas is meant to pay for maulvis’ salaries and free meals, clothing, books and lodging for children.

In keeping with this tradition, the Darul Ujloom Madrassa, set up in 1992 by three maulvis of the Barelvi sect, is supposed to house 150 poor Muslim children and provide them with shelter, education and food. Far from doing this though, in a disturbing twist, TEHELKA found that the Darul Ujloom Madrassa was illegally sending its minor children out to work harrowing twelve hour shifts at nearby factories and sweatshops.

This is the symptomatic story of one such child. Ten-year-old Anees is the son of a daily wage labourer in the Purnea district of Bihar. Bihar has the highest number of Muslims in the country after Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. According to the 2001 census, 87 percent of Muslims in the state live in rural areas, of which 49 percent fall below the poverty line. On an average, two out of every three Muslim households in rural Bihar send at least one child away for better prospects. Anees’ father was no different. His daily income of 50 was barely enough to provide three meals a day to a family of eight. So one day, when a man called “Chachu” came to him and suggested that his eldest son should be sent to a madrassa in Delhi where he could become a Hafiz Quran — someone who has memorised the entire Holy Book — the father readily agreed.

(Unfortunately, “Chachu” is commonplace jargon in the world of childtrafficking. Posing as kindly well-wishers, relatives and strangers often lure children away from parents with false promises, earning Rs. 2,000 —Rs. 5,000 commission for every child they trap. PM Nair’s NHRC report Trafficking in Women and Children in India, in fact, says 53.5 percent of child workers are coerced into it by their relatives or acquaintances.)

Tipped off by activists, the TEHELKA reporter posed as a Lucknow-based NGO that funds vocational training, to gain entry into the madrassa. This is what Anees said on our spycam.

ANEES: “Chachu said once I become a Hafiz Quran, I can get a job of an Imam in any mosque for a salary of 5,000.”
TEHELKA: At what time do the classes take place?
ANEES: Morning. Eight to 10.
TEHELKA: Only two hours?
ANEES: Yes. After that I go to work.
TEHELKA: Where do you work?
ANEES: Britannia biscuit factory.
(TEHELKA has not authenticated this claim independently.)
TEHELKA: What work do you do there?
ANEES: I am part of the packing team.
TEHELKA: What are your work timings?
ANEES: From 2 pm to 10 pm.
TEHELKA: How much money do you get?
ANEES: 2,500.
TEHELKA: For how long have you been working?
ANEES: Four months.
TEHELKA: Do you have an I-card?
ANEES: Yes.
TEHELKA: Do your parents know about this?
ANEES: No.

When we ask Anees what he does with the money he earns, the maulvis tell him to leave the room. We ask permission to walk around. The madrassa is a warren of tiny rooms strung together like train compartments. The children’s luggage is stacked up, leaving little spare space. While some rooms are open, most are locked. Like little Anees, most of the children are obviously away at work. Anees’ own 2 pm shift is approaching.

THE STARK and appalling story of child labour is not a new one. In November 2009, TEHELKA had published a wideranging story on child trafficking and labour (Pimped, Abandoned, Sold). But like in a report we published a month ago, The Half Life of a Coal Child — where we described the medieval horror of children working in the rat mines of Meghalaya — this story unearths a new and dark narrative of child labour that should serve as a timely wake-up call for the community. It is a narrative that speaks of children repeatedly lured away from disenfranchised parents in the name of religion and pushed into hellish chutes of hard work, little food and — mostly — no pay.

As yet, the TEHELKA investigation itself is a slim one. Though we spent several months on it, our story covers only five madrassas in Delhi and it is difficult to gauge how rampant the phenomenon is. Getting access to madrassas is not easy and, according to an estimate by the Human Resource and Education ministry, there are about 1.5 million children enrolled in the 35,000 madarassas in the country. Just Delhi has 5,000 madrassas and that does not include the ones that are unregistered.

Back at the Darul Ujloom madrassa, the maulvis — Asrar A Kadri and Naseem Azhai — are surprisingly open about the fact that the children entrusted to them are sent out to work and readily hand us papers detailing their place of employment. At a surface level, this attitude seems driven by a habitual cynicism born out of India’s staggering poverty. There is also the greed for possible funding from the NGO we are posing as. Here’s how Maulvi Naseem Azhai sees it:

TEHELKA: We want to know if students of your madrassa work somewhere.
NASEEM: See, poor parents cannot afford their children’s expenses.There’s no harm if the children work a bit and earn some money.
TEHELKA: So what time do the classes take place?
NASEEM: From 8 am to 11.30 am. But for children who go to work, we let them off at 10 am.
TEHELKA: Where do they work?
NASEEM: Zari factory, cold storage, garment factory, mobile shops and others.
TEHELKA: Are the places they work at close by?
NASEEM: Yes. They are across the road in Shakurpur village.
TEHELKA: Are all the expenses of the kids borne by the madrassa?
NASEEM: Yes. All expenses for food, lodging and education are on us.
TEHELKA: How many meals are the children provided?
NASEEM: We can’t say about those who go to work. We provide meals to only those who stay back.
TEHELKA: What is the strength of the madrassa?
NASEEM: 150.
TEHELKA: Out of this, how many do not work?
NASEEM: Only 30.

Unwittingly, Maulvi Naseem’s answers are a dead giveaway. While TEHELKA could find no evidence of either maulvi directly benefiting from the commercial outlets where their wards are employed, both Kadri and Naseem talk about the costs of running the establishment. Three meals a day per child is around Rs. 600 a month, they say. “But,” says Naseem, “we always tell their employers to provide them their meals.” Just a quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that if 120 out of 150 children go to work and are fed outside, there is a monthly saving of Rs.78,000 for the madrassa. There is no one to audit what the maulvis do with that saving.

Food — or the absence of it — is perhaps the most heart-breaking aspect of the story. Like Anees, Mohammad Kallan is an 11-year-old boy living in the Darul Ujloom madrassa. He works a punishing 9 am to 9pm shift in a garment factory in Shakurpur village. Kallan says he stitches jeans ‘jismein Akshay Kumar ki photo aati hai’ ( jeans endorsed by actor Akshay Kumar). Though TEHELKA could not independently corroborate whether these were fakes or genuine, it seems from Kallan’s assertion that he works in a factory that supplies Spykar jeans. Kallan boasts disarmingly that, after two years of work, he can now stitch pockets on ten pairs of jeans in an hour.

Contrary to Maulvi Naseem’s cold argument, however, that it’s okay if poor kids work to earn, Kallan has never been paid. “It’s okay,” he says, “I am just a trainee. From next year they have said they will pay me Rs.1,200 per month.” His innocence is searing.

Kallan was taken from his widowed mother in Madhepura in 2008 by a Jehangir Chachu and delivered to the Darul Ujloom madrassa. Sent out to work by the maulvis, along with 25 other boys his age, the understanding is that the ‘seth’ — the manager of the sweatshop — would provide them food twice a day. At night when they finish their shift, Kallan says they get a small portion of meat and two chapatis. In the morning though, shockingly, having left the madrassa on an empty stomach, they arrive at their work stations to get a cup of tea and two slices of bread plastered with Iodex — an anti inflammatory balm not meant for human consumption. Apparently, the hungry boys have acquired a liking for the taste. “It burns in the stomach for some time then becomes thanda (cool) in the mouth,” says Kallan. (How much more cynical can the capitalist chain get: Iodex has a high chloroform content and, if consumed, represses the central nervous system and, to state the obvious, is lethal for the kidney. Consuming the Iodex every day drugs the children and helps them work mechanically with a kind of robotic efficiency.)

Employing young children as apprentices or trainees without registering them is a common practice in the unorganised sector — saving the cost of adult labour — but is illegal as per the Apprenticeship Act. Understandably, the factory owners where the boys work are far less forthcoming than the maulvis. Despite several guises, the TEHELKA reporter could not gain entry into the factory — turned away each time by hostile guards.

