Indian News channels are a security hazard?

Instead of questioning the narrative, news television and some print outlets have instead blatantly beaten the drums of confrontation, hyping even relatively calm statements by the army chief into belligerent displays of national machismo. Coming at a time when the government is attempting to move forward on dialogue with Pakistan that is very much in the national interest, the question should be asked: are some of India’s news channels, and their pursuit of eyeballs, turning into a national security hazard?

A handful of bellicose television supremos cannot be allowed to dictate a foreign policy that hurts the interest of India’s citizens.

Editorial in Business Standard. Here

Jamaat-e-Islami Hind to produce films and TV serials

The Kerala unit of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind is getting into production of commercial films and serials, which will be telecast on its new venture, Mediaone TV. The Malayalam-language news and entertainment satellite channel is to go on air next month.

This is the first time a state unit of the Jamaat-e-Islami is venturing into visual media. Incidentally, Jamaat mouthpiece Madhayamam itself does not publish film advertisements, a policy it has followed since its launch 25 years ago.

The channel would be floated by the Kozhikode-based Madhyamam Broadcasting Corporation. A tie-up has already been worked out with Al Jazeera.

Jamaat’s ‘assistant amir (Kerala)’ Sheikh Mohammed Karakunnu, an Islamic scholar, said Mediaone would follow the same principles practised by Madhyamam. “Like the daily, the TV channel will give due space to issues of minorities, Dalits and the marginalised. The TV channel will also have regulations on accepting advertisements, (and on) content of the programmes,” he said.

Karakunnu confirmed that Mediaone would also produce its own films apart from sourcing films from outside. “Work on a film has begun,” he said.

Mediaone group editor O Abdurahiman said their aim was to give voice to the voiceless. “We want to develop an alternative media culture as our daily has done. Mediaone TV has entered into a tie-up with Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera, mainly for sharing content on world affairs. The channel would be hived into news and entertainment after six months.”

Noting that the bar on film advertisement in Madhyamam had no link with Mediaone airing films, Abdurahiman pointed out that the Jamaat mouthpiece didn’t skirt film news either. “Our daily gives film reviews and covers film festivals exhaustively,” he said.

Among the film proposals the channel is considering, Abdurahiman said, was one based on the life of Kunhali Marakkar, a local king’s naval chief who had fought against Portuguese invaders after Vasco da Gama’s arrival on the Malabar Coast in the 15th century. The story falls neatly in line with Jamaat’s pet campaign: anti-imperialism.

Writer and social critic Prof N M Karassery said that as it strives for more space in the mainstream, it was but natural for the Jamaat-e-Islami to turn to new media. Films, which could be used for ideological campaigning, were an obvious choice. “The Jamaat is not a mere religious outfit, but a political one in disguise,” he noted.

Karassery, however, added that the move could also backfire on the Jamaat. “I do not think that the channel would make that organisation more liberal, but may expose their anti-women approach and their capitalistic intentions,’’ he said.

Prof Hameed Chendamangaloor, who studies Muslim organisations, too isn’t surprised by the Jamaat’s foray into TV media as it wants to wield more political clout and foster Islamic politics. “No Muslim organisation can stick on to the days when watching TV or enjoying music was taboo. Even if the ideology is for conservatism, political motives would spur the Jamaat and other organisations to embrace changes, he said.

A report by Shaju Philip in Indian Express Here.

My Kafeel has my passport : Travails of Indians in the Gulf

One evening, I walked into a small Internet café near my hotel. Two young Indian men managed the café. After I had answered my e-mails, I bought a coffee and we chatted. They were from Faizabad, a small town in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Sohail, the younger, a wiry man who served coffee and tea and cleaned the place, had been working there for a year. When I told him that I had been to his town several times as a reporter, his eyes brimmed with tears. “I worked in a garage as a mechanic, but I didn’t make enough. I got married and had a child. So I came here. I thought I am going to Mecca. I will get to perform the Hajj and earn a lot more than I ever would,” he said. “I didn’t know people here would treat us like dirt.” He pointed to a chubby Saudi boy, who was a regular at the café and called himself “Funky Monkey” (his video-game username). “Every time he feels like, he would slap me. It is the same with other local customers. You are a little late complying an order and they bark at you, slap you.” He added, “Here you can’t appeal to anyone. My passport is with my kafeel and I can only go home when he allows me to.” Imran, the older counterman, consoled him. “You are here now! Get used to it. Do I cry? I haven’t been able to return home in three years,” Imran said.

“Why not?” I asked Imran.

“My kafeel has my passport. He keeps making excuses, delaying it. He doesn’t want to lose business if I go away. And he has to pay all my money that is with him and buy me the return ticket home.”

And yet, Imran said, “We still have it easy. Working here is much worse for the maids.”

There are about one-and-a-half million female domestic workers in Saudi Arabia.

Basharat Peer in The New Yorker. Here

Jamaat leader discusses with Sagarika Ghose on evils of co-education

Jamaat-e-Islami Hind's proposals to JS Verma Committee

Jamaat-e-Islami Hind welcomes the government decision to set up committees to review the present anti-rape law and find out measures to make the society safe for the women. Jamaat expresses hope the committees will reach the root of the disease and find out the cure.
Following are the suggestions for kind consideration of the committee headed by Justice J.S. Verma regarding ensuring safety and security to woman:-

1. Only proper marriage contracted by free will of man and woman should be recognised as legally permitted form of legal sexual intimacy. All sex outside marriage including live-in-relationship should be declared illegal and punishable.
2. There should be provision for capital punishment for heinous crimes such as rape. These punishments should be given in public and there should be opportunity for people to witness the same so that it might act as deterrent to such heinous crimes.
3. Co-Education should be abolished and proper education facilities meant for only women only should be available at all level of education.
4. Educational institutions should prescribe sober and dignified dress for girls.
5. Services of religious institutions and religious leaders should be sought to reform society, inculcate moral values and awareness against crimes especially in the new generation.
6. Proper transport facilities for woman with proper safety measures be made available particularly in the town and cities.
7. Marriage should be made easy and it should be encouraged to have timely marriage, all forms of dowry be abolished and all unnecessary expenditures be curbed and made punishable.
8. The electronic and print media, TV programmes, Films and advertisements should avoid improper exposure of woman and it should be made punishable.
9. The alcohol is in the root of all evils and crimes particularly against women it should be completely banned in the whole country.
10. The criminal laws in this regard should be made more stringent, the judicial procedure be simplified and made faster.
11. The police reforms should be implemented soon and especially the complaints of not lodging FIRs or delaying of FIRs are made punishable offence.

More Here

Arundhati Roy on Indian rape culture

Arundhati Roy: Why is this crime so clearly such a lot of outrage because it plays into the idea of criminal poor. You know the vegetable vendors, bus driver, gym instructor actually assaulting a middle class girl. Whereas when rape is used as a means of domination by upper caste, by the army or the police. It is actually go unpunished. Not even talked about.

