Posted on September 20, 2007
The release of the autobiography of the former Chairman of Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan and his contention that the Iraq war “is largely about oil” has brought the war into a new focus this week. The US Defence Secretary Robert Gates as expected rejected the argument. However the book The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World is bound to create ripples in the days to come. The debate on war is already becoming poignant after the French Minister Robert Kouchner warned this week that war with Iran is inevitable as Iran persists in the enrichment of uranium that could be used in making bomb. The Iranian Foreign Minister did not mince words when he said that the US forces are themselves encircled and within the striking distance of Iranian missiles. If the continuing war and the likely war to come are about oil then the most tragic mistake would turn out be the way the Arabs allowed themselves to be divided on sectarian lines in Iraq. America has been pitting one sect against the other in a suicidal civil war as a cover up for its hidden end of pumping out oil for a strategic reserve that would last ages and domination of the Middle East. Weapons of Mass Destruction, removing the Iraqi dictator and bringing democracy were used to buy time to achieve a hidden agenda.
Of the greatest ironies of our time has been the United States of America’s stance that democracy prevents war while dictatorship abets it. But the last thirty years pose a serious challenge to this assumption. Who invaded and occupied Grenada, but America. Who invaded and occupied Panama, but America. Who invaded Iraq twice within just over a decade and has occupied it, but America. Who helped the Afghans and Osama bin Laden to fight Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan but has invaded and occupied it in its turn, but America. Yet this so called greatest democratic country preaches what it practically does not do.
America was born in war. The Revolutionary War spread over eight years: April 19, 1775- September 3, 1783. The thirteen colonies of Great Britain rebelled and fought this protracted war against the mother country and declared themselves independent under the stars and stripes and metamorphosed into the United States of America. Since then America has fought the War of 1812, the Mexican War of 1846-48, the Civil War 1861-65, the Spanish-American War 1898, World War I, World War II, the Korean War of 1950-53, the Vietnam War of 1960’s-1975. The Wars in the Caribbean have given America a bad name throughout Latin America and the Caribbean and they include: the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962, Invasion and Occupation of the Dominique Republic in 1965, the Invasion and Occupation of Grenada 1983, the Invasion and Occupation of Panama in 1989. Equally long is the list of wars of America even after the cold war with communism ended with the disintegration of the Soviet Union: the Gulf War of 1991, the Invasion and Occupation of Somalia 1992, the Invasion and Occupation of Afghanistan 2001, the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq 2003.
As the war in Iraq continues and protests against the war take place in America it is time to take account of the wars that America has fought till today. The latest protests took place on September 15, 2007 in which protesters also called for impeachment of the American President. However it may look strange for a democracy, wars of recent years were grounded in the personal motivations of the man in the White House. The current war in Iraq had the personal hubris of President George W Bush who had grudges against President Saddam Hussein. He harboured revengeful feelings against the Iraqi leader ever since a failed attempt was made on the life of his father. Senior George Bush had ordered invasion of Iraq when it had occupied Kuwait. This first war on Iraq is known as the Gulf War February 16-28, 1991. After the war Senior Bush went on an inspection of the American troops there when a plot to assassinate him was uncovered. President Bush lost reelection and President Bill Clinton succeeded him. George W Bush was the governor of Texas at that time and felt angry for the defeat of his father. When he won election after the judgment of Supreme Court of the US went in his favour and against Gore, the newly elected younger Bush felt arrogance that Saddam Hussein was still there even after the war while his father lost the election because of the war. The two Bushes also had a chequered family history of having suffered misfortune in oil trade in their home state of Texas which is rich in oil. These are subterranean issues and irritants which contributed to the aggravation of the political and strategic situations on the ground like the occupation of Kuwait, Iraq’s alleged making of Weapons of Mass Destruction, removal of Iraqi leader, democracy, and now, terrorism. Some critics have called war on Iraq as family wars.
America started the Gulf War to protect Saudi Arabia from being over run and occupied by invading Iraqi army which had occupied Kuwait. Saudi Arabia was and is the greatest oil supplier of the US and its major ally in the region, next only to Israel. The US army called it Operation Desert Shield. During the Gulf War first 37 days saw exclusive air bombardment. This was named Operation Desert Storm. On February 23 1991 American and allied forces made ground invasion which lasted four days. They called it Operation Desert Saber. Needless to say that oil is at stake and nothing else, not even WMD or democracy. Oil for which the family business declined and it is again oil which threatens American economy. Similarly the American economy will be threatened as Iran is now accepting payment for oil in other currencies and not the American dollar. Hence, this is the reason for war like move against Iran, another axis of evil after Iraq. The family economy depends on national economy.
But the most ludicrous was Bill Clinton’s impeachment situation. He was accused of having had oral sex with a Polish intern Monica Lewinsky working in his office. Even his pants were being inspected in the American Congressional hearings. A day before impeachment vote against him he ordered bombings of radar sites in Iraq on December 16, 1998. Two hundred Tomahawk missiles were fired into Iraq from the US war ships in the Gulf. The Operation Desert Fox was carried out to move the main heading of the news about impeachment from the front page of the American newspaper.
In these wars the Vietnamese have come out with brilliance of achievement. They were the most determined as they were the most disciplined. The Arabs have not come out of the wars yet but they are not as disciplined in confrontation with the “great Satan”. Foremost is their proverbial disunity born out of the multiple tribal loyalties –a pre Islamic trait. Then their backwardness in science and technology makes them dependent on the West which exploits them for its own interest. They have also put all their money in the western banks which freeze their assets when things go wrong and cripple them. Oil and deposit asset are what the US cannot survive without.
Grenada and Panama like many other countries are too small and weak to look eye to eye with the Americans. Except the hostage siege at the American embassy in Tehran at the start of the Islamic revolution in Iran led by Ayatollah Khomeini. The Iranians have not tested either there own mettle or that of the American’s. But signs are there that the next arena the current Bush administration has earmarked is Iran. Why is Iran an inevitability but not North Korea which is one of the two other axes of evil? The answer is oil and petrodollars: their provenance in the Middle East. As Robert Frisk has observed: “It’s always been my view that the people of this part of the Earth want freedom. But they want another kind of freedom—freedom from us. And this we do not intend to give them. Which is why our Middle East presence is heading into further darkness. Which is why I sit on my balcony and wonder where the next explosion is going to be. For, to be sure, it will happen. Bin Laden doesn’t matter any more, alive or dead. Because like nuclear scientists, he has invented the ‘bomb’. You can arrest all of the world’s nuclear scientists but the bomb has been made. Bin Laden created al-Qaeda amid the matchwood of the Middle East. It exists. His presence is no longer necessary.”
May be another snag will develop like the sand storm that jammed the war machinery when President Jimmy Carter tried but failed and honestly accepted failure, and desisted from launching anymore attack on Iran when he tried to save the American hostages.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Ram Sethu vs Sethu Samudram:Another Ayodhya
Posted on September 12, 2007
The bridge near Pimpalgaon in Nasik District on National High Way Number 8 also known as Agra Road was blocked along with hundred others including the ones in Delhi: Nizamuddin birdge, ITO, Yamuna birdge, Akshardham temple, Vikas Marg, Connaught Place, Dwarka flyover, Lajpat Nagar and South-Extension, National Highway 8. You have here Delhi directly linked to Pimpalgaon: in protest and devotion if nothing else. People had harrowing time reaching office and work places in Delhi or long distance destinations on the Agra Road passing through Nasik and Pimpalgaon as well. Thorium deposit between India and Sri Lanka is the remains of the bridge that Hanuman used in building the bridge to cross into Sri Lanka in an attempt to fight Ravana and free Seeta. Today it looks as if the political parties are building up their own bridges to fight the coming elections across the country. Once Avodhya yielded rich dividends at polls and this is the next round in the same fight. Some leaders have quite a good turn of this kind of politics.
Ram Sethu or Adam’s bridge is the limestone shoals 48 km long stretching between Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu and Mannar in Sri Lanka. Legend has it that the two towns were connected by a bridge that Hanuman and his followers had constructed. Sethus Samudram is a project of the shipping department of government of India by which the lime formation would be dredged out to make the distance shorter as well as reduce time of navigation from780 km of sailing distance to 400 km and 30 hours of sailing to just few hours.