And so, almost 500 people gather every Friday to offer namaz at the Darul Ujloom mosque in Shakurpur Basti, quite unaware that the place is facilitating a crime that the Quran labels as gunaah (sin). Perhaps, it is time the community around became a little more vigilant. As Azhar Iqbal, 52, an employee with a private company, says, “Every year, we allocate some parts of our savings for zakat, so that young children can progress on the path of Allah. If corrupt imams are indulging in a practice of child labour, we will also be a part of that gunaah (sin).”

GUNAAH CAN have many ugly rungs. The Faiz-e-Azam Madrassa in North Delhi’s Khajoori Khas area is a two-anda- half-room quarter. Here, 20 kids in the age group of 5-10 years are packing bindis. A plywood partition blocks most of the light in the room. On the other side of the partition there are more children — all under 10 years of age. Sitting around a low coffee table, each child is engrossed in the painstaking task of embellishing bindis with crystals. It’s a hot summer afternoon. The radio is blaring at full volume. There is no fan or elbow room.

The previous day, the TEHELKA reporter had entered the premises as a prospective buyer. Now, suddenly, in front of our eyes, Maulvi Iftekaar Kadri — the custodian of the madrassa — enters the room in a tearing hurry and asks the children to take out their books. On cue, the bindis are put away. The kids sit cross-legged in four neat queues. A roller board is pulled out. The maulvi starts teaching.

Obviously, he has been tipped off: a rescue raid is on its way. Within minutes,Labour Inspector Girish Raj, members of an NGO called Shati Vahini and some policemen arrive. Twenty-seven children are rescued. Some dash out of windows. The maulvi is interrogated and, inexplicably, let off. When TEHELKA asks him why he’s exploiting the children, he says, “I joined the madrassa three days. I know nothing about the bindi business.”

Shahdara SHO Ishwar Singh counters this, saying, “Maulvi Kadri has been around for some time. This is a just a ploy they use to escape further interrogation by the police.” But he does not arrest him. Labour Inspector Raj too says the whole thing is a charade. “The fact is these kids live and work there. Every time we try to raid them, the sweatshop turns into a classroom.”

The Faiz-e-Azam Madrassa is axiomatic of an alarming and key part of the problem: the unregulated madrassa. There have been periodic whispers in the neighbourhood, but nobody’s quite sure what to make of it. Says Mehnaaz, a housewife in the neighbourhood, “For six years, two or three people have been coming to the house. The children never come out. When we ask why so many children are kept here, we are told this is a madrassa. But they never admit the local children. There is a fresh batch every few months.”

And for every month that neither community elders nor the Indian State puts a check on it, more children like Mohammad Akmal fall prey to men like Maulvi Iftekar Kadri. Akmal, 9, came to the madrassa two years back. His father, a rickshaw puller, sent him from Bihar’s Araria district with his cousin Saquib, who had been living in Delhi for seven years. Saquib handed him over to ‘Kadri Sa’ab’ and never reappeared. Akmal was left to cut his teeth in the bindi business. The children embellished dozens of packets every day — waking at 7 am and working till 10 pm. They were never allowed even to step out into the terrace. “Maulvi Sa’ab told me the classes will begin soon and till then I should learn this work,” says Akmal. “But classes haven’t begun till date.” Then haltingly, he goes on to tell a hair-raising story. “Initially,” Akmal recalls, “I was very slow. I could only make 20-30 packets per day. One day Kadri Sa’ab got angry and asked everyone to teach me a lesson.” All the children were asked to spit and pee on him. “I vomitted and cried. And then I picked up,” he says. Akmal can now prepare 100 packets a day. The shelves of the workstations around him are lined with books. The bindi embellishments are packed in cute Minnie Mouse pencil boxes — ironic reminders of the childhood he was owed. Akmal has not been home in two years. He says he wants to play gulli-danda with his younger brother Rafiq. He is paid 50 every Sunday for his work. His life’s reprieve is the food he buys from a ‘hotel’ with that money every week.

As for Maulvi Iftekar Kadri and his accomplices — SDM AK Sharma alleges they generate a profit of at least 40,000 every month by selling the bindis in the market. Betraying both religion and humanity in the process.

AS ASSERTED earlier, TEHELKA’s investigation can only be read as a kind of “smell test” for a lurking problem. No one is quite sure how deep the problem runs but there is a growing premonition. Bachpan Bachao Andolan — an NGO that has been working on issues of child trafficking for years — says they have rescued approximately 50 children from various madrassas in Delhi in the last one year.

Rishikant, who runs Shakti Vahini, says, “This is a very sensitive issue. Law enforcement agencies must take immediate action. The phenomenon is new to us. I can’t give an exact figure but in the last one month I have come across 15 such cases, out of which we have managed to rescue 10 children from the New Delhi station and some madrassas. The children are brought here on the promise that they will be enrolled in a madrassa, but are put in these fake sweatshops. It is time for the Home Ministry and the NCPCR (National Commission for Protection of Child Rights) to make it mandatory for madrassas and the children studying there to be registered under a proper body. This will help both the police and NGOs to check this kind of trafficking of young children.”

Kailash Satyarthi, Chairperson, Global March against Child Labour, agrees, “It is shameful that traffickers are managing to connive with religious institutions to exploit these children. We only got a hint of this practice two years back when we rescued some children from the Bihar-Nepal border, but this was a source destination and we didn’t know where the children were being taken. After rigorous interrogation of the trafficker, we realised these children were being taken to madrassas to be made to work. It’s just about a year since we’ve managed to crack this. In this time, we’ve rescued about 150 children. It’s crucial to understand traffickers are always far ahead of investigating agencies in finding new ways to exploit children. This practise of involving fake madrassas and keeping children in bondage is the newest strategy. It is quite sensitive for civil society organisations to intervene in institutions like madarassas. The guise of it being a religious issue becomes a hindrance for our rescue missions. Therefore, it is very important that the concerned Muslim leaders and socially engaged clerics take a lead role in averting and exposing this racket.”

Last year, acting on the recommendation of the Sachar Committee Report, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal had proposed the formation of a Central Madrassa Board which would provide assistance in conducting exams, awarding qualifications, designing curriculum as well as developing infrastructure to help create uniform standards in the non-theological aspects of madrassa education. Perhaps this would have gone some way in creating accountability. However, under flak from some quarters of the Muslim community, the idea was shelved.

There certainly seems both space and need for a new consensual idea that will enable better monitoring and regulation. Unlike other states, Delhi does not even have a state Madrassa Board — increasing the scope for foul play. Ishwar Singh, the SHO of Shahdara says, “In the last year, the complaints have begun to go up. Because there are many poor Muslims in this area, it’s difficult to make out where exactly these sweatshops are running. At first, when we went for rescue operations, we’d get turned back by the maulvis who’d show us certificates to say they were madrassas. But then we got proactive and began to check whether the certificates were genuine. In two cases, they turned out to be fake. I have rescued 30 children from five madrassas in the last six months who were employed in bindi and zari workshops. We are now keeping a closer watch.”

AGAIN, A closer watch is certainly what little boys like seven-year-old Mohammad Nanhe desperately need. Nanhe was recently rescued from a small madrassa in LNJP colony whose name he can’t recall. (His rescuers say it was Alia Arabia Madrassa.) When asked what work he did there, he promptly tells us how to make a silver earring. “Take a long silver wire, cut it into two parts. Put the green and red beads alternately and entwine it in the wire. It’s done,” he says. According to Nanhe, he could prepare 20 pairs of earrings a day and a lot of foreigners used to come and buy the jewellery in stacks.