TV Anchor: Is there any chance this kind of big protest lead to genuine change? Will the political class change?
Arudhati Roy: I think it would lead to certain laws perhaps. It may also lead to increased surveillence. But all of that, I will repeat, all of that will protect middle class women. But in other place when we are looking for laws there are laws. But when the Police themselves go and burn down villages and gangrape. I have personally listened to so many testimonies from women who were subjected to such heinous crime. I have heard so many testimonies from eye witnesses that how women were killed.

TV Anchor: This is such a contrast from the image being projected of a modern India by the film industry in Mumbai and by a new Tech India. It makes one feel there are many world competing one another here.
Arundhati Roy: There is one section of film industry which projects bubble gum chewing modern India. There is another section of film industry with rap singers, films porno films where they show bestial violence against women. Celebrating murder and rape.. etc. The idea of 'them' being criminal is.. Poor are projected as...

Urban Young women are vulnerable....

To watch Arundhati Roy Here

Hitler, Hindutva and Indian elite

My wife teaches French to tenth-grade students at a private school here in Mumbai. During one recent class, she asked these mostly upper-middle-class kids to complete the sentence “J'admire …” with the name of the historical figure they most admired.

To say she was disturbed by the results would be to understate her reaction. Of 25 students in the class, 9 picked Adolf Hitler, making him easily the highest vote-getter in this particular exercise; a certain Mohandas Gandhi was the choice of precisely one student. Discussing the idea of courage with other students once, my wife was startled by the contempt they had for Gandhi. “He was a coward!” they said. And as far back as 2002, the Times of India reported a survey that found that 17 percent of students in elite Indian colleges “favored Adolf Hitler as the kind of leader India ought to have.”

In a place where Gandhi becomes a coward, perhaps Hitler becomes a hero.

Still, why Hitler? “He was a fantastic orator,” said the 10th-grade kids. “He loved his country; he was a great patriot. He gave back to Germany a sense of pride they had lost after the Treaty of Versailles,” they said.

"And what about the millions he murdered?” asked my wife. “Oh, yes, that was bad,” said the kids. “But you know what, some of them were traitors.”

Admiring Hitler for his oratorical skills? Surreal enough. Add to that the easy condemnation of his millions of victims as traitors. Add to that the characterization of this man as a patriot. I mean, in a short dozen years, 

Hitler led Germany through a scarcely believable orgy of blood to utter shame and wholesale destruction. Even the mere thought of calling such a man a patriot profoundly corrupts—is violently antithetical to—the idea of patriotism.

But these are kids, you think, and kids say the darndest things. Except this is no easily written-off experience. The evidence is that Hitler has plenty of admirers in India, plenty of whom are by no means kids.

Consider Mein Kampf, Hitler’s autobiography. Reviled it might be in the much of the world, but Indians buy thousands of copies of it every month. As a recent paper in the journal EPW tells us (PDF), there are over a dozen Indian publishers who have editions of the book on the market. Jaico, for example, printed its 55th edition in 2010, claiming to have sold 100,000 copies in the previous seven years. (Contrast this to the 3,000 copies my own 2009 book, Roadrunner, has sold). In a country where 10,000 copies sold makes a book a bestseller, these are significant numbers.

And the approval goes beyond just sales. Mein Kampf is available for sale on flipkart.com, India’s Amazon. As I write this, 51 customers have rated the book; 35 of those gave it a five-star rating. What’s more, there’s a steady trickle of reports that say it has become a must-read for business-school students; a management guide much like Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese or Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking. If this undistinguished artist could take an entire country with him, I imagine the reasoning goes, surely his book has some lessons for future captains of industry?

Much of Hitler’s Indian afterlife is the legacy of Bal Thackeray, chief of the Shiv Sena party who died on Nov. 17.

Thackeray freely, openly, and often admitted his admiration for Hitler, his book, the Nazis, and their methods. In 1993, for example, he gave an interview to Time magazine. “There is nothing wrong,” he said then, “if [Indian] Muslims are treated as Jews were in Nazi Germany.”

This interview came only months after the December 1992 and January 1993 riots in Mumbai, which left about a thousand Indians slaughtered, the majority of them Muslim. Thackeray was active right through those weeks, writing editorial after editorial in his party mouthpiece, “Saamna” (“Confrontation”) about how to “treat” Muslims.

On Dec. 9, 1992, for example, his editorial contained these lines: “Pakistan need not cross the borders and attack India. 250 million Muslims in India will stage an armed insurrection. They form one of Pakistan’s seven atomic bombs.”

A month later, on Jan. 8, 1993, there was this: “Muslims of Bhendi Bazar, Null Bazar, Dongri and Pydhonie, the areas [of Mumbai] we call Mini Pakistan … must be shot on the spot.”

There was plenty more too: much of it inspired by the failed artist who became Germany’s führer. After all, only weeks before the riots erupted, Thackeray said this about the führer’s famous autobiography: “If you take Mein Kampf and if you remove the word Jew and put in the word Muslim, that is what I believe in.”

With rhetoric like that, it’s no wonder the streets of my city saw the slaughter of 1992-93. It’s no wonder kids come to admire a mass-murderer, to rationalize away his massacres. It’s no wonder they cling to almost comically superficial ideas of courage and patriotism, in which a megalomaniac’s every ghastly crime is forgotten so long as we can pretend that he “loved” his country.

In his acclaimed 1997 book Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen writes: “Hitler, in possession of great oratorical skills, was the [Nazi] Party’s most forceful public speaker. Like Hitler, the party from its earliest days was devoted to the destruction of … democracy [and to] most especially and relentlessly, anti-Semitism. … The Nazi Party became Hitler’s Party, obsessively anti-Semitic and apocalyptic in its rhetoric about its enemies.”

Do some substitutions in those sentences along the lines Thackeray wanted to do with Mein Kampf. Indeed, what you get is a more than adequate description of … no surprise, Thackeray himself.

Yes, it’s no wonder. Thackeray too was revered as an orator. Cremated, on Nov. 18, as a patriot.

Dilip D'Souza in The Daily Beast Here

Expat Ride: A book on Gulf NRIs

For long, the Middle East, which is commonly termed as 'Gulf', has been considered an El Dorado for Indians. The first wave of prosperity came in many parts of India, particularly, in South India, when lakhs of Indians got jobs in Middle East in 70s and 80s.

It is a fact that despite 5-7 million Indians working in Gulf countries, there is not enough focus in India on either their contribution to our economy or their problems.

For the record, the number of Indians in West Asian countries is at least four times the number of NRIs in America. Mohammed Saifuddin's book Expat Ride sheds light on the issues pertaining to Indians in Gulf.

Contrary to the belief that every person who goes to Gulf, manages to make moolah, it tells us how large number of people fail to save adequate money.

The semi-skilled workers face pathetic conditions, work hard by spending more hours in duty but don't get as much return for their efforts. From facing extreme weather and psychological issues due to living away from families, the book tells a lot about the situation on the ground.

The book tells us about challenges faced by expatriates in getting good education to their children. That they have to pay exorbitant fees to get admission in colleges in India and the quota initiated by AB Vajpayee-led BJP government remains limited to just a few educational institutions in India.

Saifuddin also touches the issue of taxes apart from exploitation by money-lenders and depression among Indians working in the region. As many as 70% of those who commit suicide in Dubai, are Indians! This is a shocker for everybody.