This would boost trade in the Palk Strait almost like the construction of Suez Canal of 1857 or the Panama Canal. When the President of Egypt Nasser nationalized it Britain and France declared war on Egypt. When President Manuel Noriega of Panama made such a move for the Panama canal President George Bush ordered the US army to invade and occupy Panama on December 20 1989 Now another war is in the making of a different sort not in the Palk Strait or the Gulf of Mannar but on the roads and bridges across India!. The rampant VHP is taking on the UPA for a cause that NDA had initiated. (Does it remind you how PM Rajiv Gandhi of Congress had opened the Babri doors for Shila Niyas pooja by which the BJP had ultimately won the election?) It had served an ultimatum on the central government on April 19, 2007 to scrap the Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project by May 13. Ashok Singhal had hinted ominously: "Like we have vowed to construct a temple at the Rama Janma Bhoomi we vow to protect the Ram Sethu," He also sounded panicked by the NASA disclaimer and to ward it off he said that it was an American conspiracy that the 3.50 lakhh tones of thorium in the Palk strait could be used to make electricity for 100 years for the whole of India. He also blamed America for being jealous that India was monopolizing the strait and that the US wanted it opened for world navigation to end the monopoly. On 31 August 2007 the Supreme Court restrained the government from touching the thorium formation. Emboldened by this the VHP called for a chakka jam on September 12, 2007.
The Sangh privar falsely quoted NASA that the National Aeronautical and Space Agency of the United States had declared that Adam’s Bridge/ Ram Sethu was not a natural formation but man / monkey made. When NASA came to know the falsehood it disclaimed the theory.
It came out recently that the RSS had planted a mole ( Dr Puneesh Taneja)in the Prime Minister’s Office. The mole claimed that he was a space scientist working with the ISRO, Indian Space Research Organization. That so called scientist had a flat gifted to him by the RSS in a posh Delhi colony and he had printed visitor’s card with the bogus information. It so happened that a high official of ISRO found that the mole was a fake scientist. A leading national newspaper printed the story on the front page. Thereafter the RSS removed him from the hotspot but did not demote him. He remains a pracharak. In the eyes of the ordinary Indian this mole must have betrayed confidential information is not in doubt. One can bug the PMO even in the name of an ideology and yet have the cheek to remain in the position of the Sangh privar is not a matter of surprise now. Ashok Singhal of VHP appeared with the so called scientist before the glare of camera of media in a press conference in support of the ram sethu. But that scientist was given a brief. He was flaunted as an expert in ocean sedimentation and he floated the idea that the rock formation was human and not evolutionary. Tectonic formation of rocks when collide produce seismic changes that Samuel Huntington has called clash of civilization. We feel the tremors now from Delhi to Pimpalgaon and during the three hours of chakka jam that has also affected Western Expressway in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Haryana's Karnal district, Agra, Chandigarh, Jammu, Indore, Patna and at 20 flyovers in the Capital, Delhi. Trucks and other vehicles are burning on the roads here and there. The Gujjars did it for one reason and now the VHP is doing it for another. All are sailing in the same boat.
There appears to be a design. As the Congress is focusing on the Sachar report and the slew of measures to improve the condition of the Muslims as a leeward move against the onslaught of the Left on the ABC nuclear deal, the Sangh parivar has kept the bridge issue up its sleeves to offset the Congress in the coming election. Whether the BJP would rise to the bait of the VHP is what the pundits are waiting and watching. Once the BJP somersaulted over the secular credentials of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and then on the ABC nuclear deal and now…
The bridge near Pimpalgaon in Nasik District on National High Way Number 8 also known as Agra Road was blocked along with hundred others including the ones in Delhi: Nizamuddin birdge, ITO, Yamuna birdge, Akshardham temple, Vikas Marg, Connaught Place, Dwarka flyover, Lajpat Nagar and South-Extension, National Highway 8. You have here Delhi directly linked to Pimpalgaon: in protest and devotion if nothing else. People had harrowing time reaching office and work places in Delhi or long distance destinations on the Agra Road passing through Nasik and Pimpalgaon as well. Thorium deposit between India and Sri Lanka is the remains of the bridge that Hanuman used in building the bridge to cross into Sri Lanka in an attempt to fight Ravana and free Seeta. Today it looks as if the political parties are building up their own bridges to fight the coming elections across the country. Once Avodhya yielded rich dividends at polls and this is the next round in the same fight. Some leaders have quite a good turn of this kind of politics.
Ram Sethu or Adam’s bridge is the limestone shoals 48 km long stretching between Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu and Mannar in Sri Lanka. Legend has it that the two towns were connected by a bridge that Hanuman and his followers had constructed. Sethus Samudram is a project of the shipping department of government of India by which the lime formation would be dredged out to make the distance shorter as well as reduce time of navigation from780 km of sailing distance to 400 km and 30 hours of sailing to just few hours.
This would boost trade in the Palk Strait almost like the construction of Suez Canal of 1857 or the Panama Canal. When the President of Egypt Nasser nationalized it Britain and France declared war on Egypt. When President Manuel Noriega of Panama made such a move for the Panama canal President George Bush ordered the US army to invade and occupy Panama on December 20 1989 Now another war is in the making of a different sort not in the Palk Strait or the Gulf of Mannar but on the roads and bridges across India!. The rampant VHP is taking on the UPA for a cause that NDA had initiated. (Does it remind you how PM Rajiv Gandhi of Congress had opened the Babri doors for Shila Niyas pooja by which the BJP had ultimately won the election?) It had served an ultimatum on the central government on April 19, 2007 to scrap the Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project by May 13. Ashok Singhal had hinted ominously: "Like we have vowed to construct a temple at the Rama Janma Bhoomi we vow to protect the Ram Sethu," He also sounded panicked by the NASA disclaimer and to ward it off he said that it was an American conspiracy that the 3.50 lakhh tones of thorium in the Palk strait could be used to make electricity for 100 years for the whole of India. He also blamed America for being jealous that India was monopolizing the strait and that the US wanted it opened for world navigation to end the monopoly. On 31 August 2007 the Supreme Court restrained the government from touching the thorium formation. Emboldened by this the VHP called for a chakka jam on September 12, 2007.
The Sangh privar falsely quoted NASA that the National Aeronautical and Space Agency of the United States had declared that Adam’s Bridge/ Ram Sethu was not a natural formation but man / monkey made. When NASA came to know the falsehood it disclaimed the theory.
It came out recently that the RSS had planted a mole ( Dr Puneesh Taneja)in the Prime Minister’s Office. The mole claimed that he was a space scientist working with the ISRO, Indian Space Research Organization. That so called scientist had a flat gifted to him by the RSS in a posh Delhi colony and he had printed visitor’s card with the bogus information. It so happened that a high official of ISRO found that the mole was a fake scientist. A leading national newspaper printed the story on the front page. Thereafter the RSS removed him from the hotspot but did not demote him. He remains a pracharak. In the eyes of the ordinary Indian this mole must have betrayed confidential information is not in doubt. One can bug the PMO even in the name of an ideology and yet have the cheek to remain in the position of the Sangh privar is not a matter of surprise now. Ashok Singhal of VHP appeared with the so called scientist before the glare of camera of media in a press conference in support of the ram sethu. But that scientist was given a brief. He was flaunted as an expert in ocean sedimentation and he floated the idea that the rock formation was human and not evolutionary. Tectonic formation of rocks when collide produce seismic changes that Samuel Huntington has called clash of civilization. We feel the tremors now from Delhi to Pimpalgaon and during the three hours of chakka jam that has also affected Western Expressway in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Haryana's Karnal district, Agra, Chandigarh, Jammu, Indore, Patna and at 20 flyovers in the Capital, Delhi. Trucks and other vehicles are burning on the roads here and there. The Gujjars did it for one reason and now the VHP is doing it for another. All are sailing in the same boat.
There appears to be a design. As the Congress is focusing on the Sachar report and the slew of measures to improve the condition of the Muslims as a leeward move against the onslaught of the Left on the ABC nuclear deal, the Sangh parivar has kept the bridge issue up its sleeves to offset the Congress in the coming election. Whether the BJP would rise to the bait of the VHP is what the pundits are waiting and watching. Once the BJP somersaulted over the secular credentials of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and then on the ABC nuclear deal and now…
Polls on the crutches of ABC and backwardness
Posted on September 8, 2007
Within hours of former Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratapsingh’s announcement of acceptance of Mandal recommendations, LK Advani trumpeted his plan for rathyatra for the temple at Ayodhya. Another tragedy is in the making since AR Antulay announced the 15 point guidelines for rectifying the backwardness among the Muslims. No sooner did he go public than the baying started. Shiv sena Member of Parliament Sanjay Raut says that Uddhav Thackeray would lead a delegation to the Prime Minister to demand scraping of reservation or concessions to Muslims. This is a clear foreboding that the coming times would be fraught with dangers for the minority for it just cannot escape the wrath of those who grudge every move to even the scale of justice. The track record is proof. The sena supremo had vehemently albeit menacingly opposed the survey of the armed forces to find out how many Muslims are there in the services. Manohar Joshi issued a veiled threat in the aftermath of the judgment of the serial bomb blasts of 1993 when the demand grew for justice for the victims of the communal riots that preceded the blasts. Any individual person threatening another is one thing. A political party known for communal violence issuing threat to a minority community is quite different.
