I see a lot of people sending messages of Rest in peace “RIP” as soon as they hear about the death of a dear one. Yes, it is an expression of love, affection, and respect. And I know, it is a sensitive matter. I can see a few people thinking of me as ‘insensitive’ as I write this piece. As someone who considers this life only as a stop-over in an eternal journey, I think wishing a departed soul ’Rest In Peace’ (RIP) is not appropriate. It is against the philosophy I subscribe to. I am sure most of my friends who appreciate the Hindu/Indian philosophy of life as a cyclical eternal phenomenon will also agree with me. I enjoy the journey rather than the destination as such.
The concept of RIP (Rest in Peace) has its origins in the Semitic religions that believe the soul, having departed the body, will take rest until the day of final judgment. On this day of judgement, the ‘good’ will go to heaven and the ‘evil’ will be led to their own abode. The notion is of a one-time, one-way journey with no recourse. So, “Resting In Peace” will amount to wishing someone this one-way path, and I do not agree with that. Concepts of heaven and hell are there in Hindu scriptures as well, but the idea there is to have a stop-over in heaven or hell and continue the journey, no matter who you are. It is the same for all beings, from insects to Lord Siva, with no exemption or exception. To take birth is to enter into a short realm of life and gather experiences, good and bad, as fuel to continue the journey which is non-linear and unbound by time and space.
I had an interesting experience a few years back in Detroit. I was attending an engineering conference there in 2009, where I was also the recipient of an award. The award was presented by the father of that stream of engineering, who, having pioneered this field of engineering before the Second World War, was instrumental in developing a prominent methodology that we use even today. In 2009, he was in his early nineties. He took a liking towards me and we decided to take an evening boat cruise together in the Detroit River, which separates the US and Canada (Windsor). He revealed to me that he was also a senior minister within a Christian faction prevalent mainly in the US. I told him that in my family, Christ is revered as a guru, a teacher as were many other enlightened beings in the history of mankind.
After the cruise, I helped him get to his hotel and he sat me down in his room. He offered me a copy of the bible and expressed his wish to write a blessing and a prayer for me on the first page. He told me, with that prayer, he was going to seek my entry into the church of Jesus upon final judgment. Although I am not a born Christian and I have not accepted Christ as my only savior, he assured me that all such ‘shortcomings’ will be overcome once he prays for me. He was a pious older gentleman and I sat there waiting for him to complete his prayer for me. I am all for gathering any blessings I can in this lifetime, and then some!
Partway through, he opened his eyes and asked, ‘Sukumar, what is your wife’s name? I want to include her in the prayer.’ I asked him,’ Which wife’s name should I give to you? My wife of this life, or the ones before this? Maybe, I was the wife in some of the previous lives and then should I find my husbands’ names and give them to you? Maybe I was an animal in some lives. Then what would I do? I said this with due respect to him and he probably saw that in me. He stopped his prayer, wrote a simple message of best wishes in his bible and asked me about what I told him. He asked, ‘do you also have many wives?’ His church permits many wives so there could be more true Christians in the world, but he chose to have only one wife for practical reasons.
I explained to him what I knew about incarnation, reincarnation, the cycle of life and the eternal journey every being is undertaking. I also tried to relate this to the story of Chithrakethu (Bhagavatham -6th Canto).
It was surprising to me that a ninety-two-year-old high priest, a world-renowned authority in an area of science, was not aware of the concept of reincarnation and the cycle of birth and death. It is not that I expected him to subscribe to the idea of the life cycle, but to be not aware that such philosophies existed elsewhere was an eye-opener for me.
He thanked me for introducing the concept to him and asked me about what happened to Chithrakethu in the story I referred to. At ninety-two, his ears were still sharp.
I gave him a short version of the story. Chithrakethu was a king who had no children. He did a lot of austerities to get an offspring and in order to please the gods, he invited the illustrious Sage Angira to conduct a major fire ritual in the palace. At last, to the king’s delight, his youngest wife gave him a son. All his other wives were jealous of her and eventually poisoned the child. The king was beside himself with grief and sought Sage’s counsel again to seek answers to his questions. ‘Where is my child now? Since you were instrumental in getting me a son, you should also help bring him back’.
The sage told the king about the cycle of life and the eternal journey a soul is supposed to take, gathering experiences as it moves on. But the king was not satisfied and insisted the Sage bring his son back to life. The sage, reluctantly arranged for the king to meet up with the soul of the departed son. The king wanted to embrace him, but the child asked, ‘Who are you? On my journey, I have had many relationships, many mothers and fathers, wives and children. Who are you and what is so unique about this relationship with you? In fact all of us, animals and plants included, are ever-related and eternally bound to one another. Having a ‘special bond’ in just one lifetime is not of any relevance to me. Let me move on…’
I wish all departed souls I knew, or not, a silent prayer of Shanthi, Shanthi, Shanthi, (Peace) and a happy journey. Move on my dear….don’t rest even in peace, for long.
Amid all the focus on Jammu and Kashmir in recent times, the status of Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK) consisting of the so-called ‘Azad’ Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) has been largely ignored. Severe media restrictions, both local and international and even apathy has ensured that Pakistan has been able to act with impunity in this region.
Two of Pakistan’s main arguments against the removal of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status under Article 370 are that it would lead to changes in demography and that it is violative of the UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions. Both these arguments are not only false and malicious but it is Pakistan that has been guilty on both these counts.