The learning curve was gruesome. The fingers of Nanhe’s right hand were brutally snapped with a wire cutter for wasting “expensive” silver wire: two fingers were broken, the rest were badly wounded. It is in this madrassa that Nanhe also learned a bit of Urdu, math and Hindi. After two years of torture, Nanhe and three of his friends were rescued and housed in Mukti Ashram, a short stay home of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) in Buradi village, New Delhi. Ask him if he’s told his parents back in Katihaar district of Bihar of his plight and he retorts, “What’s the point? They will unnecessarily wail and cry and be tense.” Hearing such resignation from a seven-year-old is deeply disquieting.

RS Chaurasia, chairperson BBA, says, “It’s very hard to counsel children like Nanhe. He was in shock for a long time. We will contact his parents and send him home once the legal formalities are completed. It’s very important to rehabilitate these children to prevent their re-trafficking.”

The huge and recurrent presence of children being trafficked from Bihar is strikingly tragic. According to some estimates, Bihar has almost 4,000 madrassas but families continue to send their children thousands of kilometres away — seduced by the idea of Delhi as the theatre for a larger life.

It is probably a dream like that lured nine-year old Junaid from Sitamarhi in Bihar. PM Nair’s book on trafficking says that almost 54.1 percent of children or women are brought in groups. True enough, in a depressingly familiar routine, Junaid was brought along with six other children by a “Chachu” to the Zeenatul Madrassa in Nangloi, a Jat-dominated neighbourhood in North Delhi. Like the Faiz-e-Azam Madrassa in Khajoori Khas, this madrassa in Nangloi is not officially affiliated to any sect or body. It is a madrassa only in name. On ground, it is a transit camp for children being trafficked as bonded labour.

“Chachu said he will be back in the evening,” says Junaid. “It’s been a year now, he hasn’t come.” In the meantime, Maulvi Allama Hasnain Raza Khan — the man Junaid was entrusted to — handed him over to a man he calls ‘seth.’ Seth turned out to be a man called Prashant Prasad, who owns a footwear factory in Nangloi, imaginatively called Jootaland. Along with the other kids, Junaid’s work shift stretched from 8 am to 10 pm. He recalls, “Once, during a police raid, the seth tied me in a sack and kept me in the godown.” When the sack was opened in the evening, he was found unconscious. Junaid was promised a salary of Rs. 1,200 a month. He has never got it. “The seth says he will give it to me when I go back home.” When, he doesn’t know.

Posing as a prospective buyer, TEHELKA visited Jootaland, which is just 500 meters from the Nangloi police station. Here’s what Prashant Prasad said on camera.

TEHELKA: What brands do you manufacture in Jootaland?
PRASHANT: We manufacture all the local brands.
TEHELKA: Like?
PRASHANT: Action, Campus, Basic, Active, Bata.
TEHELKA: From where do you get your workers?
PRASHANT: Bihar.
TEHELKA: How?
PRASHANT: We have our people there.

Impatiently, he dismisses further queries. TEHELKA has not been able to establish independently whether Jootaland is indeed part of the supply chain to the brands Prasad mentions. However, alarmingly, Prasad did provide us a sample of a BATA sandal (Art. no. 601-9008) manufactured in the factory. And the Punjabi Bagh SDM, PR Jha confirmed the fact. “The rescued children were employed in the stitching department and were preparing BATA sandals,” Jha told TEHELKA. Given the number of fake goods in the market, TEHELKA still cannot vouchsafe for the truth of this, but it is an important sign for big companies to audit the ethics of their manufacturing chain.

On 5 March this year, 27 children were rescued from Jootaland by Bachpan Bachao Andolan. A conversation with one of the rescued kids, Saahil, 10, sheds grim light on the conditions the children work in. The children again mention working in the assembly line for mega sports shoe brands. To reiterate, TEHELKA could not independently corroborate the authenticity of this claim.

TEHELKA: What do you do in the factory?
SAAHIL: I am in the stitching department.
TEHELKA: What are your work timings?
SAAHIL: It’s a 12-hour shift.
TEHELKA: How old are you?
SAAHIL: Ten.
TEHELKA: How much are you paid?
SAAHIL: 30 an hour. Saahil is probably too young to compute his earnings. We asked another, older boy similar questions.
TEHELKA: What all brands do you make?
JAAMIL: Adidas, Reebok and Airforce.
TEHELKA: How much money does your seth pay you?
JAAMIL: 3,000.
TEHELKA: How long have you been working?
JAAMIL: Two years.
TEHELKA: What’s your age?
JAAMIL: 13.
TEHELKA: Have you ever been paid?
JAAMIL: The seth says he will give me the money when I go back to my village.
TEHELKA: Where is your village?
JAAMIL: Nalanda in Bihar.
TEHELKA: What are your work timings?
JAAMIL: From 9 in the morning till 9.30 at night.

Though SDM, PR Jha was part of the rescue team, in a defeating twist, like Maulvi Kadri, Prashant Prasad is arrested and let out on bail a week later.

Despite the massive scale of child trafficking in India, the legislation on it is surprisingly lenient. A trafficker can be arrested under any one, or all, of these Acts: the Indian Penal Code; the Child Labour Act; the Juvenile Justice Act; and the Bonded Labour Act. Although there is a provision for a six-month jail term, none of these are non-bailable offences, except for the Juvenile Justice Act which is nonbailable only in Delhi. If the accused is charged under the Child Labour Act, a fine of Rs. 20,000 per child is imposed on

the accused. This goes into a corpus, which is meant to providing a monthly amount to the rescued child till the age of 18. If the accused is charged under the Bonded Labour Act, he must pay an immediate additional fine of Rs. 20,000 to the parents of the rescued child. Obviously, none of these are proving to be sufficient deterrence.

THERE IS one final, tragic, inevitable strand in the story of these trafficked children: the spectre of sexual abuse. In the crowded Muslim neighbourhood of Jamia Nagar in South Delhi, there is a set of madrassas that are mere facades — transit shelters — for the innumerable zari and sequin sweatshops in the area. (Children are always preferred in this business as their thin, agile fingers can work the beads more swiftly.)

Saddam, 12, from Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh was sent to the Tartul Quran Jamia Madrassa (near Batla House) four years ago. The Tartul Madrassa is apparently affiliated to the Deobandi sect. At this madrassa, Saddam attends classes on the Shariat for two hours every Sunday. The rest of the week, he works in a zari factory from 7 am till 12 midnight. When Saddam first started working, he complained about the work.

“The seth then told me to take off my clothes and raped me,” says he. When he tried to tell Maulvi Shah Ahmed Noorani, his supposed caretaker, about it, the maulvi laughed it off. “Maza aaya (did you enjoy it)?” he asked.

Saddam copes with his trauma by sniffing liquid shoe polish, a substance commonly abused by boys on the street. “It gives me relief,” Saddam says. “I get energy from it.” He hasn’t been home even once: it is difficult to do that on pocket money of Rs. 50 a week, which is all he gets for working 17 hours a day, six days a week. He tried to run away from the factory once but was chased, caught and chained for the next two days. He says he will try to escape again.

When TEHELKA tried to confront the madrassa about this story, Hasan Adrar, the maulvi in charge, refused to talk, saying we were trying to tarnish the madrassa’s image and defame Islam.

Gratefully, other community elders are less doctrinaire. When TEHELKA approached Mufti Habibur Rehman Sahib, head of the Darul Ifta Uloom Deoband, he said he had absolutely no knowledge of madrassas providing child labour. However, he added, “If it is happening, we strongly disapprove. It is gunaah.”

Janaab Al-Haaj Hazrat Maulana Jameel Ahmed Ilyasi — the president of the All India Organisation of Imams of Mosques — was even more vehement. “It is the need of the hour that madrassas play a positive role in guiding and reforming the Muslim community. Their acts must give Muslims a lesson in mutual harmony and sacrifice. If some imams are deviating from the teachings of Islam they are not only betraying Allah but the entire Muslim community which gives donations for them. We will take strong action against them.”