Even before the ink dries on the paper promising economic and political uplift of the downtrodden Muslims the atmosphere is sullied. The tiger upstream is threatening the lamb downstream for muddying the water. If that is not enough then the ancestry of Babur is to blame. In other words we are back to square one in politics. The civic sense that economic growth and material development has grossly bypassed a section of the society and it is needed to correct the imbalance is thrown to the wind. Without this civic sense we would rather fight our own battle on terrorism and other nemeses besieging us is the new mantra of the neoconservatives amongst us paralleling the distant American cousins.
That different political parties have fought their own wars in the name of fighting terrorism does not require any rephrasing of the fact. Chief Minister Narender Modi of Gujarat even did away the fig leaf of what Muslims leaders in 1980s described the political parties vis-à-vis Muslims: running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Since the 1980s the lot of the Muslims has plummeted even further. Democracy has inbuilt mechanism to correct the imbalance. But those who come to occupy the house want to leave out those who helped in securing the house. This is the underlying stratagem of Modi’s electoral campaign. “Tribals should oppose religion based representations for Muslims. By extending reservations to converts, the central government wants to encourage conversions and harm the constitutional rights of tribals and dalits. The centre is playing a dangerous game by providing religion-based reservations to the minority community.” So the tribals and dalits can have constitutional rights and Muslims cannot. This insidious way of campaigning has paid him rich dividends in the past. But the first time when he did it in December 2002 he had hijacked the state of Gujarat after the state sponsored pogroms. During that period the funds raised in the United States for relief and development went to organizing of the carnage, recall the pouches of liquor and food distributed to the marauders, who were substantially tribals and dalits.
In such a campaign the greatest victim is not the Muslim community but democracy. The fascists have always lauded the Nazis and Adolph Hitler and want to emulate them in dealing with the minorities. Modi’s speech is the first shot in his attempt in taking on the Congress for the forthcoming election in the state on the issue of the minority. He is making it out that Congress is taking the morsel from the mouth of the tribals and dalits and giving it to the Muslim. Here is the Slobodan Milosevic in another version.
Election round the corner, each political party begins to put its acts together. The Congress being the oldest knows the art very well. It has done and will do much to woo the minorities. Because it also conveniently neglects its promises once the polls are over. However having set up a commission to ascertain the backwardness of Muslims it is caught in a cleft. The proposal for another commission for equal opportunity is touted. It is too early to dismiss it as eyewash. But much would depend how the minority becomes alert and well informed and organized in its endeavour to achieve what are long over due demands.
The Gujarat Chief Minister calls himself brother of the tribals and has a Van Bandhu package worth Rs 15, 000 crore. Mark it, it is ready cash to be spent on the instant. As compared to jingle sound of the money is the hollow sound of the promises and guidelines of the minister who did not have a seating arrangement for himself. Muslims never had 1000 crore sanctioned to them since India won freedom. However 15 point package is there for them from Antulay. The gerrymandering he has advocated for Muslims is nothing new. The scheduled castes and tribes have enjoyed it for long. The rearrangement of a constituency to favour the dalits and tribals has been an anomaly in a place like Malegaon. The Muslims constitute majority but for 60 years they could not elect any member of their own community to voice their concern in parliament. Other such pockets are also there. Antulay has recommended removing the anomaly through nomination. Modi has cash in his pocket. Three types of scholarships and remedial coaching and tuition are bureaucratic hurdles which would go to some extent in improvement if really implemented. Modernizing madrasa is reigning passion of Musharraf and Mohan Singh alike. Wakf property can be sold for a bribe: the Muslim minister in charge of the department is only obligingly waiting for the highest bidder. These are the fifteen points of janab Antulay and every cat has nine lives.
Within hours of former Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratapsingh’s announcement of acceptance of Mandal recommendations, LK Advani trumpeted his plan for rathyatra for the temple at Ayodhya. Another tragedy is in the making since AR Antulay announced the 15 point guidelines for rectifying the backwardness among the Muslims. No sooner did he go public than the baying started. Shiv sena Member of Parliament Sanjay Raut says that Uddhav Thackeray would lead a delegation to the Prime Minister to demand scraping of reservation or concessions to Muslims. This is a clear foreboding that the coming times would be fraught with dangers for the minority for it just cannot escape the wrath of those who grudge every move to even the scale of justice. The track record is proof. The sena supremo had vehemently albeit menacingly opposed the survey of the armed forces to find out how many Muslims are there in the services. Manohar Joshi issued a veiled threat in the aftermath of the judgment of the serial bomb blasts of 1993 when the demand grew for justice for the victims of the communal riots that preceded the blasts. Any individual person threatening another is one thing. A political party known for communal violence issuing threat to a minority community is quite different.
Even before the ink dries on the paper promising economic and political uplift of the downtrodden Muslims the atmosphere is sullied. The tiger upstream is threatening the lamb downstream for muddying the water. If that is not enough then the ancestry of Babur is to blame. In other words we are back to square one in politics. The civic sense that economic growth and material development has grossly bypassed a section of the society and it is needed to correct the imbalance is thrown to the wind. Without this civic sense we would rather fight our own battle on terrorism and other nemeses besieging us is the new mantra of the neoconservatives amongst us paralleling the distant American cousins.
That different political parties have fought their own wars in the name of fighting terrorism does not require any rephrasing of the fact. Chief Minister Narender Modi of Gujarat even did away the fig leaf of what Muslims leaders in 1980s described the political parties vis-à-vis Muslims: running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Since the 1980s the lot of the Muslims has plummeted even further. Democracy has inbuilt mechanism to correct the imbalance. But those who come to occupy the house want to leave out those who helped in securing the house. This is the underlying stratagem of Modi’s electoral campaign. “Tribals should oppose religion based representations for Muslims. By extending reservations to converts, the central government wants to encourage conversions and harm the constitutional rights of tribals and dalits. The centre is playing a dangerous game by providing religion-based reservations to the minority community.” So the tribals and dalits can have constitutional rights and Muslims cannot. This insidious way of campaigning has paid him rich dividends in the past. But the first time when he did it in December 2002 he had hijacked the state of Gujarat after the state sponsored pogroms. During that period the funds raised in the United States for relief and development went to organizing of the carnage, recall the pouches of liquor and food distributed to the marauders, who were substantially tribals and dalits.
In such a campaign the greatest victim is not the Muslim community but democracy. The fascists have always lauded the Nazis and Adolph Hitler and want to emulate them in dealing with the minorities. Modi’s speech is the first shot in his attempt in taking on the Congress for the forthcoming election in the state on the issue of the minority. He is making it out that Congress is taking the morsel from the mouth of the tribals and dalits and giving it to the Muslim. Here is the Slobodan Milosevic in another version.
Election round the corner, each political party begins to put its acts together. The Congress being the oldest knows the art very well. It has done and will do much to woo the minorities. Because it also conveniently neglects its promises once the polls are over. However having set up a commission to ascertain the backwardness of Muslims it is caught in a cleft. The proposal for another commission for equal opportunity is touted. It is too early to dismiss it as eyewash. But much would depend how the minority becomes alert and well informed and organized in its endeavour to achieve what are long over due demands.