Thus, the state subject rule has been held in abeyance in GB since the 1970s. This was done to deliberately dilute the Shia/Ismaili character of the region by facilitating the migration of a large number of Sunnis from Pakistan. From 1998 to 2011, due to large-scale migration, it is estimated that the population in GB surged by 63 per cent, as against 22 per cent in so-called ‘AJK’, where the State Subject Rule was still in force. This kind of social engineering has led to severe sectarian strife, especially under General Zia and later on as in 2012, as well as dilution of the local culture and identity.
Among Pakistan’s machinations that have been violative of the UNSC resolutions are the following:
(i) It manipulated letters of accession from the Mirs of Nagar and Hunza even though they had no power of accession since they were under the suzerainty of the Maharaja of J&K. Yet, it suppressed these letters from the UN hoping to include these areas in the plebiscite.
(ii) The Karachi Agreement of 28 April 1949, supposedly signed between a Minister in the Pak Government, the ‘President’ of so-called AJK and the President of the Muslim Conference under which the administrative control of GB was transferred to Pakistan. The travesty was that neither was anyone from GB a signatory to this agreement nor did the so-called AJK Government have any representation from or administrative control over GB and neither did the Muslim Conference have a political presence there.
(Image Credit: NewsBharti.com)
Subsequently, Ibrahim Khan, one of the supposed signatories denied publicly that he had actually signed the Agreement! Despite these dubious facts, Pakistan has been exercising control over the region and lecturing Bharat on constitutionality.
(iii) On March 2, 1963, Pakistan further violated the UN resolutions, when it ceded about 1,868 square miles (5,180 square kms) of GB to China in the Shaksgam Valley even though it was accepted that the sovereignty of the region did not rest with it.
Following the Karachi Agreement Pakistan governed the area through the draconian colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) right up to the 1970s. The FCR, akin to martial law, did not allow any political activity and gave the authorities blanket powers to arrest and interrogate any person.
In 1974-75, the Northern Areas Council Legal Framework Order replaced the FCR, introduced rudimentary administrative and judicial reforms, but did not empower the people of G-B. In 1982, Zia-ul-Haq proclaimed that the people of G-B were not part of the State of J&K and extended martial law to GB declaring it ‘Martial Law Zone-E’ (A to D being the four Provinces).
In 1994, Benazir Bhutto introduced the Northern Areas Legal Framework Order that vested all executive powers with a Federal Minister. The August 2009, Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment of Self-Governance Order changed the name of the region from Northern Areas to G-B. However, the elected Legislative Assembly was functional only in name as the unelected Legislative Council headed by the PM of Pakistan took all decisions.
In 2016, under pressure from China to elevate the constitutional status of GB to a province in order to provide legal cover for Chinese investments under the CPEC, Pakistan set up a high-level committee. This committee headed by Sartaj Aziz, then Adviser to the Pak PM on Foreign Affairs recommended that GB may be provisionally given the special status of a province, pending final settlement of the J&K issue. This led to the Government of Gilgit-Baltistan Order 2018 in May 2018.
However, the Government of Pakistan continued to retain exclusive powers to make laws in critical areas. The matter was taken up in the Supreme Court where an attempt was made to water down the powers of the PM of Pakistan but did not empower the local people. Various legal judgments have underlined the constitutional ambiguity of the area, the denial of fundamental rights of the people and the fact that they have no recourse to an independent judiciary.
Some of these include the 1993 Malik Muhammed Miskeen vs. Government of Pakistan judgment of the AJK High Court and the Supreme Court of Pakistan judgment in the 1999 Al Jehad Trust vs. Federation of Pakistan. The lack of fundamental rights is graphically demonstrated in the case of Baba Jan, a political activist who was detained in 2011 for organizing a protest march of those who had been impacted by a devastating mountain landslide into the Hunza River. He was subsequently convicted for life under anti-Terrorism laws and this for leading a civic protest.
Ever since 1947, Pakistan has sought to treat so-called ‘AJK’ and GB as settled issues while shifting the spotlight on J&K and projecting that the ‘dispute’ is about the latter. The visit of Imran Khan to Muzaffarabad on 14 August, Pak Independence Day and his aggressive and threatening speech testifies to this.
Pakistan has managed to do this by clamping a blanket of censorship on the areas under its control and fomenting terrorism in Bharat’s part. For long, the international community bought this narrative even as successive governments in Bharat were focused on dealing with the consequences of terrorism.
The time has come to shift gears, make Pakistan accountable for keeping these regions suppressed for seven decades and also hold out hope to the people of the area that being a part of J&K, Bharat has not forgotten or forsaken them.
(This article was first published on The Economics Times on August 15, 2019 and has been reproduced here with minor change – references to ‘India’ has been replaced with ‘Bharat’)
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A month after 28-year-old Harish Jatav was brutally thrashed by a Muslim mob in Alwar for accidentally hitting a Muslim woman with his motorbike, his blind father Ratiram Jatav committed suicide after police refused to act against the accused.
The mob, led by one Umar Sher, beat Harish so badly, that he was profusely bleeding and unconscious by the time the police got to him. He died in a Delhi hospital 2 days later.
As per a Panchajanyareport, Ratiram had been continuously imploring police to arrest those responsible for his son’s death, but Rajasthan police claimed that Harish died in the road accident and not due to mob lynching.
Ratiram Jatav (Credit: Panchajanya)
Right from the time of the incident, it was clear what the police stance was going to be, as Alwar SP Paris Deshmukh had said ‘there is no evidence to indicate that the youth’s death was a case of mob lynching’.