Janab Maulana Ehsan Ahmad Sahab Husainabad Mubarakpur — an adviser to Al Jamiatul Ashrafia, Azamgarh, one of the largest Barelvi educational institutions — said, “The Bareilvy sect is very particular about the madrassas it is funding and they are audited at frequent intervals. Only those maulvis are appointed for teaching who are capable to carry forward the teachings of Allah. The managing committee and academic council always keep an eye on the system. If such practises are taking place in any madrassas, action will be taken immediately. Such maulvis will be severely punished. All sects — the Barelvis, Deobandis and Al-Hadiths — must strive to conduct proper checks to counter such a practice of exploiting students instead of training them to become real scholars of Islam.”

There are an estimated one million working children under the age group of 14. Child labour is banned in 16 occupations and 65 types of work (processes) listed in the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act. At least 80 percent of major US clothing firms farm out their production to India due to cheap labour. There are more than 7,000 zari units in Delhi alone (according to estimates BBA).

Given these staggering numbers and the profound story of poverty and deprivation that underlies this investigation, perhaps it is best to end with the hopeful note struck by the Muslim elders TEHELKA spoke to: that cognisance will be taken. And punishment will be meted.

Source: Tehelka Magazine

The Great Indian Love Affair With Censorship

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 13:00:00 +0000

By : Ashish Nandy*

“Patriotism,” Samuel Johnson said nearly 250 years ago, “is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” These days in India, the adage can be safely applied to nationalism. There is no other explanation of the threat to arrest and try Arundhati Roy on charges of sedition for what she said at a public meeting on Kashmir, where Syed Ali Geelani too spoke.

I was not there at the meeting, but I have read her moving statement defending herself afterwards. I feel both proud and humbled by it. I am a psychologist and political analyst, handicapped by my vocation; I could not have put the case against censorship so starkly and elegantly. What she has said is simultaneously a plea for a more democratic India and a more humane future for Indians.

I faced a similar situation a couple of years ago, when I wrote a column in the Times of India on the long-term cultural consequences of the anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002. It was a sharp attack on Gujarat’s changing middle-class culture. I was served summons for inciting communal hatred. I had to take anticipatory bail from the Supreme Court and get the police summons quashed. The case, however, goes on, even though the Supreme Court, while granting me anticipatory bail, said it found nothing objectionable in the article. The editor of the Ahmedabad edition of the Times of India was less fortunate. He was charged with sedition.

I shall be surprised if the charges of sedition against Arundhati are taken to their logical conclusion. Geelani is already facing more than a hundred cases of sedition, so one more probably won’t make a difference to him. Indeed, the government may fall back on time-tested traditions and negotiate with recalcitrant opponents through income-tax laws. People never fully trusted the income-tax officials; now they will distrust them the way they distrust the CBI.

In the meanwhile, we have made fools of ourselves in front of the whole world. All this because some protesters demonstrated at the meeting that Arundhati and Geelani addressed! Yet, I hear from those who were present at the meeting that Geelani did not once utter the word “secession”, and even went so far as to give a soft definition of Azadi. By all accounts, he put forward a rather moderate agenda. Was it his way of sending a message to the government of India? How much of it was cold-blooded public relations, how much a clever play with political possibilities in Kashmir?

We shall never know, just because most of those who pass as politicians today and our knowledge-proof babus have proved themselves incapable of understanding the subtleties of public communication. They are not literate enough to know what role free speech and free press play in an open society, not only in keeping the society open but also in serious statecraft. In the meanwhile, it has become dangerous to demand a more compassionate and humane society, for that has come to mean a serious criticism of contemporary India and those who run it. Such criticism is being redefined as anti-national and divisive. In the case of Arundhati, it is of course the BJP that is setting the pace of public debate and pleading for censorship. But I must hasten to add that the Congress looks unwilling to lose the race. It seems keen to prove that it is more nationalist than the BJP.

It is the hearts and minds of the new middle class—those who have come up in the last two decades from almost nowhere and are middle class by virtue of having money rather than middle-class values—that both parties are after. This new middle class wants to give meaning to their hollow life through a violent, nineteenth-century version of European-style ‘nationalism’. They want to prove—to others as well as to themselves—that they have a stake in the system, that they have arrived. They are afraid that the slightest erosion in the legitimacy of their particularly nasty version of nationalism will jeopardise their new-found social status and political clout. They are willing to fight to the last Indian for the glory of Mother India as long as they themselves are not conscripted to do so and they can see, safely and comfortably in their drawing rooms, Indian nationalism unfolding the way a violent Bombay film unfolds on their television screens.

Hence the bitterness and intolerance, not only towards Arundhati Roy, but also towards all other spoilsports who defy the mainstream imagination of India and its nationalism. Even Gandhians fighting for their cause non-violently are not spared. Himangshu Kumar’s ashram at Dantewada has been destroyed not by the Maoists but by the police. I would have thought that writers and artists would be exempt from censorship in an open society.

The trend of harassing political dissenters for their “seditious” writings and actions started early. It started with the breakdown of consensus on national interest in the mid-’70s. Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency and introduced serious censorship and surveillance, she claimed, to protect national interest, democracy and development. (She had foresight, for though she included development in her list, it took another two decades for the consensus on development to break down.) The difference between the 1970s and the first decade of the 21st century is that millions are now acting out their dissent and speaking out of their radical differences with mainstream public opinion. The whole tribal movement—wrongly called the Naxal movement, because the Naxals have taken advantage of the tribal problem—is an example of this.

There are times when a national consensus is neither possible nor desirable. The best one can do is to contain the violence and negotiate with those who act out their dissent. That may not be easy in the case of the Kashmiris because their trust in us is now close to zero. Psychologically speaking, the Kashmiris are already outside India and will remain there for at least two generations. The random killings, rapes, torture and the other innovative atrocities have brutalised their society and turned them into a traumatised lot. If you think this is too harsh, read between the lines of psychotherapist Shobhna Sonpar’s report on Kashmir.

What is it about the culture of Indian politics today that it allows us to opt for a version of nationalism that is so brutal, self-certain and chauvinist? Have we been so brutalised ourselves that we have become totally numb to the suffering around us? What is this concept of Indian unity that forces us to support police atrocities and torture? How can a democratic government, knowing fully what its police, paramilitary and army is capable of doing, resist signing the international covenant on torture? How can we, sixty years after independence, countenance encounter deaths? Could these practices have survived so long and become institutionalised if we had a large enough section of India’s much-vaunted middle class fully sensitive to the demands of democracy?

The answers to these questions are not pleasant. We know things could not have come to this pass if those who are or should be alert to these issues in the intelligentsia, media, artistic community had done their job. Here I think the changing nature of the Indian middle class has not been a help.

We are proud of our democracy—the consensus on democracy still survives in India—but unaware of a crucial paradox in which we are caught. The democratic process has created a new middle class, a large section of which is not adequately socialised to democratic norms in sectors not vital to the survival of democratic politics but vital to creativity and innovativeness in an open society. The thoughtless, non-self-critical ultra-nationalism, intolerant of anyone opposed to the mainstream public opinion, is shared neither by the poor nor the more settled middle class. Ordinary Indians, accustomed as they are to living with mind-boggling diversity, social and cultural, have no problem with political diversity. Neither does the settled middle class.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, for instance, wrote an essay savaging the middle class in mid-nineteenth century. We had to study this in our school and it has remained a prescribed text in Bengal for more than a century. Today you cannot introduce such a text in much of India without probably precipitating a political controversy and demands for censorship.