The Gujarat Chief Minister calls himself brother of the tribals and has a Van Bandhu package worth Rs 15, 000 crore. Mark it, it is ready cash to be spent on the instant. As compared to jingle sound of the money is the hollow sound of the promises and guidelines of the minister who did not have a seating arrangement for himself. Muslims never had 1000 crore sanctioned to them since India won freedom. However 15 point package is there for them from Antulay. The gerrymandering he has advocated for Muslims is nothing new. The scheduled castes and tribes have enjoyed it for long. The rearrangement of a constituency to favour the dalits and tribals has been an anomaly in a place like Malegaon. The Muslims constitute majority but for 60 years they could not elect any member of their own community to voice their concern in parliament. Other such pockets are also there. Antulay has recommended removing the anomaly through nomination. Modi has cash in his pocket. Three types of scholarships and remedial coaching and tuition are bureaucratic hurdles which would go to some extent in improvement if really implemented. Modernizing madrasa is reigning passion of Musharraf and Mohan Singh alike. Wakf property can be sold for a bribe: the Muslim minister in charge of the department is only obligingly waiting for the highest bidder. These are the fifteen points of janab Antulay and every cat has nine lives.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Muslim Uneasiness over Investigation into Terrorism
Posted on September 2, 2007
There has been talk of Islam and terrorism making rounds in the world since even before 9/11. However the frequency of allegation has registered
sharp increase in recent years. Paralleling this is the unbelievably strong resistance of Muslims in India that the investigative agencies have not professionally done anything that is cogent(except, of course, Bombay serial bomb blasts 1993). As a result the sense of being suspected and targeted is excruciating. Come September 8, it would be one full year for the shabe ba rat explosions in Malegaon which killed more than 40 people and injured around three hundred mostly children, beggars and elderly.
Why is there reluctance among the members of the Muslim community to have any faith in the police and crime detection agencies of the government? Soon after bomb explosions in Malegaon the people roughed up a senior police officer, unturned a police jeep, had a running battle with the police around an adjoining police station, familiar site for other such confrontation in the past. This was going on within minutes of the blasts almost like what the square and streets around Mecca mosque and Charminar witnessed on May 18, 2007. Is it only emotional outburst and unwieldy nature or anything else that irks the people?
Blaming the terrorists or agents provocateur from across the border has become part of the regimen. But there was a startlingly new element injected in the scene. Muslims were told that it could be a section of their own people responsible behind the blasts in the old cemetery and Mushawart chowk. That too the sections were named: wahabis, tablighi jamat and other purists who did not countenance the age old vigil and visit to the graves. This strange thought spread from the columns in the newspapers from outside even before all the killed were properly buried. Till that day no one in the town had even thought in the wildest fancy that it would be so. The angst that the grieved feel is this ascribing to the closely knit community what they refuse to believe. There has never been any acrimony between the sunnis, wahabis or the tablighi jamat. Perplexed by the design which others have discovered there, the people felt betrayed and insulted after being injured in their sensibility. Till today Shafiq Ahmed (father of a-would-be-doctor young son on the way to China but killed in the blasts) has not wavered in his disbelief in the alleged culprits caught by the police. “I told Sonia Gandhi and (Chief Minister) Deshmukh that I was ready to give the government Rs 10 lakh if they caught the real culprits,” he asseverates on the eve of the shabe ba rat that would complete one year of suffering. “The government promised to nab the real culprits in 24 hours. But it has been 12 months and I am still waiting to see the real bombers behind bars.”
A contributing factor is that the police are constructing their charges drawing upon confessions of the police informers or drug addicts. The local people know all too well what figure these shady characters cut in the town. Their condition is so desperate that they would do anything to eke out existence. Informing police is an easy source of ready money. They would stick to the police and felons alike like the leech. The entire case is being built up on the testimony of Abrar Ahmed who has denounced the people of Malegaon publicly through Urdu newspapers. He was reported in the newspapers to have disappeared and then his lawyer brother filed for habeas corpus and that is how this closely ensconced person surfaced. He has also expressed fear of police who hold him. Unless the police give a detailed statement regarding these, the misgivings of the general public would stick. The first person arrested was Nurul Hooda who had already been in police custody around the time of the explosions and was under close police surveillance.
To complicate the already murky atmosphere there appeared on the scene another police informer Sajid Sheikh. He had been working with the Anti Terrorist Squad since September 8,2006. He went on to meet home minister RRPatil and the State Minority Commission Chairperson Naseem Siddiqui. According to Sajid the conspirators had already visited and surveyed the town under the ruse of looking for a girl for marriage. He says that he was forced to tell about the conspiracy when he found that the police were not taking the correct line of investigation. The chief of Mahrashtra ATS Krish Pal Raghuvanshi does not trust him but Chairperson Minority Commission does. The deputy police commissioner of CBI Raman Tyagi is unaware of Sajid.
The police sketches of the two alleged bombers who bought bicycles from Pangrapol shopping complex haunt the people in their sleep. The two did not ride the cycles but walked and pulled them and according to report were in a hurry to reach the destined spot. The police have simply made no headway on this. So the discontent of the local people increases as the plot thickens.
The angst of the grieved father Abdul Waheed(a retired school teacher) in Hyderabad is a counterpoint to Shafiq Ahmed’s. His son Mohammad Shahid saw his younger brother Zahid picked up from their house by police in the case of murder of a BJP leader. He simply walked out on the family and according to his father has never had any contact with the family. The police have given him a new name in addition, Bilal. His mother Hafeeza is hysterical in her insistence that he is Shahid and not Bilal. Waheed feels very deeply about how things are turning out. The move to make terror as treason belies what he says. What if his son is proved a terrorist? "Then don't spare him. We are born here. We are happy to be Indian. We live in this land and we don't want anything done to this land. If he is a terrorist kill him."
Such strong reaction is matched by his wife. Both of them are in agony over the repercussions. The members of the community have had faith in them and so the thought that a son of theirs would cause murder and mayhem has not crossed their path. If their son were otherwise so they would be tragically betraying their own people and what would they account for when they face god on the day of reckoning. That momentous thought is very disturbing to them. Blowing up people at prayer in a mosque as well as in cemetery is unthinkable for a Muslim. Of all the places Mecca mosque is the most cherished and revered spots in the old city of Hyderabad and even in the erstwhile Nizam state territory. The same is true of the cemetery and the mosque in Malegaon. Of all the times the shab be barat is the occasion of piety and prayer which involves each and every Muslim. There is no exemption to anyone on the basis of group identity. Every one is deeply concerned because the future course is shaped by the almighty on that night. The forgiveness of the sins of the dead also can be lessened by prayer and repentance. So the dead and the living are both joined in a union of prayer and forgiveness and hope of a better future for all the members of family and community. Into such piety and sanctity the very thought of terror is out of place.
mustafakhan1948@gmail.com
There has been talk of Islam and terrorism making rounds in the world since even before 9/11. However the frequency of allegation has registered
sharp increase in recent years. Paralleling this is the unbelievably strong resistance of Muslims in India that the investigative agencies have not professionally done anything that is cogent(except, of course, Bombay serial bomb blasts 1993). As a result the sense of being suspected and targeted is excruciating. Come September 8, it would be one full year for the shabe ba rat explosions in Malegaon which killed more than 40 people and injured around three hundred mostly children, beggars and elderly.
Why is there reluctance among the members of the Muslim community to have any faith in the police and crime detection agencies of the government? Soon after bomb explosions in Malegaon the people roughed up a senior police officer, unturned a police jeep, had a running battle with the police around an adjoining police station, familiar site for other such confrontation in the past. This was going on within minutes of the blasts almost like what the square and streets around Mecca mosque and Charminar witnessed on May 18, 2007. Is it only emotional outburst and unwieldy nature or anything else that irks the people?
Blaming the terrorists or agents provocateur from across the border has become part of the regimen. But there was a startlingly new element injected in the scene. Muslims were told that it could be a section of their own people responsible behind the blasts in the old cemetery and Mushawart chowk. That too the sections were named: wahabis, tablighi jamat and other purists who did not countenance the age old vigil and visit to the graves. This strange thought spread from the columns in the newspapers from outside even before all the killed were properly buried. Till that day no one in the town had even thought in the wildest fancy that it would be so. The angst that the grieved feel is this ascribing to the closely knit community what they refuse to believe. There has never been any acrimony between the sunnis, wahabis or the tablighi jamat. Perplexed by the design which others have discovered there, the people felt betrayed and insulted after being injured in their sensibility. Till today Shafiq Ahmed (father of a-would-be-doctor young son on the way to China but killed in the blasts) has not wavered in his disbelief in the alleged culprits caught by the police. “I told Sonia Gandhi and (Chief Minister) Deshmukh that I was ready to give the government Rs 10 lakh if they caught the real culprits,” he asseverates on the eve of the shabe ba rat that would complete one year of suffering. “The government promised to nab the real culprits in 24 hours. But it has been 12 months and I am still waiting to see the real bombers behind bars.”