The author suggests that India should conduct surveys and take more steps to redress the issues of expatriate community. Another myth is busted in the book. Muslims are not favoured in Gulf countries. In fact, in key positions non-Muslims outnumber Muslims.

The number of Muslims among powerful Indians in GCC countries is just 18%. There are other serious issues like problems faced in repatriation of dead bodies to India.

These things need to be taken up on priority. It is true that Indian newspapers and Television channels seldom pay attention to these important aspects which affect a large number of people.

But when it comes to sudden disappearance or crime against an NRI in America or Britain, our media forgets all sense of proportion and lap it up, showing it for hours.

But there is no such interest visible in Gulf. This is despite the enormous regular contribution in terms of remittances--sending money back home on regular basis, that runs millions of households in India.

Saifuddin, who hails from Hyderabad, has over the years penned articles for Yahind.com portal. The book comprises these articles. One hopes that the book would draw the attention of policy makers towards Indian expatriates in the GCC countries--United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabic, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain.

By Indscribe in AnIndianMuslim. Here and Here

Mamata Bannerjee steals the thunder from UPA-II

First time ever, Mamata Banerjee could transfer her characteristic unpredictable gambit to a larger uncertainty of political economy. Using what matters in Bengal politics, which is a pro-people, pro-minority and anti-Centre stance, she succeeded in showing the UPA-2 its footloose practices to the point of breaking it. In the eye of the storm is the opening of the retail trading for FDI and withdrawal of subsidy for gas and hiking of diesel prices, all a recipe for marginalization of the poor and the minorities in a corporate dominated economy of India.

Politics of reforms, here again, exhibits its hazy means-ends relationship. No government, howsoever powerful it may be, can assume an overriding decision-making power in matters of bringing foreign funds, as it erodes domestic legitimacy. Bereft of popular acceptance, reform measures that create an inevitable insecurity and crisis in livelihood of ordinary citizen eat into the credibility of the Government. Even if it is a government in majority, or it is in minority, either way, reforms sacrifice both the government and the people. In this sense, reforms make the most achieving government hostage to its antics and throw the stakes of its citizenry into the winds. Mamata decided not to be a part of such a process of gambling with the people and pulled the plug.

In her twenty odd minutes of press conference to declare the withdrawal of support from the Central Government, she established an uncanny but real linkage between Centre’s economic follies with communal riots in Assam. She sounded like a practical politician in linking up the tragedy of commons at the hands of UPA government with its Assam counterpart which could not prevent a preventable riot. That Mamata’s well known acceptance of victims and provisions for sheltering them in relief camps is not just a mere public show off came out in her serious concern about Assam riots, which she didn’t dither to call ‘communal’. Indeed Mamata could see the invisible link between economic reforms and communal politics as it is played out at a stone’s throw by the Congress. Her announcement that her ministers will resign after Jumma Namaz on Friday makes her a darling of the masses in Bengal. Indeed there are many dimensions to her apparently inexplicable act of connecting Assam riots to FDI in retail and the overall policy drift of the UPA.

It is increasingly clear that in the course of riots, Bengali speaking Muslims of the East Bengal origin has been the only target, large number of whom have to cross over to neighbouring state of West Bengal for shelter.

Except making whatever public announcements, Congress as the ruling party, both at the centre and the State didn’t have any qualms to take them back home. Just as the Congress party unilaterally passed a cabinet decision to allow entry of FDI in retail in great peril to the existence of small traders in the very sector, in the same way, they have left scores of displaced victim at the mercy of Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) administration. The criterion of land record to decide whether someone is an Indian or not in Bodoland not only violates the principle of no harm to the already harmed, but it contributes to turning genuine Indian citizens into stateless persons. The ruling party is dancing to the tune of BTC and failing to uphold constitutional principles.

In such an hour of crisis, Mamata not only withdrew support from UPA, but by raking up the issue of communal riots in Assam, she brought the truth out of claustrophobic interpretations given to Bodoland riots. Although she didn’t elaborate, but anyone can relate mention of protesting against Assam communal riots to the actually existing reality. As a glaring example of how UPA’s policies are skewed towards the marginalized and minority-ized sections of society, Assam riot stands out as one example of neglect and injustice by the Central Government.

As a statesman of a very different kind who can listen to the ground, her decision to send minister’s resignation to the Prime Minister after Friday prayer carries a lot of meaning both nationally and internationally. Nationally it marks a strong anti-Hindutva stance. It also communicates a message of peace, brotherhood and love for the Muslims that a country polarized tends to forget. It also is a re-affirmation of solemnity of Islam in the face of deliberate attempts to the film-ic mischief. Mamata establishes the right chord of concern for the helpless victims of communal clashes in Assam by connecting her FDI protest with deeply emotional pronouncements about Friday resignations. She couched the idiom of protest in terms of practical Islam that overcomes the otherwise meaninglessness of political acts such as entry and exit.

Mamata’s exit has thrown up challenges to other secular and anti-communal forces and parties to evolve a common strategy. Far from being clear about the impact of these reforms, parties like Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party are calculating each other’s response and playing a zero sum game. In such a situation there could again be a kind of reconsolidation of parties within UPA just for the sake of avoiding an early election. Such a mutual bickering is going to affect the polity in a negative way as continuation of UPA is going to bring a policy regime that does not care for the minorities and the marginalized.

Prasenjit Biswas in Two Circles. Here

"Islamic Dawah is the best option to prevent the recurrence of dirty American film": Ameer-e-Jamaat

Amir Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Umari has severely condemned the American film blaspheming the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him). Terming the release of this film as an act of hurting the Muslims of the world, he expressed grave concern over the fact that America fails in making concerted efforts to contain such anti-Islam activities in spite of expressing displeasure over them. 

The Jamaat chief expressed his confidence that conspiracies to tarnish the image of Islam and denigrate the personage of Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) have failed earlier also. And even now no country or group, despite investing talents and resources, can harm the truth of Islam and the majesty of the Prophet who is the Mercy to mankind. Therefore, people should keep from destructive activities aimed at spoiling world peace and try to understand the Message of Peace and Salvation Islam gives and the position of Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) as Mercy to all the worlds. 

Declaring the protests, being staged in Muslim countries against the heart-rendering American film, as Muslim masses’ love for and close affinity with their faith and the Messenger of God, the Jamaat leader said the Muslims should prove themselves as Khair-e-Ummat (the best nation) and Ummat-e-Wast (the moderate nation) in every action and every measure they take, and keep from every approach that can bring a bad name to the position and greatness of the community. It would not be right that the crime is committed by one and you punish someone else; it tarnishes the image of Islam.

The Jamaat Ameer appealed to the Islamic Movements and organisations world over to realise the Dawah responsibilities much more so that the common masses might be acquainted with the teachings of Islam, and the ignorance and misapprehensions of the world about Islam, its way of life and the Holy Messenger be allayed and the incidents like the release of the American film might not be repeated in future.