Recently, at a lecture organised by the Information Commission of India, I claimed that the future of censorship and surveillance in India was very bright. It’s not only the government that loves it but a very large section of middle-class India too would like to silence writers, artists, playwrights, scholars and thinkers they do not like. In their attempt to become a globalised middle class, they are willing to change their dress, food habits and language but not their love for censorship. We should thank our stars that there still are people in our midst—editors, political activists, NGOs, lawyers and judges—to whom freedom of speech is neither a value peripheral to the real concerns of Indian democracy nor a bourgeois virtue but a clue to our survival as a civilised society.

* Ashis Nandy is an Indian political psychologist, a social theorist, and a contemporary cultural and political critic. A trained sociologist and clinical psychologist, his body of work covers a variety of topics, including public conscience, mass violence, and dialogues of civilizations.

He was Senior Fellow and Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) for several years. Today, he is a Senior Honorary Fellow at the institute and apart from being the Chairperson of the Committee for Cultural Choices and Global Futures, also in New Delhi.

Appearing on the list of the 2008 list of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll, Nandy had received the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2007. In 2008 he was listed as one of the top 100 public intellectuals of the world by the magazine, Foreign Policy, published by The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Sedition Isn’t All Roy Said: Vara Vara Rao

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 06:09:00 +0000

By : Vara Vara Rao*

Having been one of the speakers at the seminar in New Delhi last week on “Is Azadi the only way for Kashmir?” I am not surprised by the hue and cry over Arundhati Roy’s observation that the people of Kashmir have a right to self-determination and even Azadi. I’m not surprised by the call to book her for sedition either.

She is not the first person who has said such a thing nor is she going to be the last. In fact, all those who participated in the meeting – Prof. Sujata Badro, Syed Ali Shah Geelani and myself – echoed a similar feeling. The reason is simple: this is what the people of Kashmir want and there is no wishing that away.

Consciously or otherwise, quite a few aspects raised by Roy are not being discussed by the media and politicians. It is important to mention them.

While endorsing the right to self-determination, Roy also emphasised that freedom alone does not give everything: she wanted to know what kind of justice would be done to the people of Kashmir if and when they are given the freedom to rule themselves. She also referred to slogans she had heard during a visit to Kashmir: “Bhookha nanga Hindustan, nahi rahenge is desh mein” and took serious objection to such an attitude. Roy pointed out that support for the struggle of Kashmiris was coming exactly from the same classes – the poor and the oppressed in other parts of the country apart from a miniscule section of intellectuals. It is the Indian establishment which is opposed to their fight.

I am also surprised at the changed stance of Geelani who, ten years ago, spoke of nothing short of Islam as bringing an end to the problems of Kashmir. But today he reminded us that Mahatma Gandhi wanted the people of Kashmir to decide where to live, how Jawaharlal Nehru favoured a plebiscite and how BJP prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee made attempts to find a political solution by talking to Pakistan. What none of us should forget is that Hyderabad and Kashmir were among the three princely states that were not part of the Indian Union at the time of Independence. The people of Telangana, of which Hyderabad is a part, are now demanding a separate state within the country but the people of Kashmir, even to this day, strongly prefer freedom. Not recognising the demand will not lead to any solution.

* Vara Vara Rao is a revolutionary writer who has faced several cases of sedition and conspiracy. He has been acquitted in most of them.

I Pity The Nation That Needs To Jail Those Who Ask For Justice

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 09:02:00 +0000

By : Arundhati Roy

I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning's papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators have written and said for years. Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice.

I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state.

Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer's husband and Asiya's brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get 'insaf'—justice—from India, and now believed that Azadi—freedom— was their only hope. I met young stone pelters who had been shot through their eyes. I traveled with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones.

In the papers some have accused me of giving 'hate-speeches', of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.

A Flawed Definition of Secularism Lies Behind The Ayodhya Verdict

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 09:58:00 +0000

By Rohini Hensman*

Whose Faith and Belief?
The verdict of the Allahabad High Court in the Ayodhya case has been criticised for making faith and belief the basis of its judgment, but this is not the first time that a supposedly secular court has ruled on the basis of faith and belief. Indeed, such instances are inevitable given India’s peculiar definition of secularism.

Reactions to the Allahabad High Court verdict in the Babri Masjid case have varied widely, from triumphalism from some actors, through appeals for calm and hopes of reconciliation from others, to expressions of disappointment and dismay from yet others. This is partly a consequence of the complex character of the split verdict. On the issue of whether a Hindu temple had been destroyed in order to build the Babri Masjid in 1528, S.U. Khan, in a minority opinion, said that it was built on the ruins of a temple, but nothing was destroyed, while Justice D.V. Sharma and Justice S. Agarwal held that a Ram temple had been destroyed in order to build the mosque. On the issue of whether it was the Ram Janmabhoomi, Justice Sharma, in a minority judgment, ruled that the site was the birthplace of Lord Ram, and therefore the entire property should go to the Hindu litigants. The majority judgment of Justice Agarwal and Justice Khan stated that Hindus believed it was the birthplace of Ram, and divided the property three ways, giving one-third to the Sunni Waqf Board and two-thirds to Hindu litigants. The status quo was to be maintained for three months, during which the parties were free to appeal the judgment in the Supreme Court (Allahabad High Court 2010).

It is entirely possible that the majority judgment was framed in the fear that giving outright possession to either Hindu or Muslim parties to the dispute could result in riots and bloodshed, while division of the property could lead to reconciliation. But good intentions alone cannot ensure a good judgment. For example, one of the Hindu litigants, to whom the area under the dome of the mosque was awarded, was Ram Lalla (Baby Ram), whose statue had surreptitiously and illegally been placed there in the night of 22-23 December 1949, after which the mosque was kept locked. But the title suit of the Waqf Board was deemed to be barred by the Statute of Limitation, despite the fact that it filed a suit claiming the mosque in 1961, within the statutory period of twelve years. What could the legal rationale for either of these decisions possibly be?

History and the Law
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) concluded that a temple had existed at the site of the Babri Masjid, but professional archaeologists like Shereen Ratnagar, who also gave evidence before the court, concluded that claims about the existence of a temple were not credible (Mandal and Ratnagar 2007). Other professional archeologists who were observers of the excavation, like Supriya Verma of Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jaya Menon of Aligarh Muslim University, also felt there were doubts about the credibility of the ASI report, while D.N.Jha, history professor at Delhi University, alleged that the court had not taken the historical evidence into account (Jebaraj 2010). Even if a temple had existed at the site, was it demolished or had it fallen into ruin long before the mosque was constructed? On this point, even the judges of the Allahabad High Court did not agree. The lack of any documentary evidence of the destruction of a temple is striking. As Ram Puniyani points out, Goswami Tulsi Das, who wrote the story of Lord Ram in the popular Awadhi language, would have been around thirty years old when the mosque was built in 1528, and surely would have mentioned any demolition in his writings had it actually occurred.

It has to be conceded, at least, that the very existence of a temple at the Babri Masjid site, leave alone its demolition, is disputed by professional archaeologists and historians. As eminent historian Romila Thapar commented, ‘Since this is a matter of professional expertise on which there was a sharp difference of opinion, the categorical acceptance of one point of view, and that too in a simplistic manner, does little to build confidence in the verdict’. Are the judges, who are neither historians nor trained archaeologists, competent to adjudicate such an issue? Surely not. Nor should they be expected to, when the matter in court is the legal title to the land. And here, according to Justice Rajindar Sachar, since the site was a mosque for over 400 years, ‘a suit for declaration by Hindus claiming that it was a temple is hopelessly barred by time and must fail.’