Denying a crime or underplaying the matter is usually the first instinct of Bharat’s ill-equipped and over-burdened police. Moreover, secular conditioning by the Nehruvian establishment has resulted in crimes committed by minorities being swept under the carpet, at the altar of political correctness and to avoid ‘polarization’. The most egregious example of this mindset was the Godhra train burning in 2002, where 58 Hindus were burnt alive by a fanatical 1500-strong Muslim mob but our secular establishment tried to pass it off as an ‘accidental fire’.
However, if a minority is the victim of a crime, irrespective of the context such as the victim being a thief/smuggler, all hells break loose and police comes under intense spotlight to act fast & assuage the outrage of left-liberal elites.
Another clear pattern has emerged in the last 3 decades – whenever the Congress or any ‘secular’ party (like Samajwadi, RJD, TMC, NCP) is in power, radical elements in the minority community get emboldened and police apathy towards the majority Hindus becomes even more pronounced.
Harish & Ratiram Jatav’s tragic case is also a telling comment on the ground reality in Bharat. Hindus, despite being a numerical majority, are unable to muster the required numbers & influence to organise sustained protests and force the secular state to pay heed to their concerns. Contrast this with the way serial protests are organized for victims from the minority community like Tabrez Ansari (lynched after being caught stealing), forcing the police & administration to fast-track those cases.
Ironically, the Congress Government in Rajasthan recently passed an anti-lynching law, which provides for life imprisonment and a fine from ₹1 lakh to ₹5 lakh to those convicted in cases of mob lynching leading to victim’s death. Many critics have claimed that the law is a half-baked political move aimed at appeasing Congress’ Muslim votebank. Certain districts in Rajasthan like Alwar & Bharatpur are grappling with a serious cattle smuggling problem, and affected farmers were left with no resort but to form vigilante squads to tackle the menace of the well-armed & ruthless beef mafia. It is these handful cases of cattle smugglers being lynched that has driven the Congress Government to enact the new law, critics allege.
But whether this anti-lynching law will be applied when the victim is a poor Hindu like Harish Jatav, looks extremely doubtful.
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The Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA) held its 2019 annual convention on July 5-7 in Philadelphia, USA. Just as with last year’s conference — also held in the nation’s birthplace — there was no shortage of extremist speakers sharing the podium. But in contrast to 2018, this time the focus was squarely on the Islamist charge into the political sphere. Speakers claimed that Islam required believers to gain political power, impose an Islamic doctrine on America, and fundamentally reshape American society.
Snapshots from MUNA’s recent annual convention, one of a growing number of forums nationwide where children can mingle with Islamist radicals.
Ayman Hammous, executive director of the Muslim American Society (MAS, the American affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood), stated that “Islam is needed at the spiritual level, at the social level, at the political level.” Movita Johnson-Harrell, a state representative from Pennsylvania, called on Muslims to “occupy every space of this world.”
Nihad Awad, co-founder of the Hamas-backed group Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), told convention participants that it is their “duty as Muslims” to engage in civil and political advocacy. “Our faith is based on action,” Awad proclaimed, arguing that Muslims on the political sidelines are not “true believers.” Georgia state senator Sheikh Rahman urged Muslims to get involved in local politics, insisting that “they have the responsibility” and should do “what is right for this country.”
And Zahid Bukhari, president of the Islamic Circle of North America, a JI (Jamaat-e-Islami) proxy group, recalled a chat he once had with Rached Ghannouchi, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Ennahda movement in Tunisia, on the best way to establish Islam “on the practical level” in the United States.9560433151
ICNA President Zahid Bukhari tells attendees that it will take time to “establish Islam as a way of life” in the U.S. because Muslims are a minority.
According to Bukhari, Ghannouchi said there are two options to Islamize society: if a country has a sitting Muslim majority, the government could “practically establish Islam as a way of life on this planet Earth or at least in their own country.” But if Muslims are in the minority, particularly in the West, Muslim organizations should promulgate Islam across society until their influence has grown large enough.
Ghannouchi’s Ennahda movement is an ominous example of the consequences of electing an Islamist movement to power. After being involved with coup attempts in the 1980s, Ennahda triumphantly obtained a majority in the first Tunisian democratic elections of 2011. It did not take long for party leaders to show their true colors.
Ennahda legalized Hizb ut-Tahrir, a violent pan-Islamist party which seeks to re-establish a worldwide caliphate. It maintained close relations with Ansar Al Sharia Tunisia (AST), an offshoot of Al Qaeda, and allowed the organization to operate freely in Tunisia while permitting other Salafi extremists to take over mosques and incite Tunisians to wage jihad.
While MUNA claims to be a benign nonprofit group devoted to “social service” and developing the “personal, moral and social quality of human life,” it is also closely linked to the Bangladeshi branch of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), a violent South Asian Islamist movement. In 2014, Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre named Jamaat’s student wing in Bangladesh, Islami Chhatra Shibir, as the third-most violent non-state armed group in the world.
In South Asia, JI is best known for its involvement in the 1971 Bangladeshi war of independence, during which JI operatives helped Pakistani forces murder tens of thousands of Bangladeshis.
Pennsylvania state rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell (left), Georgia state senator Sheikh Rahman
At the 2019 conference, State Representative Movita Johnson Harrell insisted that Muslims “are the example for peace and love.” This pleasant-sounding pronouncement seemed rather incongruous on a stage shared with leading extremist preachers such as Suleiman Hani, who has promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories and complained that individuals who bring up the Holocaust and Jews for “objective discussion” are “labeled as antisemites”; and Suhaib Webb, who has declared that adulterers should be stoned to death and warned Muslim youth that they are being “pounded by the ideology of the Kuffar [a derogatory term for non-Muslims].”