A contributing factor is that the police are constructing their charges drawing upon confessions of the police informers or drug addicts. The local people know all too well what figure these shady characters cut in the town. Their condition is so desperate that they would do anything to eke out existence. Informing police is an easy source of ready money. They would stick to the police and felons alike like the leech. The entire case is being built up on the testimony of Abrar Ahmed who has denounced the people of Malegaon publicly through Urdu newspapers. He was reported in the newspapers to have disappeared and then his lawyer brother filed for habeas corpus and that is how this closely ensconced person surfaced. He has also expressed fear of police who hold him. Unless the police give a detailed statement regarding these, the misgivings of the general public would stick. The first person arrested was Nurul Hooda who had already been in police custody around the time of the explosions and was under close police surveillance.
To complicate the already murky atmosphere there appeared on the scene another police informer Sajid Sheikh. He had been working with the Anti Terrorist Squad since September 8,2006. He went on to meet home minister RRPatil and the State Minority Commission Chairperson Naseem Siddiqui. According to Sajid the conspirators had already visited and surveyed the town under the ruse of looking for a girl for marriage. He says that he was forced to tell about the conspiracy when he found that the police were not taking the correct line of investigation. The chief of Mahrashtra ATS Krish Pal Raghuvanshi does not trust him but Chairperson Minority Commission does. The deputy police commissioner of CBI Raman Tyagi is unaware of Sajid.
The police sketches of the two alleged bombers who bought bicycles from Pangrapol shopping complex haunt the people in their sleep. The two did not ride the cycles but walked and pulled them and according to report were in a hurry to reach the destined spot. The police have simply made no headway on this. So the discontent of the local people increases as the plot thickens.
The angst of the grieved father Abdul Waheed(a retired school teacher) in Hyderabad is a counterpoint to Shafiq Ahmed’s. His son Mohammad Shahid saw his younger brother Zahid picked up from their house by police in the case of murder of a BJP leader. He simply walked out on the family and according to his father has never had any contact with the family. The police have given him a new name in addition, Bilal. His mother Hafeeza is hysterical in her insistence that he is Shahid and not Bilal. Waheed feels very deeply about how things are turning out. The move to make terror as treason belies what he says. What if his son is proved a terrorist? "Then don't spare him. We are born here. We are happy to be Indian. We live in this land and we don't want anything done to this land. If he is a terrorist kill him."
Such strong reaction is matched by his wife. Both of them are in agony over the repercussions. The members of the community have had faith in them and so the thought that a son of theirs would cause murder and mayhem has not crossed their path. If their son were otherwise so they would be tragically betraying their own people and what would they account for when they face god on the day of reckoning. That momentous thought is very disturbing to them. Blowing up people at prayer in a mosque as well as in cemetery is unthinkable for a Muslim. Of all the places Mecca mosque is the most cherished and revered spots in the old city of Hyderabad and even in the erstwhile Nizam state territory. The same is true of the cemetery and the mosque in Malegaon. Of all the times the shab be barat is the occasion of piety and prayer which involves each and every Muslim. There is no exemption to anyone on the basis of group identity. Every one is deeply concerned because the future course is shaped by the almighty on that night. The forgiveness of the sins of the dead also can be lessened by prayer and repentance. So the dead and the living are both joined in a union of prayer and forgiveness and hope of a better future for all the members of family and community. Into such piety and sanctity the very thought of terror is out of place.
mustafakhan1948@gmail.com
Hyderbad bombings:a national tragedy
The two bombing incidents of May 18, 2007 and August 25, 2007 in Hyderabad show the fury with which the city has been subjected to suffering. In the case of the Mecca mosque the young boy lying on his side with left hand folded under head seems to be sleeping innocently except the gory hole in the head and pool of blood under head instead of a pillow. The young well dressed gentleman lying between the rows of plastic chairs in Lumbini amusement park is seemingly oversleeping after having slid from the chair when everyone left the stadium except the blood soaked debris. Death and destruction is common to both. What is not common is the violent protest against the police of the first incident leading to police firing and more casualties. Moreover the first attack was specifically clear in targeting a community exclusively on the basis of religion. Friday mid day prayer was more tempting time than other times of prayer on the same or other days of the week. But in the second the target is obviously not of the same clear focus. A chat bhandar or eatery and an amusement park are familiar places for all communities. This is all the more convincing since that Saturday was not a religious festival day. Saturday evening and night are also more relaxed times for educated and employed to go out and eat and enjoy with family. The weekend and Friday midday prayer are occasions of crowding and rush time.
However a look at the dead reveals that the recent bombing is sweeping in target. It is more or less all-India in its comprehension. Could that be a signal? From Saki Naka Mumbai to Tamil Nadu in the south, Haryana in the north and Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand in the east, to Rajkot in the north west, you have the whole country metaphorically bombed. This must lead to a resurgence of nationalist feeling of the pre independent India of Gandhi, Nehru and Azad rather than of today that is exclusionary, polarizing, and self seeking. There is a cacophony and chorus of responses and analyses that hardly contribute to strength and unity.
The suffering of the mother of Baja Srilekha (18) for the death of her daughter or grief etched contours of the face of the father of Irshad Ahmed Abdul Gani (19) is Indian. This calls for a nationalist response that among other things sets the house in order first and then helps us to know where we have come and why and the remedy.
Given this commonality as well as disparity of situation what could be the common or otherwise motive, hidden agenda and who the perpetrators of the heinous crime?
There is hardly any terror strike in India which does not come with the immediate blame on the ISI in tandem. It is has become so quotidian that the foreign spokesperson of a neighbouring country has acquired the chic in asking us to investigate and not speculate! And another neighbour has the cheek to show boredom of denying over and over again the same accusation from our side. Such denials of every accusation have changed into standard formal automatic responses. Of course, on both the sides.
Next we need to introspect about formulating what could be the aim of the perpetrators. Equally true is ubiquity of the same aim of explosion: dividing the people on communal lines. However we have reached a point when religion must cease to make us look at the ghastly tragedy taking place around us from this angle. If at all there are religious factors we must take them purely in terms of rationality and humanity. If it is political Islam it is just realpolitik and not Islam. If it is Hindutuva then it is not Hinduism. In the tragedy of Hyderabad as well as around the country there have been practically no communal riots as an outcome of the explosions. Sometimes protesters have damaged shops and suspected people of a community. But by and large there has been no communal riot or carnage following on the heels of terror strikes. Therefore there is need to not upfront the communal divide as the primary motivating factor. Other reasons must be probed. India has 10 % growth rate and the US is wooing it for reasons not fully spelled including as a checkmate against China. An unknown factor can come up.
Terror itself does not discriminate its victims, between Irshad Ahmed Abdul Gani from Saki naka of Mumbai or Sachin Dattatrya Bhinor from Ahmednager.
The victims were from diverse fields of disciplines with which their youthful hearts were filled to make a name in the world and serve the country. Among them were the seven students from Mahrashtra, several of them from Nashik itself and three professors. A boy called Milind Mandage was the son of a school teacher from Pimpri Gawali village in Parner in Maharashtra and wanted to sail in the world on ambition powered by mathematics in which he excelled. Sujeet Kumar Jha (19) from Laheriasarai in Bihar’s Darbhanga was pursuing his ambition in electronics which his father supported from a loan. There were 18 engineers from Jabalpur, Kota and Bhopal sent to Hyderabad. From this group M K Jain and Ibrahim Khan died in the park. Both were under training in driving train engines using microprocessor-based speedometers for diesel locomotives. Another victim was from Orissa’s Berhampur Dr K V Ananda Rao who was pursuing super-specialisation in medical oncology at the NIMS in Hyderabad. Irshad was a student of engineering and was hopeful of doing MBA to rise in the world. Kiran Choudhary is of course the young gentleman man we have pictured in the first paragraph as oversleeping. He was also an engineer; a Maharashtrian from Kalyan. Saurabh Kumar of Samsatipur in Bihar was studying computer science in Symbiosis of Poona. Vallabh Fefar was a dealer in mattresses and was prospering in business when the mattress company sent him on Hyderbad tour as incentive. He took his family with him. He died and his son seriously injured. He was from Rajkot, Gujarat. Terrorism could not have been so selective in its target!
While the victims were from all the corners of the country, the perpetrators though not identified as yet remain a miniscule non representative entity. Even so the make of the bombs of May and August show clear differences. That may even help in identification, mode of assembly, motive and the brain behind. At the face of it we may think of
Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami (HuJI) or the JeM but the difficulty is to prove that Abdul Sahil Mohammad based in Karachi or Hamza could use RDX in the mosque and then shift to ordinary Neogel 90 and ammonium nitrate manufactured in Nagpur. Such far fetched argument that the people hang posters of Musharraf and Osama bin Laden in their houses in Hyderbad therefore they are suspect is ridiculous. Because between these two men stands the Lal masjid. Or should we do Sherlock Holmes detection of the portrait of martyred imam of the red mosque taking the place of Musharraf? (Don’t be surprised by the syllogism, it is from an additional secretary of the central government who was also with the RAW, the Kaoboy.) Howsoever ridiculous any argument, it must also be examined. Even the vicinity of Hyderabad to Nanded where crackers exploded worse than bombs should not be far fetched.