Indian politicians have correctly rejected as undemocratic a definition which requires the prohibition of all expressions of religious faith, since that would violate freedom of conscience, expression and association. But they have adopted the equally untenable definition of secularism as ‘Sarva Dharma Samabhav’ (all religions are equal). The fatal flaw in this definition is its assumption that each religion is monolithic, whereas in reality there are irreconcilable contradictions within each religion: women’s rights activists versus patriarchs and misogynists, gay rights activists versus homophobes, social justice activists versus apologists for social inequality and oppression, non-violent pacifists versus those who justify cruelty and murder. What often happens is that it is the reactionary section that is seen to represent the whole community.

The year 1986 provides a graphic illustration of how this definition works in practice. That was the year in which the government opened the locks of the Babri Masjid and allowed Hindus to worship inside it in order to appease Hindu extremists. This provided sufficient fuel to the Ram temple movement for it to build up momentum for the demolition of the mosque in 1992, accompanied by the slaughter of thousands of Muslims. In the same year, following massive protests against the Shah Bano judgment of 1985 by Muslim fundamentalists, the government passed the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, which put Muslim women outside the purview of Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The most negative consequence was not the loss of the pathetic sum granted to Shah Bano by the court, but the insistence of the Muslim Personal Law Board and others that faith takes precedence over the law, and that Muslims shall not be equal before the law nor get equal protection of the law. Muslim voices against the bill, especially those of women, were drowned out and ignored. The parties that campaigned for this legislation cannot, therefore, appeal against the Ayodhya judgment with any degree of logic or consistency, since it has given them exactly what they demanded at that time.

The Allahabad High Court judgment in the Ayodhya case is in the same tradition. It assumes that ‘Hindus’ in general believe the spot under the dome of the Babri Masjid was the birthplace of Ram, but this is simply not true. What about those Hindus who believe that Ram was born not in Ayodhya but in the village of Gharram near Patiala, in the palace of his maternal grandfather, since it was customary for a woman to return to her parental home to deliver her first child? What about Hindus like Swami Agnivesh, who in an interview said that he believed Ram was born in Ayodhya but not at that particular spot? There are many other temples in Ayodhya that are claimed to be the birthplace of Ram. Furthermore, Swami Agnivesh added that he believed Ram was a man, not a god, and God is something quite different. Indeed, millions of Hindus believe that the ‘Lord does not reside in temples, structures or forms of deities’ (TheBigThinkg 2010).

Similarly, the judgment assumes that all ‘Hindus’ believe a Ram temple was demolished in order to build a mosque, and that therefore a Ram temple ought to be built in place of the demolished mosque, but this, too, is not true. The lack of any documentary evidence of the destruction of a temple in the writings of contemporary Hindus is striking. As Ram Puniyani (2010) points out, Goswami Tulsi Das, who wrote the story of Lord Ram in the popular Awadhi language, would have been around thirty years old when the mosque was built in 1528, and surely would have mentioned any demolition in his writings had it actually occurred, yet there is no such mention. It was ‘only the Sangh Parivar which initiated and propagated this notion for mobilization of Hindus for its political objective’ (Teltumbde 2010). Far from wishing to build a Ram temple at that particular spot, many Hindu believers were distraught when the mosque was demolished and Muslims were massacred by participants in the Ram temple movement. The belief that Lord Ram was born under the central dome of the Babri Masjid and therefore a Ram temple should be built there was promoted assiduously only by an extremist section of Hindus, who sought to pursue their agenda by bloodshed and terror. To equate this section with all Hindus is as grotesque as equating the Taliban with all Muslims or the Ku Klux Klan with all Christians. Yet such equations are unavoidable if a definition of secularism which homogenises adherents of each religion is accepted.

Religious Extremism and Fascist Politics
The High Court judgment rewarded the criminals who placed the Ram Lalla statue under the dome illegally in 1949 and destroyed the mosque in 1992 by giving them the property they had stolen, thus undermining the rule of law. But these were no ordinary, trivial thefts. They were part and parcel of a larger agenda to annul India’s democratic constitution and turn India into a Hindu Rashtra, by actors who made no secret of their admiration for Hitler and especially the way in which he had dealt with minorities. As such, it has to be seen in the context of the other landmarks on this journey, such as the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, and periodic progroms against Muslims and Christians reaching two peaks, one in 1992-93 at the culmination of L.K.Advani’s bloodstained Rath Yatra, and the other in 2002 in Gujarat. What emerged after the genocidal violence in Gujarat – the laboratory of Hindutva – after 2002 is as important as the arson, gang-rapes, and mass murder: the fascist transformation of the state and society, which is still evident in Gujarat today.

Beginning in the 21st century, a new Hindutva strategy emerged: carrying out terrorist attacks, often on Muslim targets, and then blaming innocent Muslims for them. These unfortunates were arrested and tortured, their families torn apart, their health, reputation and job prospects ruined, before they were finally released for lack of evidence. Moreover, the whole community came to be branded as ‘terrorist’: a truly ingenious and diabolical way of killing several birds with the same stone, so to speak. This was the modus operandi in the Thane, Vashi, Parbhani, Jalna, Purna, Malegaon, Modasa, Goa, Hyderabad, Ajmer, Samjhauta Express and possibly other terrorist attacks (Gatade 2010). One of the most disturbing findings in these cases is the extensive involvement or complicity of personnel in state institutions. While the rath-yatra-communal-pogrom strategy is an overt assault on secularism and democracy, this infiltration of the state apparatus and assault from within is arguably even more dangerous.

When the government finally took cognisance of this menace, there were howls of protest from the Sangh Parivar, including assertions that Hindus cannot be terrorists and terrorists have no religion. Both propositions are patently false. When Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad Chief Hemant Karkare unearthed incontrovertible evidence that saffron-clad Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Swami Dayanand Pandey had played key roles in the Malegaon terrorist attack of 2008, he was proving precisely that Hindus could be terrorists (Sify News 2008). And a quick glance through history and around the world shows that adherents of any religion and none can become terrorists if their interpretation of their own religion or political philosophy justifies such acts.

Building a Ram temple on the very spot where a mosque had been demolished carries a powerful symbolic value in this context, connoting the crushing of a minority community in order to establish the absolute dominance of Hindutva. The real issue is whether Muslims in India are equal before the law and have equal protection of the law, as the constitution guarantees, or not. The choice is not between masjid and mandir, but between democracy and a fascist Hindu Rashtra.

Justice Sharma’s judgment can be seen as a full endorsement of the Hindutva agenda, but the majority judgment is more complex. Its intention, perhaps, was to appease the Hindu extremists and avert a repeat of the ghastly violence of 1992-93 by giving Hindus two-thirds of the land, while simultaneously pacifying the Muslim litigants by giving them one-third of their property. But it is a dangerous mistake to think that extremists can be appeased by giving them what they want. The lesson to be learned from what happened between 1986 and 1992 is that appeasement only encouraged the Sangh Parivar to engage in more violence. There are already indications that the High Court verdict is having the same effect, with demands by the VHP that the entire plot should be given to the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas so that they can build a grand Ram temple there (Parashar 2010). If this judgment were to be the final word on the subject, it is possible that the fuel it provides to the stalled Ram temple agenda could plunge the country into bloodshed again. It is therefore fortunate that appeals to the Supreme Court against it are being planned.

Religion and Politics: Towards a More Progressive Union?
The Supreme Court judgment of 1994 stated that the demolition of the Babri Masjid was ‘an act of “national shame”. What was demolished was not merely an ancient structure, but the faith of the minorities in the sense of justice and fairplay of the majority. It shook their faith in the rule of law and constitutional processes’ (Andhyarujina 2010). We therefore have reason to hope that the Supreme Court, unlike the Allahabad High Court, will restore faith in the rule of law and the Indian constitution. Restoration of the status quo ante prior to December 1949, when Muslims worshipped in the masjid while Hindus worshipped in the outer courtyard, could perhaps serve the purposes of both justice and reconciliation.