அகிலங்களுக்கெல்லாம் அருட்கொடையாய் வந்த இறைத்தூதரின் கண்ணியத்துக்கு ஊறு விளைவிக்கின்ற வகையில் தயாரிக்கப்பட்ட அமெரிக்க திரைப்படத்தை ஜமாஅத்தே இஸ்லாமி ஹிந்த் அகில இந்தியத் தலைவர் மௌலானா சையத் ஜலாலுத்தீன் உமரி கடுமையாகக் கண்டனம் செய்துள்ளார். உலகம் முழுவதும் இருக்கின்ற முஸ்லிம்களின் உள்ளங்களைக் காயப்படுத்துகின்ற செயல் இது என்றும் அவர் குறிப்பிட்டுள்ளார். இஸ்லாத்துக்கு எதிரான இத்தகைய நடவடிக்கைகள் குறித்து அதிருப்தியும் ஆட்சேபமும் அழுத்தமாகப் பதிவு செய்யப்பட்ட பிறகும் இது போன்ற அடாத செயல்களைத் தடுத்து நிறுத்துவதில் அமெரிக்க அரசாங்கம் தோல்வி அடைந்திருப்பது குறித்து அவர் பெரிதும் வேதனைப்பட்டார்.

இஸ்லாத்தின் மாண்பையும் அண்ணல் நபிகளாரின் மகத்துவத்தையும் கொச்சைப்படுத்து-கின்ற சூழ்ச்சிகள் இதற்கு முன்பும் தோல்வியையே தழுவி இருக்கின்றன. இப்போதும்கூட எந்தவொரு நாட்டாலும் அல்லது சமூகக் குழுவினாலும் - அவர்கள் தங்களுடைய ஆற்றல்களையும் வசதிவாய்ப்புகளையும் வளங்களையும் முழுமையாகப் பயன்படுத்தினாலும் - இஸ்லாம்தான் சத்தியமானது என்கிற உண்மைநிலையையும் அகிலங்களுக்கெல்லாம் அருட்கொடையாய் வந்த அண்ணல் நபிகளாரின் மகத்துவத்தையும் இம்மியளவுகூட ஊறு விளைவிப்பதில் வெற்றி அடையவே இயலாது.  எனவே உலக அமைதியைப் பாதிக்கக்கூடிய நடவடிக்கைகளிலிருந்து முற்றாக விலகி இருந்தவாறு அமைதி, ஈடேற்றத்திற்கான இஸ்லாத்தின் செய்தியையும் அண்ணல் நபிகளார்(ஸல்) அகில உலகங்களுக்கெல்லாம் அருட்கொடையாய் இருக்கின்ற சிறப்பையும் புரிந்துகொள்வதற்கு முயல வேண்டும்.

உள்ளங்களைக் காயப்படுத்துகின்ற அமெரிக்க திரைப்படத்திற்கு முஸ்லிம் உலக நாடு-களில் நடத்தப்பட்டு வருகின்ற ஆர்ப்பாட்டங்களும் போராட்டங்களும் தங்களுடைய மார்க்கத்தின் மீதும் அண்ணல் நபிகளார்(ஸல்) மீதும் அவர்களுக்கு இருக்கின்ற அளவிலா அன்பையும் இணையிலா பற்றையும் வெளிப்படுத்துகிறன என்றும் அவர் தெரிவித்தார். அதே சமயம் கைரே உம்மத் - சிறந்த சமூகம் என்றும் உம்மத்தே வஸ்த் - நடுநிலை மிக்க சமூகம் என்றும் இறைவனால் அறிவிக்கப்பட்ட முஸ்லிம் சமுதாயம் அந்தத் தகுதிநிலைக்கு இயைந்தவையாகவும் அதற்கு சான்று அளிப்பவையாகவும் தம்முடைய அனைத்து செயல்-பாடுகளையும் அமைத்துக் கொள்ள வேண்டும் என்றும் சமுதாயத்தின் தகுதிக்கும் அந்தஸ்துக்கும் மகத்துவத்திற்கும்  சற்றும் பொருந்தாத யாதொரு வழிமுறையிலிருந்தும் முற்றாக விலகி இருத்தல் வேண்டும் என்றும் அவர் அறிவுறுத்தினார். குற்றத்தை ஒருவர் செய்திருக்க, இன்னொருவரைத் தண்டிப்பது சற்றும் பொருத்தமற்றதல்ல. இது போன்ற செயல்களால் இஸ்லாம் பற்றிய சித்திரம் சிதைக்கப்படுகின்றது என்றும் அவர் சுட்டிக்காட்டியுள்ளார்.

முன்னெப்போதும் இல்லாத அளவுக்கு இஸ்லாமிய அழைப்புப் பணி தொடர்பான தம்முடைய பொறுப்புகளை உணர்ந்துகொண்டு, அவற்றை நிறைவேற்றுவதில் கவனம் செலுத்துமாறும், பொதுமக்களுக்கு இஸ்லாத்தின் உண்மையான செய்தியும் போதனைகளும் சென்றடையவும், இஸ்லாத்தைக் குறித்தும் இஸ்லாம் எடுத்துரைக்கின்ற வாழ்க்கைத் திட்டத்தைக் குறித்தும் அண்ணல் நபிகளாரைக் குறித்தும் உலக மக்கள் மத்தியில் காணப்படுகின்ற அறியாமை அகல்வதற்கும் தவறான கருத்துக்கள் களையப்படுவதற்கும் உறுதி செய்யுமாறும் ஜமாஅத்தின் அகில இந்தியத் தலைவர் உலக இஸ்லாமிய இயக்கங்களுக்கும் அமைப்புகளுக்கும் வேண்டுகோள் விடுத்தார். இஸ்லாத்திற்கு எதிரான அமெரிக்கத் திரைப்படம் போன்ற சூழ்ச்சிகள் மீண்டும் மீண்டும் தலைதூக்குவதைத் தடுப்பதற்கு இதுதான் சிறந்த வழி என்றும் ஜமாஅத் தலைவர் அறிவித்தார்.

Here

Obama, FDI, Manmohan Singh and lies

For U.S. President Barack Obama there could be nothing more cheering. The ‘underachiever’ now goes to the presidential polls with a lot of confidence — India’s decision to open up FDI in multi-brand retail comes as a shot in the arm for the beleaguered American economy and will obviously boost his poll prospects. 

Mr. Obama certainly knows what is good for the U.S. economy; Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also knows what is in America’s interest. Mr. Obama, for instance, wanted to stop outsourcing to protect U.S. jobs. No amount of persuasion from India changed his mind. Similarly, knowing how important FDI in retail is for him, he had pitched for a new wave of economic reforms. It was surprising to see Mr. Obama telling India what is good for us.

Aided and abetted by TIME magazine and credit rating agencies like Standard&Poor’s, Fitch and Moody’s, India finally buckled under global pressure. What is little known is that India was also under a G-20 obligation to remove all hurdles to the growth of multi-brand retail.

But is FDI in retail really good for India? Will it improve rural infrastructure, reduce wastage of agricultural produce, and enable farmers to get a better price for their crops? While a lot has been said and written about the virtues of big retail, let me make an attempt to answer some of the big claims. 

Agriculture: The Prime Minister has repeatedly projected FDI in retail as a boon for agriculture. Unfortunately, this is not true. Even in the U.S., big retail has not helped farmers — it is federal support that makes agriculture profitable. In its last Farm Bill in 2008, the U.S. made a provision of $307 billion for agriculture for the next five years.