Events have a strange way of unfolding and much stranger way of being reported. On February 27, 1933 the German paratroopers under Nazi leader Herman Goring had helped a man from Holland Marinus van der Lubbe burn the Reichstag (the German parliament). Adolf Hitler became angry and went to the office of the newspaper Volkischer Beobachter and worked the whole night with editor Goebbels They concocted a story blaming the communists. As a result 4000 communists lost their lives. What followed was the very holocaust. We in India have had enough of our own and must establish the truth to save the nation.
However a look at the dead reveals that the recent bombing is sweeping in target. It is more or less all-India in its comprehension. Could that be a signal? From Saki Naka Mumbai to Tamil Nadu in the south, Haryana in the north and Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand in the east, to Rajkot in the north west, you have the whole country metaphorically bombed. This must lead to a resurgence of nationalist feeling of the pre independent India of Gandhi, Nehru and Azad rather than of today that is exclusionary, polarizing, and self seeking. There is a cacophony and chorus of responses and analyses that hardly contribute to strength and unity.
The suffering of the mother of Baja Srilekha (18) for the death of her daughter or grief etched contours of the face of the father of Irshad Ahmed Abdul Gani (19) is Indian. This calls for a nationalist response that among other things sets the house in order first and then helps us to know where we have come and why and the remedy.
Given this commonality as well as disparity of situation what could be the common or otherwise motive, hidden agenda and who the perpetrators of the heinous crime?
There is hardly any terror strike in India which does not come with the immediate blame on the ISI in tandem. It is has become so quotidian that the foreign spokesperson of a neighbouring country has acquired the chic in asking us to investigate and not speculate! And another neighbour has the cheek to show boredom of denying over and over again the same accusation from our side. Such denials of every accusation have changed into standard formal automatic responses. Of course, on both the sides.
Next we need to introspect about formulating what could be the aim of the perpetrators. Equally true is ubiquity of the same aim of explosion: dividing the people on communal lines. However we have reached a point when religion must cease to make us look at the ghastly tragedy taking place around us from this angle. If at all there are religious factors we must take them purely in terms of rationality and humanity. If it is political Islam it is just realpolitik and not Islam. If it is Hindutuva then it is not Hinduism. In the tragedy of Hyderabad as well as around the country there have been practically no communal riots as an outcome of the explosions. Sometimes protesters have damaged shops and suspected people of a community. But by and large there has been no communal riot or carnage following on the heels of terror strikes. Therefore there is need to not upfront the communal divide as the primary motivating factor. Other reasons must be probed. India has 10 % growth rate and the US is wooing it for reasons not fully spelled including as a checkmate against China. An unknown factor can come up.
Terror itself does not discriminate its victims, between Irshad Ahmed Abdul Gani from Saki naka of Mumbai or Sachin Dattatrya Bhinor from Ahmednager.
The victims were from diverse fields of disciplines with which their youthful hearts were filled to make a name in the world and serve the country. Among them were the seven students from Mahrashtra, several of them from Nashik itself and three professors. A boy called Milind Mandage was the son of a school teacher from Pimpri Gawali village in Parner in Maharashtra and wanted to sail in the world on ambition powered by mathematics in which he excelled. Sujeet Kumar Jha (19) from Laheriasarai in Bihar’s Darbhanga was pursuing his ambition in electronics which his father supported from a loan. There were 18 engineers from Jabalpur, Kota and Bhopal sent to Hyderabad. From this group M K Jain and Ibrahim Khan died in the park. Both were under training in driving train engines using microprocessor-based speedometers for diesel locomotives. Another victim was from Orissa’s Berhampur Dr K V Ananda Rao who was pursuing super-specialisation in medical oncology at the NIMS in Hyderabad. Irshad was a student of engineering and was hopeful of doing MBA to rise in the world. Kiran Choudhary is of course the young gentleman man we have pictured in the first paragraph as oversleeping. He was also an engineer; a Maharashtrian from Kalyan. Saurabh Kumar of Samsatipur in Bihar was studying computer science in Symbiosis of Poona. Vallabh Fefar was a dealer in mattresses and was prospering in business when the mattress company sent him on Hyderbad tour as incentive. He took his family with him. He died and his son seriously injured. He was from Rajkot, Gujarat. Terrorism could not have been so selective in its target!
While the victims were from all the corners of the country, the perpetrators though not identified as yet remain a miniscule non representative entity. Even so the make of the bombs of May and August show clear differences. That may even help in identification, mode of assembly, motive and the brain behind. At the face of it we may think of
Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami (HuJI) or the JeM but the difficulty is to prove that Abdul Sahil Mohammad based in Karachi or Hamza could use RDX in the mosque and then shift to ordinary Neogel 90 and ammonium nitrate manufactured in Nagpur. Such far fetched argument that the people hang posters of Musharraf and Osama bin Laden in their houses in Hyderbad therefore they are suspect is ridiculous. Because between these two men stands the Lal masjid. Or should we do Sherlock Holmes detection of the portrait of martyred imam of the red mosque taking the place of Musharraf? (Don’t be surprised by the syllogism, it is from an additional secretary of the central government who was also with the RAW, the Kaoboy.) Howsoever ridiculous any argument, it must also be examined. Even the vicinity of Hyderabad to Nanded where crackers exploded worse than bombs should not be far fetched.
Events have a strange way of unfolding and much stranger way of being reported. On February 27, 1933 the German paratroopers under Nazi leader Herman Goring had helped a man from Holland Marinus van der Lubbe burn the Reichstag (the German parliament). Adolf Hitler became angry and went to the office of the newspaper Volkischer Beobachter and worked the whole night with editor Goebbels They concocted a story blaming the communists. As a result 4000 communists lost their lives. What followed was the very holocaust. We in India have had enough of our own and must establish the truth to save the nation.
Monday, August 20, 2007
The Time is out of Joint
Reading the signs of the time one would be struck by the furor over nuclear proliferation deal and the two protests mounted by Shiv Sainiks.
George Fernandes and Bal Thackeray have had close association since their nascent political career in the erstwhile Bombay. Fernandes was a leader of workers’ union and Thackeray started drawing cartoons and then abandoning the art of caricaturing and donning the mask of the politician became grim with sordid matters of politics. Both had their origin in protests they organized and called bandhs which among other things paralyzed the financial heart of India. They were the tiger and lion of the concrete jungle of the metropolis. The Congress party tried to tame one and frequently used him to secure its own interest. But the innate ferocious nature of his came to dominate when his party mauled the tamer and came to power. He godfathered Bombay into today’s Mumbai as he roared again and again. Shiv Sena whittled the power of protests and strikes of railway workers unions as well as that of Datta Samant. George Fernandes’ hold weakened as he moved to the national politics and chose other constituencies. Shive Sena remained very much in Mumbai and Mahrashtra riveted like the limpet from the rock under the sea near Bandra.
The political discourse of the two is far from being sober. Thackeray has been fined rupees 500 for not appearing in court for a case against him filed by Munna Tripathi, a member of NCP, for his derogatory remarks about the Muslims made during 2006. There is also no sign that he would leave his rabble rousing track of humiliating the minority by unsolicited slurs heaping on their heads. Examples are galore. The track record of Fernandes since the labour unions picketing days and the Baroda conspiracy is different in form but not in substance. His roundly condemned remarks about the rape and murder of Muslim women in Gujarat pogroms as nothing new to India speaks volumes about the brazen politician ever more eager for a post of power and being ready to be in the limelight. How and with whom he hobnobs does not matter as long as he garners votes.
Of all the Independence Days, this sixtieth would be recorded for grim perturbation. Outlook Magazine caricatured Thackeray wearing military uniform of the Nazi Gestapo as Hitler and placed him in the list of villains of India like Dawood Ibrahim, et al. That I Day issue outraged the Shiv Sainiks so much that they ransacked the 10th floor office of the magazine at Nariman Point. They broke the glass frames and dashed office machines repeatedly on the floor. They demanded from the lower level staff about their seniors who were not there. Had they been there the hurricane Dean would have been more ravaging. But on the eve of the Independence Day they burnt the copies of the magazine elsewhere. Thackeray relishes passing slur on a whole community, nevertheless no one dare pay him in the same coin.. His paratroopers would naturally see to that.