It is not a foregone conclusion that a verdict in favour of the Sunni Waqf Board would have resulted in a bloodbath. Compared with the shameful complicity with Hindutva forces of the state government of UP and paralysis of the state government of Maharashtra and the Centre in 1992, there was far greater preparedness to quell any violence in 2010. Equally importantly, there is more opposition to the Hindutva agenda in civil society, partly as a result of the tireless efforts of anti-communal activists. For example, on 23 September a dharna was called in Bombay by the New Trade Union Initiative and others, and the speakers called on workers to organise in their workplaces and neighbourhoods in order to safeguard peace and communal harmony when the verdict was announced. There are also ongoing attempts to bring the perpetrators of the crimes of 1992-93 and 2002 to justice. Despite all this, however, there was palpable dread, especially among Muslims, during the build-up to the High Court verdict, and no one can guarantee freedom from communal violence in the future. What more can be done to ensure peace and communal harmony?

It is worth looking at the answer to this question provided by Lata Mani, a feminist and socialist who is also a Hindu believer. In her book SacredSecular (2009), she draws a clear line between fundamentalism or extremism of all types (including Hindutva) and genuine spiritual practice, characterising the former as ‘centrifugal’ and the latter as ‘centripetal’: ‘Where the latter encourages the divinisation of humanness and the sacralisation of all activity, the former is explicitly concerned with self-aggrandisement, with fortifying the ego. It is no wonder then that greed, hate, violence and untruth abound in Right-wing rhetoric and action while authentic spiritual qualities of love, compassion and dispassion are conspicuously absent’ (p.12). She sees herself as part of the ‘small, faith-based Hindu voice within and outside of the religious establishment which has sought to challenge the credibility and authenticity of Hindutva. Its strategy has been to unravel the lies of Hindutva while stressing the essential teachings of love, peace, unity and dharmic living that are inherent in Hinduism as in all other wisdom traditions’ (pp.125-126). There is an implied self-criticism in her admission that ‘It is time for those who live and move in faith to be more outspoken in expressing faith-based anti-communal perspectives… For, as we have seen, the danger to Hinduism, if ever there was one, comes not from without but from within’ (p.94).

However, she also criticises the Left in India for its understanding of secularism as the negation of religion, and an attitude to people of faith that is patronising at best, suspicious or hostile at worst. Such a view fails to understand that science cannot answer questions like: Why should I not kill and rob someone if I can get away with it? Why should I stand in solidarity with those who are oppressed? Nor does it acknowledge that both secular and religious ethical systems and moral philosophies (Kant’s categorical imperative as much as the Buddha’s precepts or Jesus’s parable of the good Samaritan) are founded on principles that are outside the realm of science, yet equally valid. ‘The Marxist premise that religion is a distortion of reality has led to a distorted view of religion,’ she comments (p.21). ‘The problem with the Swayamsevak Sangh, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal is not that they are religious. The problem with these organisations is that they are fascist. Religion is no more inherently conservative or fascist than secular philosophy is, by definition, liberatory. Many contemporary forms of organised violence and discrimination have a secular basis’ (p.123).

Mani points out that ‘Contemporary discussions all too often pose the secular and the spiritual as diametrically opposed perspectives with little in common, either in substance or objectives,’ and questions ‘this assumption by examining alongside one another the beliefs that ground progressive secular activism with those that shape the spiritual journey’ (Mani 2009, 143-144). She notes, ‘Equality, inclusivity, interdependence: all three are central to both progressive secular activism and centripetal spiritual philosophy…The spiritual idea that our true nature is expansive and loving parallels the secular notion of one’s “humanity”’ (pp.148, 150). In other words, ‘the dividing line is not between sacred and secular frameworks so much as between philosophies that seek to tear asunder and separate, versus those that seek to heal and unite’ (p.144).

This analysis suggests a way forward for secular activism that avoids the appeasement of reactionaries inherent in the sarva dharma samabhav definition of secularism as well as the exclusivism inherent in defining secularism as the negation of religion. Both definitions make the mistake of lumping all believers together and ignoring irreconcileable differences within each religion between reactionaries and extremists on one side, liberals and progressives on the other. In the process, both ignore the very existence of Hindus who believe that ‘This country, today, does NOT require temples for Ram or idols of Ram. It requires everyone of us to be a Ram, perfect law abiding citizen. The best solution for the Ayodhya dispute is to remove the idols of Ram and Sita which have been placed inside the Babri Masjid structure against all Agama Sastras, by people drunk with Abhimana and Ahamkara (such people are called hoodlums/thugs) and let our Muslim brothers to decide what they want to do with that structure’ (TheBigThinkg 2010).

These flawed definitions of secularism urgently need to be replaced by one that defines it as non-discrimination between persons on the grounds of their religion, and a state that does not interfere in religious matters unless it becomes necessary to do so in order to protect the fundamental human and democratic rights of its citizens. In other words, people of all communities would be free to practice their own religion in their own way so long as they did not infringe on anyone’s fundamental rights. Matters of faith would be excluded from the purview of the law, as it should be in a secular state. It should be clear that this definition of secularism, and the gender-just, secular family laws that would be part of it, would be perfectly compatible with liberal and progressive interpretations of all religions. Only those who espouse reactionary and extremist interpretations of their religion – for example, sexist, casteist or communal interpretations – would have problems with this definition.

Defining secularism as the belief that all human beings are entitled to equal respect and consideration, equality before the law and equal protection of the law, equal rights and opportunities, would result in including millions of humane and progressive people of faith under the banner of secularism. This in turn would marginalise extremists and strengthen secular activism to a point where it could ensure peace and communal harmony under all circumstances.

References:
Mandal, D. and Shereen Ratnagar, 2007, Ayodhya: Archaeology After Excavation, Tulika Books, 2007

Andhyarujina, T.R., 2010, ‘A verdict that legitimises the masjid demolition,’ The Hindu, 5 October, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article813035.ece

Gatade, Subhash, 2010, ‘Pracharak as Terrorist: on the Bhasmasur of Hindutva Terror’,Countercurrents, 13 July, http://www.countercurrents.org/gatde130710.htm

Mani, Lata, 2009, SacredSecular: Contemplative Cultural Critique, Routledge, 2009

Parashar, Sachin, 2010, ‘Ayodhya: VHP lays claim to entire 67-acre plot’, Times of India, 6 October, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Ayodhya-VHP-lays-claim-to-entir...

Puniyani, Ram, 2010, ‘Commit the Crime and be Rewarded: Ayodhya Dispute Verdict’, Countercurrents, 2 October, http://www.countercurrents.org/puniyani021010.htm

Sify News, 2008, ‘Terror trio: a swami, a sadhvi and a sainik,’ Sify News, 16 November,http://sify.com/news/terror-trio-a-swami-a-sadhvi-and-a-sainik-news-national-jegvvFeccbb.html

Teltumbde, Anand, 2010, ‘Retrograde Judgement Rewards Hindutva Zealots’, The Gabber.org, 5 October, http://www.thegabber.org/?p=72263#more-72263

TheBigThinkg, 2010, ‘The Ayodhya Dispute…does it make any sense?’ 26 September,http://indianblogger.com/the-ayodhya-ram-janmabhoomi-dispute/

ukpha.org, 2010, ‘Far from Ayodhya, there is peace in “Ram’s birthplace”’, 27 September,http://news.ukpha.org/2010/09/far-from-ayodhya-there-is-peace-in-rams-birthplace/#more-2379

* Rohini Hensman is a researcher and writer active in the women’s liberation, trade union, human rights and anti-war movements in India and Sri Lanka. Her book of fiction, Playing Lions and Tigers, follows the intertwined lives of fourteen characters from different parts of Sri Lanka, different social classes, different ethnic and religious communities, all confronting the challenges of their country’s post-colonial conditions: poverty and religious conflict. Inhabiting the lives of her characters, Rohini looks at the personal dramas of peaceful citizens turned into violent enemies by the manipulations of authoritarian and criminal government.