One of these war criminals, Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, JI’s assistant secretary general, was the guest of honor at a 2010 MUNA picnic. Another JI leader, Mir Quasem Ali (hanged by Bangladesh for mass murder in 2016), was the brother of MUNA executive board member Masum Ali. And sessions at MUNA’s 2019 conference were moderated by Nakibur Rahman, son of executed JI criminal Moitur Nizami. Today, Rahman remains a fervent advocate of his father’s work, and mourns him as a great martyr.
Islamist ideologue Abul A’la Mawdudi founded JI with the declared belief that politics are “an integral, inseparable part of the Islamic faith,” a necessary step towards “the Islamic state that Muslim political action seeks to build.” As with Mawdudi, many of the MUNA 2019 convention speakers called for establishing Islam as a complete way of life in the United States.
Last year, a number of elected officials merely endorsed MUNA’s convention. This year, multiple elected officials accepted MUNA’s invitation to speak alongside a collection of hardline preachers and activists from America’s Islamist establishment. Did Reps. Johnson-Harrell and Rahman not know about the extremism of their host and fellow speakers? Or did they not mind? Certainly, Johnson-Harrell’s words were not very different from those of the other speakers calling for political involvement as a means to impose Islam.
Lawful Islamists tend to associate religious devotion with political activism. Civic participation as an act of piety is a popular tenet of Mawdudism, one that points to the ideological bonds between JI and MUNA. But Islamists of all stripes tend to have dreams of theocratic domination; and until the 9/11 terror attacks, they were not shy about saying so in public.
Since then, American Islamists abruptly became much more circumspect about revealing their designs. Yet now, MUNA and its Islamist allies are celebrating the Muslim community’s growing political power, and openly declaring their aspiration once again to use that power to reshape America.
(This article was published on meforum.org on August 2, 2019 and has been reproduced here in full.)
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(This article first appeared on the author’s blog on 11 April, 2018 and has been reproduced here in an edited form with consent.)
President Donald Trump has said that the United States of America has foolishly handed Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid over the last 15 years while getting nothing in return, and has pledged to put a stop to it.
But why did the US spend so much money on Pakistan even after knowing that terrorist Osama Bin Laden got safe shelter in Pakistan? One cannot sweep this under the carpet by just saying that US committed a foreign policy blunder. It’s an action by proxy, aiding Islamic Jihad against Bharat.
Let us recall glimpses of history. British purposely favoured Urdu institutions in Bharat. They helped Jinnah create a separate nation based on principle of Islamic separatism. In Africa, they aided Islamic Jihad, then cracked down on it and started preaching Christianity. Throughout history, one can notice a hidden alliance of Islam and Christianity, especially when it comes to ‘pagans’ like Hindus. We cannot deny the crusade wars between Islam & Christianity, but even in Bharat we can see Christian NGOs are the first one to appease Islamic institutions.
When over a thousand Hindus are killed and over a quarter million Hindus ethnically cleansed in Kashmir, or when Christian terrorists kill indigenous people in North-East Bharat for decades, the Western media doesn’t even notice. But watch the worldwide hue and cry when Islamists & Christian evangelists gang up to concoct stories of ‘minority persecution’ in Bharat.
US hypocrisy on fighting terrorism
United States of America considers Saudi Arabia as a vital partner. Let us not restrict this to oil greed because US itself has a great amount of domestic oil resources. US bombarded Iraq on charges of weapons of mass destruction which were never found. But US never bombarded Saudi Arabia although Saudi Arabia is probably the single biggest exporter of Islamist ideology fuelling global terrorism.
In the case of Pakistan, US just gives a stern warning and Pakistan continues to receive financial aid. But in Yemen, the scenario is completely different. US-Saudi coalition is targeting Yemen’s energy and water infrastructure, causing the worst cholera outbreak in history. When the United States of America does evil abroad, it’s almost always shrouded in secrecy and deception.
US aiding terrorist groups
It is well known that the same mujahideen who were funded and armed by US via Pakistan to fight USSR in Afghanistan, turned on the Western world after the end of the Cold War. A lot of money & weaponry given by US to Pakistan has found its way to the jihadi groups who are carrying out Pakistani’s proxy war in Kashmir.
How did ISIS get advanced weapons? US role in funding different dubious actors in the ISIS-led jihadi war against Syria, is well documented. Amnesty International said in its report – “The stockpile of weaponry being used by Islamic militants to kill, terrorize, and attack hapless civilians worldwide actually came from more than 25 countries including China, Russia, US, and the European Union states.”
So how can Bharat expect US to cooperate with honest spirit in fighting the Islamic Jihad of Pakistan?
Drama of putting sanctions on Pakistan by world bodies
In December 2015, The Tribune reported that “more than 300 million euros projects will be setup for rural development of Pakistan.” EU thinks that poverty fuels religious extremism. However, Osama Bin Laden, even though he was a terrorist, belonged to one of the richest families of Saudi Arabia. Hafiz Saeed lives a luxurious life in Pakistan.
US is steadily losing ground in the Afghan war. Delaying a grant of $1 billion to Pakistan and compelling it to take strong action against the Haqqani network will not serve any purpose.
Bharat should not get satisfied with measures like Financial Action Task Force (FATF) contemplating putting Pakistan into its grey list for failing to implement mechanisms against money laundering and terror financing.