As if the paratroopers were waiting for the I Day to pass, they started jail bharo agitation in Navi Mumbai on August 16. The farmers were allegedly protesting against the land acquisition of Reliance company under the SEZ. The protestors led by Manohar Joshi damaged 200 vehicles and injured dozens of people. Granting land under SEZ belongs to the revenue department of Narayan Rane currently the prime bete noir of Shiv Sena. In embarrassing him they were settling old score with him. Mumbai had seen settling old score of another type. The agitation was well organized for the police confiscated 20 vehicles from one quarry where the protesters had come in them.
Another government agreement was creating lot of fissure. This time it was the Manmohan Singh government’s ongoing negotiation for an agreement on Nuke Deal with the US. The Left, BJP and former Defence Minister George Fernandes oppose it for their different ideological reasons. But where the comrades and the saffron adherents were restrained, the radical in Fernandes came to the fore. He spoke intemperately and later put it in a written statement. “The Americans chose to make a monkey of our prime minister by using the 60 birthday of India to spill the beans and the deals. The Parliament is the place for debate but irate Fernandes said: “This is no subject for a debate. What has emerged is that the prime minister of the country has betrayed the nation by continuous bluffing, something unbecoming of the head of the government. If it were the United States, their House would have thrown out and disgraced the president if he had acted as Manmohan Singh. If it were China they would have settle it with one bullet in his head.” Suddenly the man who led India so successfully to the globalized economy and more than 8% growth rate found himself as the enemy of the people like Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. Fernandes directly accuses Dr Manmohan Singh: “No. MR Primme Minister, you have taken the country to the precipice when the nation’s security is concerned.” In other words George Fernandes wants nothing less than the head of the Prime Minister.
What defence could Singh make except reminding the noble service he did to the nation, his lion’s share in opening our market and globalizing our economy? As did Coriolanus:
If you have writ your annals rue, it is there,
That like an eagle in a dove-cote, I
Fluttered your Volscians in Corioli:
Alone I did it.
The historian who would write of these times would mention with puzzle that there was gross representation of facts even after right to information came into effect. Bal Thackeray said that President APJ Abdul Kalam fell from his eyes when he dithered with the death sentence of Afzal Guru. As if that were not enough he indulged in innuendo about who essentially the was. Let alone remorse over this kind of political discourse, many like him do not think it as a slur. This was just before the presidential election. After Kalam left office the home ministry says that the papers on Afzal Guru were not even sent to the president!
George Fernandes and Bal Thackeray have had close association since their nascent political career in the erstwhile Bombay. Fernandes was a leader of workers’ union and Thackeray started drawing cartoons and then abandoning the art of caricaturing and donning the mask of the politician became grim with sordid matters of politics. Both had their origin in protests they organized and called bandhs which among other things paralyzed the financial heart of India. They were the tiger and lion of the concrete jungle of the metropolis. The Congress party tried to tame one and frequently used him to secure its own interest. But the innate ferocious nature of his came to dominate when his party mauled the tamer and came to power. He godfathered Bombay into today’s Mumbai as he roared again and again. Shiv Sena whittled the power of protests and strikes of railway workers unions as well as that of Datta Samant. George Fernandes’ hold weakened as he moved to the national politics and chose other constituencies. Shive Sena remained very much in Mumbai and Mahrashtra riveted like the limpet from the rock under the sea near Bandra.
The political discourse of the two is far from being sober. Thackeray has been fined rupees 500 for not appearing in court for a case against him filed by Munna Tripathi, a member of NCP, for his derogatory remarks about the Muslims made during 2006. There is also no sign that he would leave his rabble rousing track of humiliating the minority by unsolicited slurs heaping on their heads. Examples are galore. The track record of Fernandes since the labour unions picketing days and the Baroda conspiracy is different in form but not in substance. His roundly condemned remarks about the rape and murder of Muslim women in Gujarat pogroms as nothing new to India speaks volumes about the brazen politician ever more eager for a post of power and being ready to be in the limelight. How and with whom he hobnobs does not matter as long as he garners votes.
Of all the Independence Days, this sixtieth would be recorded for grim perturbation. Outlook Magazine caricatured Thackeray wearing military uniform of the Nazi Gestapo as Hitler and placed him in the list of villains of India like Dawood Ibrahim, et al. That I Day issue outraged the Shiv Sainiks so much that they ransacked the 10th floor office of the magazine at Nariman Point. They broke the glass frames and dashed office machines repeatedly on the floor. They demanded from the lower level staff about their seniors who were not there. Had they been there the hurricane Dean would have been more ravaging. But on the eve of the Independence Day they burnt the copies of the magazine elsewhere. Thackeray relishes passing slur on a whole community, nevertheless no one dare pay him in the same coin.. His paratroopers would naturally see to that.
As if the paratroopers were waiting for the I Day to pass, they started jail bharo agitation in Navi Mumbai on August 16. The farmers were allegedly protesting against the land acquisition of Reliance company under the SEZ. The protestors led by Manohar Joshi damaged 200 vehicles and injured dozens of people. Granting land under SEZ belongs to the revenue department of Narayan Rane currently the prime bete noir of Shiv Sena. In embarrassing him they were settling old score with him. Mumbai had seen settling old score of another type. The agitation was well organized for the police confiscated 20 vehicles from one quarry where the protesters had come in them.
Another government agreement was creating lot of fissure. This time it was the Manmohan Singh government’s ongoing negotiation for an agreement on Nuke Deal with the US. The Left, BJP and former Defence Minister George Fernandes oppose it for their different ideological reasons. But where the comrades and the saffron adherents were restrained, the radical in Fernandes came to the fore. He spoke intemperately and later put it in a written statement. “The Americans chose to make a monkey of our prime minister by using the 60 birthday of India to spill the beans and the deals. The Parliament is the place for debate but irate Fernandes said: “This is no subject for a debate. What has emerged is that the prime minister of the country has betrayed the nation by continuous bluffing, something unbecoming of the head of the government. If it were the United States, their House would have thrown out and disgraced the president if he had acted as Manmohan Singh. If it were China they would have settle it with one bullet in his head.” Suddenly the man who led India so successfully to the globalized economy and more than 8% growth rate found himself as the enemy of the people like Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. Fernandes directly accuses Dr Manmohan Singh: “No. MR Primme Minister, you have taken the country to the precipice when the nation’s security is concerned.” In other words George Fernandes wants nothing less than the head of the Prime Minister.
What defence could Singh make except reminding the noble service he did to the nation, his lion’s share in opening our market and globalizing our economy? As did Coriolanus:
If you have writ your annals rue, it is there,
That like an eagle in a dove-cote, I
Fluttered your Volscians in Corioli:
Alone I did it.
The historian who would write of these times would mention with puzzle that there was gross representation of facts even after right to information came into effect. Bal Thackeray said that President APJ Abdul Kalam fell from his eyes when he dithered with the death sentence of Afzal Guru. As if that were not enough he indulged in innuendo about who essentially the was. Let alone remorse over this kind of political discourse, many like him do not think it as a slur. This was just before the presidential election. After Kalam left office the home ministry says that the papers on Afzal Guru were not even sent to the president!
Reforming the police for better handling of communal riots
There are several aspects of communal riots which call for serious attention. Identifying the political affiliation of the rioters will give help in dealing with the situation better. When rioters have been and are also frequent protesters in the street the political association will tell the police their type of goondaism. This will be useful in-feeding as the police can be readied to deal with what size and intensity of protest or rioting, weaponry, methods, political pressure, political patronage, retaliatory techniques they would bring to a disturbed situation.. For example dealing with Narmada Bachao Andolan activists, or SIMI protesters, or Shiv Sainiks, or Congress workers, or CPI workers calls for different strategies in controlling the riot or protest. The police tackle a rag tag protester very harshly, may be because he comes from a party which seems to have exhausted all its steam. However, a well dressed businessman instantly leaving his executive position in a commercial complex to lead a mob often makes a different impact in a charged situation involving communal riot. The rag tag person will not get any personal protection of his group but the businessman has a cordon of supporters readily thrown around him daunting the police more because of their social and political standing and colouring. A protest for a civil cause and another with communal potential are of different nature though at times unpredictable in consequences.