Where is the justification for such massive support if big retail was providing farmers better prices? And let us not forget, despite these subsidies studies have shown that one farmer in Europe quits agriculture every minute.

The second argument is that big retail will squeeze out middleman and therefore provide a better price to farmers. This is again not borne by facts. In the U.S., some studies have shown that the net income of farmers has come down from 70 per cent in the early 20th century to less than four per cent in 2005.

This is because big retail actually brings in a new battery of middlemen — quality controller, standardiser, certification agency, processor, packaging consultants etc. It is these middlemen who walk away with the profits and the farmer is left to survive on the subsidy dole.

Monopolistic power enables these companies to go in for predatory pricing. Empirical studies have shown that consumer prices in supermarkets in Latin America, Africa and Asia have remained higher than the open market by 20 to 30 per cent.

And finally, the argument that multi-brand retail will provide adequate scientific storage and thereby save millions of tonnes of food grains from rotting. I don’t know where in the world big retail has provided backend grain storage facilities?

FDI is already allowed in storage, and no investment has come in. Let it also be known that even the 30-per-cent local sourcing clause for single-brand retail has already been challenged and quietly put in cold storage by the Ministry of Commerce. 

Employment: The Indian retail market is estimated to be around $400 billion with more than 12 million retailers employing 40 million people. Ironically, Wal-Mart’s turnover is also around $420 billion, but it employs only 2.1 million people. If Wal-Mart can achieve the same turnover with hardly a fraction of the workforce employed by the Indian retail sector, how do we expect big retail to create jobs? It is the Indian retail sector which is a much bigger employer, and big retail will only destroy millions of livelihoods

State government’s prerogative: Very cleverly, the Central government has allowed the State governments the final say in allowing FDI in retail. This may to some extent pacify those State governments opposed to big retail. However, the industry is upbeat and knows well that as per international trade norms, member countries have to provide national treatment. Being a signatory to Bilateral Investment promotion and Protection Agreements (BIPAs), India has to provide national treatment to the investors. Agreements with more than 70 countries have already been signed. State governments will, therefore, have to open up for big retail. Industries will use the legal option to force the States to comply.

And more importantly, let us look at how the virus of big retail spreads, even if the promise is to keep it confined to major cities. Recently, a New York Times expose showed how Wal-Mart had captured nearly 50 per cent of Mexico’s retail market in 10 years. What is important here is that as per the NYT disclosure “the Mexican subsidiary of Wal-Mart, which opened 431 stores in 2011, had paid bribes and an internal enquiry into the matter has been suppressed at corporate headquarters in Arkansas”.

In India, we are aware that Wal-Mart alone had spent Rs.52 crore in two years to lobby, as per a disclosure statement made in the U.S. It has certainly paid off.

Devinder Sharma in Ground Reality and The Hindu

India's 'silent' Prime Minister becomes a tragic figure

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's image has slowly given way to a dithering, ineffectual bureaucrat presiding over a deeply corrupt government.

The story of Singh’s dramatic fall from grace in his second term in office and the slow but steady tarnishing of his reputation has played out in parallel with his country’s decline on his watch. As India’s economy has slowed and as its reputation for rampant corruption has reasserted itself, the idea that the country was on an inexorable road to becoming a global power has increasingly come into question.

“More and more, he has become a tragic figure in our history,” said political historian Ramachandra Guha, describing a man fatally handicapped by his “timidity, complacency and intellectual dishonesty.”

Damaging to his reputation is the accusation that he looked the other way and remained silent as his cabinet colleagues filled their own pockets.

In the process, he transformed himself from an object of respect to one of ridicule and endured the worst period in his life, said Sanjaya Baru, Singh’s media adviser during his first term.

Attendees at meetings and conferences were jokingly urged to put their phones into “Manmohan Singh mode,” while one joke cited a dentist urging the seated prime minister, “At least in my clinic, please open your mouth.”

Simon Denyer in The Washington Post. Here

The Rise and fall of Manmohan Singh

The leader of a party allied with the Congress described to me a meeting with Manmohan Singh in December 2005, two months after the release of the UN report investigating abuses in the Iraq Oil-for-Food programme. The report had implicated Natwar Singh, then the minister of external affairs, and he was forced to resign as a result, but it had also named Reliance Petroleum Limited as a beneficiary in the oil-for-food scam. The party leader said he had raised the issue with the prime minister, saying, “Sir, the report mentions not just Natwar, it also prominently mentions Reliance. Why are you not taking any action against Reliance?”

“With a sigh,” the party leader recounted, “Manmohan Singh said to us, ‘After all, what can I do? It is India’s largest corporate.’”  

Vinod K Jose in The Caravan Here and Here 

Narendra Modi, Manmohan Singh and Sheikh Saadi

 

It is related that, whilst some game was being roasted for Nushirvan the just during a hunting party, no salt could be found. Accordingly a boy was sent to an adjoining village to bring some. Nushirvan said: 'Pay for the salt lest it should become a custom and the village be ruined.' Having been asked what harm could arise from such a trifling demand, Nushirvan replied: 'The foundation of oppression was small in the world but whoever came augmented it so that it reached its present magnitude.'  
If the king eats one apple from the garden of a subject
His slaves will pull him up the tree from the roots.

For five eggs which the sultan allows to be taken by force
The people belonging to his army will put a thousand
fowls on the spit.

A tyrant does not remain in the world
But the curse on him abides for ever.

Sheikh Sa'di in The Gulistan of Sa'adi. More Here and Here

US loses AH-64 Apache Helicopter in Afghanistan

America is at war with Afghanistan. It continues to bomb, kill, maim and massacre the innocents Afghanis - men and women, brothers and sisters, young and old - everyday. Afghan brothers and sisters continue to defy the American aggression with all their might. 

As a result America loses its soldiers, sophisticated vehicles, helicopters etc. As media is at the hands of Americans we don't get enough negative news about woundings, crashes and other negative news in the US military in Afghanistan. And the civilised world do not know or care that the US is at war in Afghanistan. 

Here is an video of a APACHE helicopter being crashed in Afghanistan. Here and  Here

The plight of migrant labourers

Last weekend, a dishevelled, bare-chested man was almost done to death in Chennai. Police and scores of bystanders watched the young man being beaten unconscious. A few even cheered and egged on the mob. Barely three days before this incident the city witnessed the killing of five men, allegedly involve in a recent spate of bank robberies in the city, in a daring mid-night ‘encounter' with the police. The two incidents, close on the heels of each other, had one commonality—the ‘north Indian' factor. An eyewitness to the lynching told reporters “the mob was screaming north Indian thief” as they “thrashed him” and dragged his unconscious body to the main road. The apparent ‘burglar from north India' finally turned out to be one Venkat Rao from Andhra Pradesh. So who are these ‘north Indians'? What are they doing here?