This ‘Grey list’ has little practical impact. Despite the fact that during 2012-15 many such actions were taken against Pakistan, still what Bharat got was the Pathankot and Uri attacks.
False allegations by the United States of America on Bharat
Bharat and US already had a serious face off during WTO negotiations. The WTO ruling went against Bharat for favouring local manufacturers in solar development programmes. It shows clear hypocrisy of the West. On the one hand, they pollute the environment far more than the rest of us, and pressurise us to reduce emissions while also trying to kill our domestic manufacturers who are working hard on alternative energy solar projects.
In 2017, a a US government panel accused the Bharatiya police and judiciary of being biased and flawed to “create a pervasive climate of impunity in which religious minorities feel increasingly insecure and have no recourse when religiously-motivated crimes occur.’’
But the reality is very different. Supreme Court of Bharat refused to order investigations against those who perpetrated murder and ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus in 1989-90. Hindus in Kashmir were butchered and drive out by Islamists and yet our judiciary refused to take any action. Yet, the US Government wants the world to believe that the Bharatiya legal system is biased towards Hindus.
Clever ploy
John Dayal is the ex-President of All India Catholic Union. He gave testimony against Bharat in US House of Representatives on April 4, 2014. This man is expert in blaming Hindus all the time. None of the Bharatiya news channels debated this for continuous stretch like they did in Dadri case.
The crack down by Modi Government on Christian NGOs breaking Bharatiya laws became headlines for US and UK newspapers. But has the Western media ever bothered to investigate the immense harm done by the Christian evangelists operating in ‘third-world’ countries? It was amazing to see how interested the Western media was in a localized crime like Akhlaq’s murder. Many Christian pastors are convicted in various serious offences, but still Hindus are seen as aggressors in the eyes of the Western world.
Conclusion
Bharat cannot expect any genuine help from US. Pakistan will continue infiltrating terrorists into Bharat, while the West turns a blind eye. It doesn’t mean we consider the West our enemy, just that we should keep our national interest above all else.
(This article first appeared on the author’s blog on 11 April, 2018 and has been reproduced here in an edited form with consent.)
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Muslim mob jams highway, attacks buses and burns a motorcycle (Credit: Patrika.com)
On Sunday, Hindu kanwariya pilgrims returning after doing jal abhishek at a Shiv mandir in the Ramganj area of walled city in Jaipur were pelted with stones by a Muslim mob, injuring 5 Hindus.
The next day, which also happened to be the day of the Eid festival, a large mob from the Muslim community gathered around 10 PM on the Delhi highway near Idgah in Galta Gate police station area. They started shouting provocative slogans and pelted stones on passenger buses and other small vehicles running on the highway.
A bus travelling to Haridwar was stopped, people inside were abused and physically attacked. The mob also reached Mandi Khatikan and pelted stones on Hindu houses. Police rushed to control the situation, but they were also pelted with stones.
Muslim mob jams highway, attacks buses and burns a motorcycle (Credit: Patrika.com)
In total 17 people, including 2 policemen, were injured in the mob violence on Monday night. 15 vehicles were vandalised and one motorcycle torched. Police had to use teargas to control the situation. Internet services were snapped in at least 10 police station areas and heavy police force was deployed in many parts of the city.
Police has lodged a case against 60 people for the Monday night violence and arrested 5 of them – Rashid, Shaukat, Liaqat, Babudin, Liaqat (Bablu) – reports Hindi newspaper Dainik Bhaskar.
English-language newspaper Times of India has stated that the trouble started when members of the ‘minority community’ blocked the highway, but blamed members of two communities for pelting stones at each other.
On Tuesday, an argument broke out between some Hindus standing outside a temple and some Muslims in Rawalji ka Bazar in Gangapol area of the walled city. Both sides started pelting stones on each other, but the situation was calming down when a huge mob came from Nalbandha area and started rioting. Many women and children visiting the market were trapped and some took shelter in a room near the temple. Many vehicles were damaged and 6 people were injured.
Stone pelting at Gangapol area, Jaipur (Credit: Patrika.com)
Police resorted to lathi charge and had to fire around 100 teargas shells to bring the situation under control. IPC Section-144 (prohibiting assembly of 5 or more people) was imposed in 15 police station areas of the city, bringing half of Jaipur under a curfew-like situation.
By Wednesday, the city was limping back to normal. As per reports, police in the Congress-ruled state had identified over 150 rioters though CCTV footage and other means, and arrested 40.
Victims of Jaipur stone pelting – Ranjit, Raj Virendra (Credit: Patrika.com)
Indian Express carried a brief report on the violence today, in which it reported a ‘clash between two communities’ & masked the identity of the mob which blocked the Delhi highway on Monday night by stating that ‘Hundreds of people had blocked the Delhi highway road on Monday night earlier this week’.
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Screen-grab from TOI video report about violent protests outside Bharatiya High Commission, London
In a major breakdown of law & order in London, UK, Bharatiya diaspora celebrating Independence Day outside Bharat’s High Commission were abused & attacked by an organized 1000-strong mob of violent protesters, comprising chiefly of Pakistanis and Khalistanis.
The hooligans hurled abuse at the Bharatiya diaspora, including women and children, and threw various projectiles – eggs, glass bottles, shoes, plastic bottles, lighters, bananas, batteries, potatoes, hot coffee, placards, apples – over the heads of the thin line of police who were desperately trying to hold them back. Many PIOs (People of Indian Origin) were hit and some injured.