Repeated appearance of protesters and rioters on police radar screen must fetch them an epithet. Their unruly riotous behaviour deserves the description of communal goondas. Their position in their community or commercial establishment may be august or mediocre but before the law enforcement authorities they are communal goondas and must be booked under IPC 153 sections A and B as well. Their background record must enter in every fresh investigation. The laxity of police in taking cognizance of this factor makes some of them heroes rather than the villains they are.
It was Justice Srikrishna who used the words communal goondas based on the Communal Riot Scheme 1986 and “Guidelines.” He was dealing with the investigation of the communal riots of 1992-93 but the name is useful for other communal riots of the past and also of the present and for the ones we fear would come. The police commissioner of Bombay said in his statement to the Srikrishna commission that the political affiliation of the alleged rioter is unimportant because it does not result in greater or lesser punishment if convicted. Commissioner Bapat was otherwise replying tongue in cheek. The affiliation was and is and will be important. Political affiliation should be made descriptive sensitive in handling ground reality.
Justice BN Srikrishna observes in this regard: “It is true that the political or other affiliation of an accused does not alter the quantum of punishment to be imposed on him in case he is found guilty. It certainly identifies and tags him so that the next time an opportunity arises for preventive or detective action, the police can easily zero in on the tagged accused as well as his associates from the identified communal organization.”
When does a representative of the people become a communal goonda? Some of the above ideas may sound strange. However, they are no stranger than the police station in the neibourhood of houses of law abiding respectable people. The greatest crowd puller in curfew and riot affected area is the local municipal member, MLA or MP or just a political leader. He it is who turns facts into fiction and fiction into facts. He it is who is well connected to the police station. He it is who sees that the obliging cops are aware that they are there at his sufferance. He it is who can get you out of there and vice versa. He it is who enlarges the revenue of the spoils of office, his own and of the police station incharge. What he does is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone who is in need of getting a felon out of trouble must go to him.
Justice Srikrishna does not directly call the public representative as a communal goonda. He makes it in the context of detestable work the representative does during riots. “While it may be legitimate for ministers and elected representatives of public to tour their constituencies or area under their charge for effective supervision of riot control and rehabilitation measures, they should be strictly prohibited from visiting police stations and interfering with policing including searches, seizures and combing. Visits to police stations while the riot is in progress and their questioning the officers in–charge about arrests and insisting upon interviews with the arrested persons is highly demoralizing and amounts to interference in the work of police. Communal goondas and mischievous elements get vocal representation inside the police station which interrogates and arraigns the arresting officer, as if he is on trial.”
The visit of the communal goonda to a police station is like striking a match in the driver’s cabin of a leaking tanker which has profusely passed out petrol all around within the cabin as well around the high way. “It is true that the policeman is a constituent of society and cannot avoid being impressed by the communal influences in the society in which he lives. While communal thinking in an ordinary citizen, however objectionable, may not produce immediately visible pernicious results, communalisation of a policeman has that effect. It is, therefore, necessary to exorcise the police force of this evil and to inoculate it against it.”
The interference of the communal goonda is quite catastrophic. It is time consuming when every minute is very precious for registering the crime, controlling a fast changing situation from turning worse. The ongoing administrative action of the police is directly subverted to exacerbating the communal tension and increasing chances of more bloodshed and enmity. A very difficult and almost insurmountable outcome is shoddy registering of crimes, the result of the machination of the communal goondas. In an interview Justice Srikrishna said on this aspect of investigation: “If the police does some fair documenting that serves as a useful tool, and can be taken as the authentic account of what has happened. But if the protector himself is biased, then it becomes very difficult. You have to go for other witness. Now if a police document says X, but witnesses all say Y, and I know X is a doctored document it becomes a difficult choice for me. When all the way from the CM to a police constable, there is heavy bias.”
The Summary A cases are the nagging consequences of police being swayed away by interference of the communal goondas. There are 1,371 such cases which are “true but undetected.” The Shive Sena/BJP government appointed a committee under chairmanship the director general of police to scrutinize the cases. It scrutinized all and decided to reinvestigate 112 cases and filed charge sheet in 8. The government of Congress and NC constituted a Special Task Force which reinvestigated only 15 cases and added fresh 8 cases.
How difficult is the task of cleaning the Augean stables of the police! The arduous work of Srikrishna spread to five years during which he could have judged 20,000 cases must not go in vain if we want our police to improve.
Repeated appearance of protesters and rioters on police radar screen must fetch them an epithet. Their unruly riotous behaviour deserves the description of communal goondas. Their position in their community or commercial establishment may be august or mediocre but before the law enforcement authorities they are communal goondas and must be booked under IPC 153 sections A and B as well. Their background record must enter in every fresh investigation. The laxity of police in taking cognizance of this factor makes some of them heroes rather than the villains they are.
It was Justice Srikrishna who used the words communal goondas based on the Communal Riot Scheme 1986 and “Guidelines.” He was dealing with the investigation of the communal riots of 1992-93 but the name is useful for other communal riots of the past and also of the present and for the ones we fear would come. The police commissioner of Bombay said in his statement to the Srikrishna commission that the political affiliation of the alleged rioter is unimportant because it does not result in greater or lesser punishment if convicted. Commissioner Bapat was otherwise replying tongue in cheek. The affiliation was and is and will be important. Political affiliation should be made descriptive sensitive in handling ground reality.
Justice BN Srikrishna observes in this regard: “It is true that the political or other affiliation of an accused does not alter the quantum of punishment to be imposed on him in case he is found guilty. It certainly identifies and tags him so that the next time an opportunity arises for preventive or detective action, the police can easily zero in on the tagged accused as well as his associates from the identified communal organization.”
When does a representative of the people become a communal goonda? Some of the above ideas may sound strange. However, they are no stranger than the police station in the neibourhood of houses of law abiding respectable people. The greatest crowd puller in curfew and riot affected area is the local municipal member, MLA or MP or just a political leader. He it is who turns facts into fiction and fiction into facts. He it is who is well connected to the police station. He it is who sees that the obliging cops are aware that they are there at his sufferance. He it is who can get you out of there and vice versa. He it is who enlarges the revenue of the spoils of office, his own and of the police station incharge. What he does is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone who is in need of getting a felon out of trouble must go to him.
Justice Srikrishna does not directly call the public representative as a communal goonda. He makes it in the context of detestable work the representative does during riots. “While it may be legitimate for ministers and elected representatives of public to tour their constituencies or area under their charge for effective supervision of riot control and rehabilitation measures, they should be strictly prohibited from visiting police stations and interfering with policing including searches, seizures and combing. Visits to police stations while the riot is in progress and their questioning the officers in–charge about arrests and insisting upon interviews with the arrested persons is highly demoralizing and amounts to interference in the work of police. Communal goondas and mischievous elements get vocal representation inside the police station which interrogates and arraigns the arresting officer, as if he is on trial.”
The visit of the communal goonda to a police station is like striking a match in the driver’s cabin of a leaking tanker which has profusely passed out petrol all around within the cabin as well around the high way. “It is true that the policeman is a constituent of society and cannot avoid being impressed by the communal influences in the society in which he lives. While communal thinking in an ordinary citizen, however objectionable, may not produce immediately visible pernicious results, communalisation of a policeman has that effect. It is, therefore, necessary to exorcise the police force of this evil and to inoculate it against it.”
The interference of the communal goonda is quite catastrophic. It is time consuming when every minute is very precious for registering the crime, controlling a fast changing situation from turning worse. The ongoing administrative action of the police is directly subverted to exacerbating the communal tension and increasing chances of more bloodshed and enmity. A very difficult and almost insurmountable outcome is shoddy registering of crimes, the result of the machination of the communal goondas. In an interview Justice Srikrishna said on this aspect of investigation: “If the police does some fair documenting that serves as a useful tool, and can be taken as the authentic account of what has happened. But if the protector himself is biased, then it becomes very difficult. You have to go for other witness. Now if a police document says X, but witnesses all say Y, and I know X is a doctored document it becomes a difficult choice for me. When all the way from the CM to a police constable, there is heavy bias.”
The Summary A cases are the nagging consequences of police being swayed away by interference of the communal goondas. There are 1,371 such cases which are “true but undetected.” The Shive Sena/BJP government appointed a committee under chairmanship the director general of police to scrutinize the cases. It scrutinized all and decided to reinvestigate 112 cases and filed charge sheet in 8. The government of Congress and NC constituted a Special Task Force which reinvestigated only 15 cases and added fresh 8 cases.
How difficult is the task of cleaning the Augean stables of the police! The arduous work of Srikrishna spread to five years during which he could have judged 20,000 cases must not go in vain if we want our police to improve.
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