India Leads Commonwealth Tally in Underweight Children

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:46:00 +0000

India may rank second in the medals tally, but it is on top of the heap among the Commonwealth countries as the home to the highest number of underweight children.

About 43% of India's children are underweight, and 7 million under fives are severely malnourished, says a new report "Commonwealth or Common Hunger", released by Save the Children, a child rights NGO.

The report reveals that 64% of the world's underweight children live in 54 Commonwealth countries, and India has both the highest number and the highest proportion of underweight children. More than two-thirds of stunted children (88.5 million or 68.6%) and nearly half of those who are underweight (95 million or 48.7%) live in just seven Commonwealth countries.

India is one of seven Commonwealth countries that are not showing adequate progress on MDG 1. India has achieved just 0.9% progress, which is nowhere near achieving the target by 2015. Bangladesh, Pakistan, Maldives, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone and Kenya are the other nations that are lagging behind in MDGs.

Commenting on the report, noted agriculture scientist and chairperson of the Coalition for Sustainable Nutrition Security in India, M S Swaminathan, said,"India has a vast burden of malnutrition among children and mothers, and the Prime Minister has called it a national shame. We now need to see urgent action that will deliver real change in the lives of mothers and their children in India. But I hope that we will see changes that can be shared with other countries across the Commonwealth."

Thomas Chandy, CEO of Save the Children, said, "By hosting the Commonwealth Games against all odds, India has shown that with political will, it can overcome problems and find solutions. With 55 million children under five being underweight, we need to show similar leadership to finding a solution to the silent epidemic that is quietly wiping out generations of our children."

The critical period when malnutrition can have the most irrevocable impact is during the 33 months from conception to a child's second birthday, says the report. After this period, it is much harder to reverse the effects of chronic malnutrition, and the effects are life-long or life-threatening.

In 2000, 198 countries, including India, had committed to halving hunger and malnutrition by 2015. Sri Lanka, Ghana and Botswana are among the Commonwealth countries that are on course to meeting the target by 2015 through several low-cost interventions to reduce malnutrition.

For instance, support for exclusive breastfeeding is one of the most cost-effective public health interventions and could reduce under five mortality by as much as 20%.

By: Himanshi Dhawan

Delhi CWG 2010 - An Orgy of Excess

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 08:28:00 +0000

The picture of elitist ‘India’ is indeed shiny, but the picture of poor ‘Bharat’ is tattered.

More than 68000 inside the specially renovated and decorated Jawhar Lal Nehru Stadium and more than 2 billion on the television sets witnessed a spectacular, marvellous, colorful opening ceremony of the 19th Commonwealth Games. The picture of urban state was vibrant and bright. The world is delighted by the view of new India, sooner going to join the elite status of a ‘Superpower’.

Mike Davis' stunning book, Late Victorian Holocausts, [also ought to be required reading in every Indian school] gives us a scathing account, for instance, of the Viceroy Lord Lytton. All through the autumn of 1876, while the kharif crop was withering in the fields of southern India, Lytton had been absorbed in organising the immense Imperial Assemblage in Delhi to proclaim Victoria Empress of India." The weeklong feast for 68,000 guests, points out Davis, was an orgy of excess. It proved to be "the most colossal and expensive meal in world history." Through the same week as this spectacular durbar, "100,000 of the Queen Empress' subjects starved to death in Madras and Mysore" alone.

Wasn’t the CWG show was an orgy of excess! In fact, barring the scale, it all sounds depressingly like the present. In terms of ideology and principle at least. Thousands of farmers have killed themselves as the agrarian crisis deepens. Tens of millions have seen their livelihoods destroyed. They now hotfoot it to the cities in hope of succour. Massive amounts of grain were exported, even as grain per Indian fell to the levels of the great Bengal famine. And with all the misery in the countryside, the elite orgy of excess goes on.

The picture of elitist ‘India’ is indeed shiny, but the faded picture of poor ‘Bharat’ is tattered.

The world was sitting up and taking notice of India because the good news stories were coming at a faster clip than before. Finally India was in a position it had long pined for: from being known as a country of little hope and few jobs, it was now acknowledged as a country with a future and one that took away the burden of ‘First World’. From being a geopolitical minnow, it was badgering the world for a permanent seat in the Security Council of the United Nations. And by playing host to the CWG and other major events since, in strident celebration for the “have-nots” and ‘been-slighteds’ of the world, India also appeared to have arrived at a neat balance of victor and victim.

This is what ‘Prosperous and Powerful India’ built around. But this ‘Prosperity’ and feeling of ‘Power’ entirely missed in rural India, where three-quarters of the coutry’s 1.2 billion still live, and where about 300 million comprise landless agricultural labour, traditionally trod upon. According to the National Sample Survey Organization report, a similar number, which constitutes a third of the rural population, live on less than Rs. 12 a day (the lowest 10 per cent, or 3 million, live on less that Rs. 9 a day). In Orissa and Chhattisgarh, the proportion of rural people living on less than Rs. 12 a day is between 55 and 57 per cent; in Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, it is between 46 and 47 per cent; even in relatively wealthy and happy Maharashtra and Karnataka, it is 30 and 32 percent respectively.

Doesn’t Rs. 100000 crore spent to organize this gala event, could have change the face of the ‘Bharat’ if spend at the right place???

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Unicef and te World Food Programme have other depressing statistics: Almost half of our under-five year olds are malnourished (46 percent). Despite gains, infant mortality remains among the highest in the world (57 deaths per thousand births) and maternal mortality is still at an astonishing 450 deaths per 100,000 births. Fifth of the total population of the country go hungry. Nearly three-quarters of the Indians still don’t have access to safe drinking water or sanitation. The largest single cause of death in India is still a common disease ‘diarrhoea’. India still satnds at the rank of 126 out of 176 in global Human Development Index. Reports by transparency International regularly list India as among the most corrupt nations in the world.

There is a steady growth in urban influx from rural areas, bringing with it a fallout of development that a few planned for. The story is not at all pretty in urban India. Mumbai is 60 per cent slum. In Delhi, there is a continuing political battle to ‘regularize’ vast illegal colonies of migrants, little more than tin shack and exposed brick laced with open sewer – many of which, in typical Delhi acronym are called JJ Colonies. It is how an estimate of 60 million Indians in large cities live.

‘Sorry India is not a superpower,’ Fortune magazine, usually upbeat about India this past decade, would scathingly reflect in an article by a top editor, Cait Murphy, quoting numbers of destitution to show that the country wasn’t much better off than some down and out African nations. Indeed, Murphy suggested that given how much India needed to fix before it could assume the pretension of a world power ‘that is probably the wrong ambition for it anyway.’

Ayodhya Verdict: Disputed Land To Be Divided into Three Parts (First Update)

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 11:22:00 +0000

Wait Another Sixty Years For The Final Judgement!

To know the 30th September Judgement of Allahabad High Court Click Here

Allahabad High Court ruled by majority that the disputed land in Ayodhya be divided into three parts to be distributed among the Sunni Waqf Board, Nirmohi Akhara and the party for 'Ram Lalla'.

The Allahabad High Court has divided the ownership of the disputed site into three parts: Ram Lalla idol site to Ram, Nirmohi Akhara gets Sita Rasoi and Ram Chabutara, Sunni Wakf Board gets the rest.

“Justice D V Sharma decreed the title suit in favour of Hindus,” said lawyer K N Bhatt, who represented the party on behalf of 'Ram Lalla'.

Status quo will be maintained at the disputed site in Ayodhya for three months, claimed lawyers Ravi Shanker Prasad and K N Bhatt.

Justice S U Khan ruled that the disputed land belongs to both the communities, said lawyers.