Screen-grab from TOI video report about violent protests outside Bharatiya High Commission, London
Police was vastly numbered, as many violent Pakistani protesters had even been bussed from other cities like Birmingham and Nottingham at 12 PM.
As per this Times of India report, many wondered why police failed to deter the protesters and questioned the role of London mayor Sadiq Khan, a British Muslim of Pakistani descent (his grandparents had migrated from Lucknow, UP during partition) –
“The violent protesters on Aldwych were being held back by horses from entering India Place, where the Indian diaspora were celebrating. They had ignored barriers set up for them and taken over the road and, before long, had let off smoke bombs to upset and confuse the police horses.
Then, after a couple of hours, a group of protesters appeared from the other side of India Place which had not been closed off by police. The Indian families, many of whom had children, were then sandwiched in and trapped as obstacles were thrown at them from all sides.
Families with small children were trapped for hours between the violent protesters and the cultural programme was called off. Finally, at 3.30 pm, time hundreds of riot police were called, who, whilst battling items being thrown at them, pushed the protesters back. Hundreds of Indians then took refuge inside the high commission building until the police were able to clear a safe route.
The Metropolitan police said four people were arrested under Section 4 of the Public Order Act, for affray, obstruction of police and possession of an offensive weapon.
Chandrabali Nandy, from London, was trapped in India Place with her six-year-old and four-year-old sons who she had brought for the celebrations, for hours. “We want to leave and we can’t get out” she told TOI at 3pm. “It’s terrible. How can I explain to my kids what is happening? We had come here to peacefully celebrate Independence Day.”
Jay shah, a member of Friends of India Society International, said: “It is very sad that law and order has failed in London. When Trump said it was failing, he was right. I blame London mayor Sadiq Khan for this absolute failure. They knew how many protesters were coming. They should have banned some of them. We have seen nothing but violence, intimidation and abuse.”
A young PIO Kashmiri girl called Ash, 14, who lives in Leicester, said: “I came here to celebrate. I have been hit with eggs twice. They have been violent and we have been peaceful. The police have allowed them to get too close. I don’t feel safe at all.”
Parin Shah, 32, said: “Why were there not more police? There were a few hundred of us and thousands of them had come in coachloads. The police let them go across barriers and get far too close.”
Pravin Patel, 73, had his forehead cut when he was hit by a bottle of mineral water. “We have seen total inaction by the police,” Harish Patel said.”
A clip from a Sky News report shows the size of the large mob which was trying to storm inside the High Commission, and was just about held back by London police –
Bharat has waged a grim struggle for over 1300 years against those who aimed to not just loot & plunder our wealth, but eradicate our civilization from the face of the earth.
When we talk of the freedom struggle, modern historians refer only to the fight against the British colonizers. The distorted idea of Nehruvian ‘secularism’ keeps us away from openly acknowledging the heroic resistance put up by our ancestors against the fanatical Islamic hordes that periodically invaded this land from Arabia, Central Asia, Turkey and Persia.
When celebrated ‘public intellectuals’ like Ramachandra Guha portray two of our brightest heroes, Chatrapati Shivaji and Maharana Pratap as mere “regional figures”, it goes to show that we might have won our physical freedom from the colonizers to a large degree, but mentally we are still severely colonized.
Even when it comes to the freedom struggle against the British, we have a skewed view of events. There is very little known of the period from 1757 to 1857, when the British East India company plundered the country, and slowly, but surely, gobbled up large parts of the country through deception and war. For eg., most of us know little about the 3 Anglo-Maratha wars or the 2 Anglo-Sikh wars, which resulted in the fall of the two empires (Maratha and Sikh) that had all but obliterated the previous foreign colonizers (Mughals) who ruled over Bharat.
We know next to nothing about the destruction wreaked on ordinary Bharatiya farmers and others, which triggered the mass immigration of around 1 million indentured laborers (‘Girmitiyas‘) to colonial plantations in Fiji, Carribean and Africa, forced to work there in slave-like conditions even after slavery had been allegedly abolished by the ‘enlightened’ British.
And while we thankfully do remember the revolt of 1857 and its leading lights like Rani Lakshmibai, our ‘educated’ class is still confused whether to call it a ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ as the British do, or the ‘First War of Independence’.
We have been led to believe that the freedom struggle started in right earnest only after Gandhi returned to Bharat from South Africa in 1915 and started the non-cooperation movement a few years later. The revolutionary energy coursing through the length & breadth of the country in the period from 1900 – 1920 has been all but forgotten. The role played by Subhash Chandra Bose’s INA (Indian National Army) and the 1946 Naval War Mutiny in finally pushing the British out has been systematically downplayed.
When we look at the 20th century freedom fighters, there is a clear hierarchy that has been seared into our collective consciousness through academia, Government and popular culture.
At the top, Tier 1, we have one man above all else – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He is the ‘father of the nation’ – the man who galvanized the masses using the principle of Ahimsa (non-violence) to bring about a change of heart in the British imperialists, or so we are told. There is just no objective analysis of Gandhi’s ideas in our official records, no rational study of the good and bad outcomes of his policies, no enquiry into why a man with such a troubling personal life is looked upon as a Mahatma (spiritually evolved soul) and not just as a political leader.
Tier 2 is also occupied for just one man, Jawaharlal Nehru – hand-picked by Gandhi to become the first PM of the country, overruling the majority decision of other Congress leaders who had chosen the far more experienced, grassroots leader Sardar Vallabhai Patel. After Gandhi’s assassination, Nehru ruled Bharat with an iron-grip, proudly expressing his scorn for our civilizational roots when he identified himself as the last “Englishman to rule India”. With such a man as Prime Minister for the crucial first 17 years after Independence, it is no wonder that many Indians still think British colonial rule was ‘good for the country.’