The ‘north Indian'

Two applications filed in the Madras High Court by six advocates and residents of Velachery, the neighbourhood where the ‘encounter' took place, describes these ‘north Indians' as “the workers who had landed in Tamil Nadu for working, slowly steadied their roots here and later started indulging in many crimes, many of which are dastardly and grave ones”. They further state that “offences committed by (the) north Indians in Tamil Nadu are on the rise” and that in this particular instance “group of north Indians were on a rampage....disturbing the peace and tranquillity of the state”. The applications have been filed to counter the ongoing public interest litigation in the Madras High Court challenging the recent killings.

In their malicious and mischievous intent, there is one thing that the applicants have said that is true, that they are ‘workers'. But the truth stops there.

Tamil Nadu has a fairly large interstate migrant population, estimated to be over ten lakhs, with large concentrations around Chennai, Coimbatore, Trichy, Madurai, Hosur, Tirupur, Kanyakumari and Tirunelvelli. Hailing from Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and even Nepal, these men come to work on private and government construction sites, in small engineering ancillary units, steel rolling mills, lathe, hosieries, foundries, in roadside eateries as well as fancy city restaurants, as security guards and even as farmhands. While walking past a slum or even a fishing kuppam these days, one can catch a soft snatch of conversation or song in Bhojpuri, Hindi, Bangla or Oriya.

Dismayed by the derisive label of north Indian “thieves”, I wanted to find out who these “thieves” were and what their loot looked like. So I met a few young men from Bihar who had just come back from ‘duty'. They were huddled together in a small room in one such slum on Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR). A 120-sq.ft. room, peeling green walls, a few shirts and pants hanging from the hooks nailed to the walls, a mirror, a plastic comb, small suitcases and bags, a kerosene stove, a few cooking pots and pans, plates, tumbler and two buckets, floor mats and mobile phones! No toilet and an open bathing area.

Nothing extraordinary or remarkably different from the neighbour next door, who also happens to be a factory worker. Both are migrants, one interstate and the other inter-district. The only obvious difference is language. The neighbour speaks Tamil while these men speak Bhojpuri. The neighbour has a family, while these men have left their families back home.

But there is another crucial difference that makes the latter far more vulnerable—the terms and conditions under which an interstate migrant worker consents to labour. Most of the migrant workers in the State land up through informal arrangements orchestrated by multiple contractors and sub-contractors. Munniraj, a Dalit labour contractor in Hosur, has 650 Bihari workers whom he supplies to the various small-scale engineering units in the industrial area. The workers, who earn anywhere between Rs.3,500-Rs.4,000 per month, give him 10 per cent of their wages, which works out roughly to Rs.2 lakh a month. About 30,000 migrant workers from Bihar, Bengal, Orissa and Nepal work in the area. Ruing that local workers don't want to work in the factories and prefer MNREGA work, Sampat, an office bearer of Hosur Small and Tiny Industries Association said “these migrant workers have invaded our culture, they speak in Hindi, celebrate Durga puja”. A short documentary titled Finger made by Progressive Writer's Forum explains why the locals would rather work in MNREGA and not in these factories. The film shows the dangerous working conditions in the factories where accidents are commonplace, with workers losing their fingers in pressing machines as a matter of routine. Apart from some medical treatment, not much is given by way of compensation to the worker.

Madhumita Dutta in The Hindu Here

Will Third Front emerge?

Akilesh Yadav would be swearing in as the youngest Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh on 15th March. Akilesh Yadav seems to be a politician of entirely different calibre. He is educated as well as down to earth. He is cool as well as full of passion. He is dignified in his victory. He has given the Samajwadi Party a fresh face and a new life. Above all he has defeated both Congress and BJP. That makes him special.

The rise of Akilesh Yadav heralds a new chapter in Indian politics. We had sons, and daughters of various political leaders donning the role of netas earlier too. India has seen Rajiv Gandhis, Rahul Gandhis, Biju Patnaiks, Ajit Singhs, Chautalas, Chavans, Chandrababu Naidus etc etc. We have our own share of Stalins, Anbumanis, Azhagiris, Kanimozhis, Dayanithi Marans, Jayalalithas, Janakis etc etc. But, they don't inspire you. You never felt happy when Stalin or Jayalalitha sworn in as Ministers.  

The rise of Akilesh Yadav is significant in an entirely different context. It has given hope and fresh lease of life for the dream of Third Front. UPA's second innings is a disaster for the country as well as the Congress. Rahul Gandhi has failed to strike a chord with the Aam Aadmi. He has joined the league of former future Prime Ministers in the company of L. K. Advani and others. Congress would definitely lose the next election. BJP too is not in a position to stage a comeback. The humiliating defeat suffered by Uma Bharati in UP conveys a lot. The perpetual blot of Babri Masjid demolition and everlasting stigma of Gujarat genocide would never make it acceptable in all parts of the country. Hence a combination of Mulayam's SP, Karunanidhi's DMK, Mamata's TMC, Andhra's TRS or TDP and Communists could forge a formidable alliance and THIRD FRONT could be formed to save the nation from the pro-US and anti-Aam Aadmi parties like Congress and BJP.

India may never be a super power : LSE Study

Despite India’s "impressive" rise, its ambition to be a super power may remain just that—an ambition, according to an authoritative new study by the London School of Economics to which several Indian scholars have contributed.

It pointedly dismisses what it calls the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s "unequivocal verdict" during her India visit in 2009 that "India is not just a regional power, but a global power’.

The study, India: the Next Superpower? acknowledges India’s "formidable achievements" in fostering democracy, growth and cultural dynamism but concludes that these are nullified by its structural weaknesses, widespread corruption, poor leadership, extreme social divisions, religious extremism and internal security threats.

India, it argues, still faces too many "developmental challenges" to qualify for "super power" status, or to be considered a serious "counterweight" to China, a role sought to be thrust on it by some in the West. Some of the report’s authors wonder whether India should even aspire to be a super power given its institutional weaknesses and social and economic divisions.

Historian Ramachandra Guha, currently the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE, suggests that rather than being seduced by the bright lights of great power diplomacy, India should instead focus on reforming its institutions and repairing the social fabric that seems to be coming off its seams.

“We need to repair, one by one, the institutions that have safeguarded our unity amidst diversity, and to forge the new institutions that can help us. It will be hard, patient, slow work,” he writes.

Hasan Suroor in The Hindu. Here

Rahul Gandhi's mistake and Akilesh Yadav's charm

Akhilesh is not an orator. But his speech is like a calm, even-toned drizzle in the abusive maelstrom of Uttar Pradesh politics. He lists the usual stuff: Mayawati’s corruption; her infamous statue-building hubris. He promises loan waivers to farmers, free education for girls, unemployment funds, roads, hospitals and electricity. He dismisses the BJP as a party not even in the fray but reserves some time to take down the Congress. He makes some fun of Rahul Gandhi for tearing his kurta and the much-talked of list of promises and suggests he might jump off the stage next in anger. Some of his talk draws laughs and cheers. Then he delivers his winning shot: he promises free laptops to the young and says he will ensure they can be used in Hindi and Urdu — and if necessary — in English too.

This might sound like unremarkable stuff, but Akhilesh is more astute than he seems. “I have been determined to keep our campaign positive,” he says. “Everything positive. No abuse. Nothing too caste specific. Just talk development and hope. That’s why our slogan this time is ‘ummeed ki cycle’ (cycle of hope).”