Tier 3 is reserved for leaders who have been given secondary status by the Marxist historians who wrote our history after Independence. It consists of people like Subhash Chandra Bose, BR Ambedkar, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Lokmanya Tilak, Bhagat Singh, Lala Lajpat Rai, Chandrashekhar Azad etc. Their names are still remembered but many of their thoughts and ideas, which do not fit the Nehruvian secularist worldview, have been kept hidden from the public. This group also includes leaders like controversial Islamic scholar Maulana Abul Kalam Azad whose true intentions behind opposing the partition have been masked.
Tier 4 is for those freedom fighters who are reviled, or just plain forgotten because they were out & out revolutionaries and as such anathema to the Gandhians who want the country to believe that ahimsa won us our freedom. Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad are the only violent revolutionaries who seem to have stayed on in public memory, but not due to any lack of effort on the part of Marxist historians who are still trying to get them labeled as ‘terrorists’. And one figure is reviled above all else by the Nehruvians and Marxists – Vinayak Damodar Savarkar – for he dared proclaim an ideology steeped in this country’s civilizational roots.
This group of forgotten heroes also includes the spiritual seers who reminded a brutalized people about the glory of Dharma, and who countered the malicious intellectual propaganda that mentally colonized generations of our countrymen – figures like Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Sri Aurobindo, Swami Shraddhanand, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya etc. Here again, Swami Vivekananda is an exception whose vision & sheer eloquence couldn’t be suppressed by the secularists, but they are still trying to label him as a ‘Hindu supremacist’.
Other forgotten heroes include those like Gopal Patha, who ensured that hard won freedom was not frittered away to the enemy within.
So this Independence Day, let us pledge to remember those forgotten and unfairly maligned freedom fighters, who looked a brutal, supremacist, cunning enemy in the eye & fought till the last drop of blood; who kept our civilizational memory alive when all seemed lost; who believed and lived Dharma, so that we could continue striving for the final freedom which is yet to be won – the unshackling of our minds.
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The only unfinished agenda on Kashmir is the liberation of POK from Pakistani clutches. Had the then Prime Minister Nehru not gone to the UN & declared ceasefire when Bharatiya forces were on the verge of expelling the Pakistani army & tribal invaders from what is now POK, the Kashmir problem would not have existed & so many people would not have lost their lives.
The present government has rectified a part of the blunder committed seven decades earlier by abrogating Article 370 & bifurcating the state into 2 Union territories, much to the chagrin of Pakistan along with the oldest national party of our country (or what is left of it).
The sham & the rhetoric played out by Pakistan was on expected lines but the support they are getting from the Congress is shameful & disgraceful. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra called the move undemocratic & unconstitutional, even though the abrogation was passed overwhelmingly by Bharat’s Parliament.
Perhaps she & the CWC forgot about the imposition of Emergency in 1975 by her grandmother which was the biggest undemocratic & unconstitutional act in the history of independent Bharat.
Inspite of opposition from within the Congress, the CWC went ahead in calling the abrogation of Article 370 as ‘unconstitutional & undemocratic’ which showed that it was totally out of sync with the mood of the nation & the voice of the ordinary citizen from Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh who has got nothing from the special status.
This folly of the Congress will haunt it in the years to come & could further hasten its plummeting graph.
As for Pakistan, the terrorist state was jolted & shell shocked at the masterstroke by Modi & Shah as could be seen by the deliberations in its National assembly by none other than the PM, who was seen playing to the galleries and asking whether he should attack Bharat as he had tried everything else.
The Pakistani Foreign Minister’s haplessness after the initial flamboyance was an admission of the ground reality. The Pakistanis were buoyed by the Trump goof up on Kashmir, but since then America has corrected itself leaving Pakistan in the lurch.
The western media’s tirade & fake reporting on Kashmir is nothing new. They love to conjure up human rights abuse stories for their own TRPs, conveniently forgetting their own backyard & the mess that their governments created in third world & developing countries around the world.
BBC’s howler on Kashmir will further alienate the western media from the developing world audience, apart from reinforcing the bias that they harbour against countries like Bharat. Anti-Hindu mindset is deeply embedded in the British establishment, so such bias should not surprise anyone.
These media houses are a pale shadow of what they were in their hey days & such frivolous & fake reporting will further erode their credibility.
Bharat needs to up the ante diplomatically & politically against any attempt by hostile nations & media to project false or cooked-up stories in the Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh.
As Pakistan & the western world and their media are ill at ease with the calm prevailing in Kashmir, one can only imagine the level they will stoop to if there are any sporadic skirmishes in the valley. For the moment, the government deserves full credit for handling Kashmir the way it has.
The government would also do well to further strengthen ties with its all weather friend Russia which has provided unflinching support to Bharat amidst sometimes wavering international opinion.
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Imagine a family living in a large beautiful ancestral home. The house, originally belonging to the family, was an advanced and cultured place where everyone lived happily, independently and progressively. Then came, as a consequence of series of disastrous misadventures, some vindictive, baleful and rancorous ‘invaders’ with duplicitous and destructive ideology and initially nestled themselves in the adjacent house.
Gradually they started expanding their reach, swallowing their vicinity, creating havoc and destruction throughout, eventually forcing in themselves into the adjacent beautiful home. They gradually takes over the house, causes havoc in the lives of original inhabitants, rape their women, kill their children and converts the magnanimous aroma of the house into the dark tenebrous reflection of destruction.