“Rahul made a mistake tearing that sheet of promises on the stage,” he continues. “What are elections but a promise, a chance at hope? It remains to be seen whether different parties will deliver what they promise, but if you tear up that hope then what else is there?” 

Shoma Chaudhury in Tehelka. Here 

Rahul Vs Akilesh

Only Rahul stood out in all this as a fresh face: a promise of a new, inclusive, development- driven politics. No one was betting that the Congress was going to finish first or even that it would do phenomenally well electorally, but there was a distinct swell of goodwill around Rahul, and his courageous bid to revive and recast the comatose Congress in UP was the big dramatic story.

Now, that story of fresh-faced hope has a virile new entrant. A challenger no one quite anticipated on this scale. Akhilesh’s optimism about a clean sweep may be a bit misplaced, but he’s undoubtedly upped the stakes for the SP and made Rahul’s own job more difficult. His older opponents’ disrepute must certainly have been part of Rahul’s long-term calculations. Suddenly now, there’s another young new leader with a clean image talking development and inclusiveness. Suddenly the youth (especially the rural youth), OBC and Muslim vote, target groups for both leaders, have not one but two new credible counters. Suddenly Rahul’s marathon lap has a sharp short-distance competitor.

Shoma Chaudhury in Tehelka. Here 

Muslims were behind SP's victory: Welfare Party leader

"Muslim vote played a crucial role in Samajwadi Party's landslide victory. Muslims shifted to SP as the Muslim youth were being targeted in the Congress - ruled states even as Mayawati let loose a wave harassment. Also, Muslims have rejected the caste-based politics propagated by smaller Muslim political parties and instead exhibited unity by voting for SP en masse." said Dr S Q R Ilyas in an interview to DNA.
Here.

Muslim representation has shot up to the highest-ever figure of 66 in the Uttar Pradesh (UP) assembly, with the community believed to have gone all out in favour of the winner, Samajwadi Party (SP). As many as 41 Muslims have got elected on the SP ticket, followed by 15 from Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Just 4 Muslim candidates could make up on the Congress ticket, 3 from Peace Party, 2 from Qaumi Ekta Dal and one from Ittehade Millat Council.

As for the Congress, it’s not just in UP that Muslims rejected it, even in the Muslim majority seat of Malerkotla in Punjab they preferred to go with Akali Dal. In UP, the Congress’s magic mantra of ‘quota within quota’ clearly flopped, so much so that Union law minister Salman Khurshid’s wife Louise Khurshid trailed fifth from the Farrukhabad constituency. Salman Khurshid had risked the Election Commission wrath for enhancing this quota during aggressive campaigning.

While the outgoing assembly had 55 Muslim legislators — the highest since independence — the minority is no longer so in the newly-elected assembly, which has a record 66 legislators. Political analysts believe that Muslims overturned results in as many as 136 seats, with the main contenders — the SP and the BSP — fielding 85 Muslims each, while the Congress giving tickets to 59 Muslims. The BJP had fielded a lone Muslim candidate, Shakeel Alam from Sahaswan in Badaun district, who had to forfeit his deposit.

The 2012 results are being seen as en-masse endorsement of the SP and a rejection of Congress and small ‘Muslim’ parties by the Muslims in the state.

The Peace Party has won just four seats, while Rashtriya Ulema Council has drawn a blank. Shazil Islam Ansari, the lone winner from Ittehad Millat Council, was the wakf minister in the Mayawati ministry but denied a ticket by the BSP.

Secretary general of Welfare Party Dr SQR Ilyas told DNA that the Muslim vote played a crucial role in SP’s overwhelming victory. Explaining reasons for this shift, Dr Ilyas said the Muslim youth were being targeted in the Congress-ruled states even as Mayawati let loose a wave harassment. Also, Muslims have rejected the caste-based politics propagated by smaller Muslim political parties and instead exhibited unity by voting for SP en masse.

While professor and political analyst Dr Zahid Ali Khan of the Aligarh Muslim University said it was for the first time that the community overwhelmingly supported a single party, general secretary of All-India Milli Council Dr Manzoor Alam said the results were a warning for the Congress “The BSP neglected Muslims in a planned way in all spheres. Like other parties, it wanted to win over Muslims just on security issue,” said Alam

As for the reasons why Muslims rejected the Congress, Alam said it was mainly because the party continued targeting Muslim youth in terror charges.

“The Congress played a double game, it must appreciate that era of tokenism is over,” he added.

Iftikhar Gilani in DNA .Here

Aam Aadmi has slapped the UPA Government

 

The message from the five states is loud and clear. No to Congress (Read inefficiency, corruption,.cunningness). Congress has forgotten the Aam Aadmi. It has failed to check the rising prices. It wants to demolish the retail trade by allowing FDI in retail business. It wants to pursue a blatant pro-US foreign policy. It does not care for the welfare of the citizens.

An emphatic NO to BJP (read Hindutva, anti-Muslim, anti-Dalit). Bharatiya Janata Party has landed in noman's island. It does not have a clear vision for the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious, multi-cultural plural nation that is called INDIA. It's divisive policies and politics has failed to strike a chord with the peace loving Aam Aadmi. It has refused to shed the burden of Narendra Modi. It has no agenda and has lost its relevance.

And a Big NO to BSP (read inefficiency, autocracy, corruption). Mayawati has lost a golden chance to evolve into a statesman and towering leader. She failed to cultivate, nourish, and groom second line of leadership. She has no clear vision for the emancipation of the dalits and her alliance with the Brahmins has taken away the sheen from her sole armour.

And a fresh lease of life for the THIRD FRONT. Both Congress and BJP have failed to care for the welfare of the Aam Aadmi. Hope for the emergence of the third front has got revived. Mulayam Singh Yadav has  bigger role to play at the centre.

Once again Muslims have played their cards well and voted tactically defeating both Congress and BJP. The number of Muslim MLAs has risen to all time high 69. The emergence of the Peace Party is significant.  Here

Anti-Congressism gets a new lease of life

Rahul Gandhi’s perpetual attempt to run as an outsider, as if the Congress is not responsible for the tales of woe he recounts, is patently disingenuous. Every single issue he took up, from Bhatta-Parsaul to Bundelkhand, had no follow-up.

There is little aspirational about the Congress politics: it is still tethered to a discourse of noblesse oblige that is out of touch with the dynamism of a society. And personal sincerity has done little to transform the party’s political structure. There are limits to leadership by avoidance. And there are limits to how much he can substitute for local candidates. Rahul, like Rajiv Gandhi, risks being done in by sycophants masquerading as strategists, communalists masquerading as minority protectors, and party officials who do not think that governance matters.

The implications for national politics are immense. Even if it is magnanimous, the incentive for the SP is to ensure that the Congress does not grow. Anti-Congressism also gets a new lease of life. The motive for every party is now to demonstrate that the Congress cannot govern. The Central government has been facing a crisis of authority. Its moral image has been battered; its capacity for negotiating with regional parties has been diminished. These results only exacerbate this crisis of authority. In the short run, expect a rocky political ride. It will take something drastic to reverse this erosion of authority.

Bhanu Pratap Mehta in Indian Express. Here

  

Akilesh Vs Rahul

The emergence of Akhilesh Yadav, son of Mulayam Singh Yadav, the leader of the Samajwadi Party which has won a spectacular victory on its own, as the new shining star of UP politics was totally unexpected by large sections of the public and the Congress Party. The electorate tired of old faces and old style of politics and gimmicks was looking for a Mr.Different and they saw Mr.Different in Akhilesh. Whereas they found Rahul young in looks, but old in thinking and articulation, they found Akhilesh young in looks and young and refreshingly different in his thinking and articulation.

When one saw Akhilesh and Rahul on the TV screen, the difference between the two young personalities was striking. What came out in the case of Akhilesh was his earnestness, seriousness, sincerity and his ability to articulate in a manner that could carry conviction to the public. What came out in the case of Rahul was a lack of such qualities. Akhilesh’s ability to connect instantly with the public and the media stood in refreshing contrast to the inability of Rahul to do so.

B. Raman. Here

Gujarat is the battle for the idea of India

Among the human debris scattered around the courtyard of the Shah-e-Alam relief camp in Ahmedabad, the largest with over 10,000 survivors, are Saira (age 12), Afsana (age 11), Naina (age 12), Anju (age 12), Rukhsat (age 9), Nilofer (age 10), Nilofer (age 9), Hena (age 11). They are all survivors from Naroda Patiya. And they have seen things no child should see. They know words no child should have to learn.

“Balatkar” (Rape) — they know this word. “Mein bataoon didi?” (Shall I tell you?), volunteers a nine year old. “Balatkar ka matlab jab aurat ko nanga karte hain aur phir use jala dete hain” (Rape is when a woman is stripped naked and then burnt). And then she looks fixedly at the floor. Only a child can tell it like it is. For this is what happened again and again in Naroda Patiya — women were stripped, raped and burnt.” (The Survivors Speak, fact-finding by a women's panel, April 16, 2002. P. 13)

Nothing was left of these mutilated women — no bodies, no evidence, no justice. Nothing but the scars on this little girl's mind. I still remember her face, and today 10 years later, I wonder where she is, how she is making her way through life, scarred by this macabre, twisted image of rape. I wonder where those men are, the ones who butchered so many childhoods and got away with it. I wonder, again and again, at the State, whose constitutional duty it was to protect, that colluded in the massacre of its own citizens.
Remains a wound

Ten years to the pogrom in Gujarat, I try to look back. But for me, like for thousands of survivors and activists, it is impossible. How does one look back at something that is so much a part of one's present? And so, Gujarat remains a wound that stays with me always, deep and continuous. I cried often in 2002. I still cry. And I guess that is all right. Because Gujarat should make us collectively weep. And make us truly ashamed of ourselves as a nation.

What happened 10 years ago is the kind of upheaval that refuses to be historicised. That cannot be consigned to the pages of any history book with a full stop at the end. In part because the violence of Gujarat continued for long after February-March 2002, and is continuing today in the frightened little lives lived by scores of destroyed Muslim families; in the lives of thousands of men, women and children still languishing in ‘resettlement colonies' relegated to the margins of Gujarat's seemingly flourishing towns and cities. In part, because many battles for justice are still being bravely waged in the courts, and the narrative is still unfolding. But in greatest part because the ‘meaning' of what Gujarat did to India remains contested.

People say — “move on, get a life, why do activists keep raking up this ‘unpleasant' past? It's been 10 years.” Why? Because if we settle for the past as some would like it scripted, we threaten the meaning of our present, and endanger our future. These contestations are not just about many battles in courtrooms that must be waged. The contestation is about the meaning of citizenship. It is about the relationship between citizen and State. It is about challenging State impunity. Gujarat is the battle for collective memory against forgetting because it is ultimately the battle for the idea of India.

In 1950, India made a constitutional promise to protect the rights of its minorities to live with dignity and with full rights of citizenship. Time and again, that sacred promise has been violated — in Delhi, Nellie, Meerut, Bhagalpur, Hashimpura, Kandhamal, Gujarat and most recently in Gopalgarh (Sept. 2011). In each case, innocents were murdered, maimed, sexually assaulted, burnt out of hearth and home, scattered to the winds, simply because of their minority identity, because of who they were. In each episode of targeted violence, the officers of the State acted in a biased manner, failing in their duty to protect, to prosecute, and to give justice. How long can this go on? How long will those in political power use the might of the State, the guns, and the police, and sirens against one group of citizens and get away with it? Institutional biases of the State machinery cannot be acceptable in any civilised democracy — that is the lesson of Gujarat.

The challenges

The massacre in Gujarat poses many challenges to us as a nation, exposing holes in our hearts, in our social fabric, as well as in our criminal justice system, laws and jurisprudence. Now we cannot legislate against communal prejudice and hatred in the hearts and minds of people. That is a battle that we as a society and a people must wage in a million different ways at a million different moments in our collective and individual lives. But we can and we must legislate to ensure justice to the weak.

Elusive justice

Unlike any other violent episode in India's recent history, Gujarat 2002 tested the strength and resilience of many of our democratic institutions to the fullest. The National Human Rights Commission, the honourable Supreme Court, and the National Commission for Minorities. Each came forward and acted. And yet somehow, that thing called justice still eludes the victims of Gujarat. These victims and survivors call upon us to restore equality in the working of the law for all citizens; to create a legal remedy for institutional bias by the State; to fill the lacunae in our laws and our jurisprudence that has failed time and again to ensure criminal culpability for those in command, those who are never caught with the knives in their hands, but who instruct others to lie, and kill and misuse the law for electoral gain. These are not very tall orders. For, if we get this right it will help realise, better than we have so far, the constitutional promise of justice and equality before law. And without justice, we cannot move on.

A survivor's courage

On January 18, 2008, Bilkis Bano, a Gujarat survivor who had the courage to speak of the unspeakable, withstanding over 20 days of gruelling cross-examination, found a little justice, when 12 accused who had gang-raped her, murdered and raped 14 members of her family, and smashed her three-year-old daughter to the ground during the horrifying days of 2002, were finally awarded life sentences by a Mumbai Session court.

On January 21, 2008, at a press conference in Delhi, Bilkis made this statement:

“For the last six years I have lived in fear, shuttling from one temporary home to the other, carrying my children with me, trying to protect them from the hatred that I know still exists in the hearts and minds of so many people. This judgment does not mean the end of hatred but it does mean that somewhere, somehow justice can prevail.

This judgment is a victory for not only me but for all those innocent Muslims who were massacred and all those women whose bodies were violated only because, like me, they were Muslim. It is a victory because now, hereafter, no one can deny what happened to women in Gujarat in those terrible days and nights of 2002. Because now it will forever be imprinted on the historical record of Gujarat that sexual violence was used as a weapon against us. I pray that the people of Gujarat will some day be unable to live with the stigma of that violence and hatred, and will root it out from the very soil of a State that still remains my home.”

We give up on the battle for justice in Gujarat at our own peril. For in giving up on Gujarat, we give up on hope for a better India — an India that is by right home to each one of us.

Farah Naqvi in The Hindu. Here