One day they partition the house into two separate houses – one for themselves. When they have no one to pour their liquid of destruction upon, they threaten the life of original inhabitants left in their part of house. Time turns its wheels and atrocities on ‘minorities’ in the separate house – the original inhabitants – doesn’t stop. Deleterious tides turns into annihilating tsunami. Neighbouring house members jumps into the tsunami to save the others, and with their mighty strength saves the one part of the other house from another part’s inflicted destruction.
The fight ends and as a result new house is created from the other house, which itself was created just few years prior. But the plight of original inhabitants – still the minority in the new other house – sees no improvement. Atrocities continues but in a more sophisticated and silent way, this time by the authorities of the newly created house. Culprit changes but the victim doesn’t. Years later the original inhabitants are mere walking dead.
This is pretty much the story of Bangladeshi Hindus. They’ve been subject to brutal atrocities and destruction committed by the majority of Bangladesh creating a condition of ethnic cleansing. The recent mass addition to the list was made in 2017. In the year 2017 alone, according to the Bangladesh Jatiya Hindu Mojahote, an umbrella organisation representing Hindus within Bangladesh, 107 Bangladeshi Hindu civilians were murdered, 31 Hindu victims disappeared, at least 25 Hindu women and girls were raped, 23 Hindus were forcefully converted and 235 Hindu temples and statues within Bangladesh were desecrated.
The same report also claimed that 782 Bangladeshi Hindus were forced to flee to Bharat due to persecution by the Bangladeshi government and radical Islamist groups. This means that 6,474 different atrocities were committed against the Hindu community in Bangladesh in 2017. Which was even higher at 11,335 in 2016. One example of that was seen in Sovandadi village of Patiya, Chittagong where houses of 20 to 22 Hindu families were burned to the ground.
And these are all just the ‘reported ones’. Shipan Kumar Basu, the head of the Hindu Struggle Committee, believes that many atrocities within Bangladesh are unreported: “A lot of Hindu homes were burned in Chittagong Moheshkhali and there were other crimes that occurred against the minorities but they were not published in any newspaper.”
The problem does not end there. Entire establishment of the state of Bangladesh functions, directly and indirectly, either in support of the culprits or in ignorance of the conflict. The atrocities, most of the time, is the subject of no value to the Bangladesh authorities. And the culprits in fact sometimes gets a helping hands from the establishment.
A Hindu being beaten by Muslims in a mosque in Bangladesh. He was captured outside the mosque while going home. After Friday prayers were over, the Muslims came out and grabbed the first Hindu they could. Mr. Vimal Patak a Bangladeshi born Hindu was beaten to death with sticks as the Muslim mullas (priests) chanted “kill the Kafir!” (non-muslim). With folded hands he begged for his life and died a brutal death. Source – Hindu Jagruti Samiti.
Following Bangladesh’s War of Independence, almost 10 million Hindus were displaced, thus making it difficult for the authorities to establish direct ownership of property within specified legal timeframes and this reality showed the real face of Bangladesh authorities. The establishment, specifically the Awami League government confiscated 1.05 million acres of the Hindu land through Vested Property Act, 1972 and benefitted from the turmoil, showing absolutely no care for the Hindus. The authorities have time and again proved they hold no sympathy and sense of responsibility towards the Hindus.
These all are not one off incidents and the ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh dates back years. The ugliest turn in the time was, of course, the 1971 War of Liberation.
The 1971 Persecution
In 1971, throughout the 9 month long persecution carried out by Pakistan’s Army in the then East Pakistan, the primary target was the Hindu community. The Muslim Pakistani Army unleashed a series of ‘holocaust’ like deleterious vindictive persecution, abduction, destruction, mass killing and raping of, predominantly, Hindus with an evil objective of quashing Hindu culture and religion in their ‘territory’.
As Sunday Times journalist Anthony Mascarenhas reported at the time, “I was getting my first glimpse at the stain of blood which has spread over the otherwise verdant land of East Bengal. First, it was the massacre of non-Bengalis in a savage outburst of Bengali hatred. Now, it is a massacre carried out by the West Pakistan Army. Hindus, hunted from village to village and door to door, were shot off-hand after a cursory short-arm inspection showed they were uncircumcised. I have seen truckloads of human targets and those who had the humanity to help them hauled off under the cover of darkness and curfews. I have witnessed the brutality of kill and burn missions after the army who cleared off the rebels pursued pogroms in the towns and villages. Women were raped or had their breasts torn out with specifically fashioned knives. Children did not escape the horror. The lucky ones were killed with their parents but many thousands of others go through what remains of them with eyes gouged out and limbs amputated.”
Hindus were subjected to extreme brutality and inhumanity waged on them by the Pakistan Armed forces under the blood soaked veil of jihad. Hindus of East Pakistan suffered the one of the worst of genocides in history. The year was the darkest in the already dark century for them. 2.5 million to 3 million Hindus were slaughtered including women and children. Absolute barbarity and intense hatred was poured over them from the bucket of Jihad. And many (fortunates) fled the blood field to protect themselves and their family.
As Hindus were the prime targets of army, no wonder 80% of refugees fleeing East Pakistan were Hindus. 8 – 10 million Hindus fled as refugees into Bharat during a systematic genocide in 1971 by the then Muslim East Pakistan Army. The destruction was planned and systematically executed.
Reminiscent of the Jewish holocaust, Hindu homes and shops were marked by a yellow “H” to guide the marauding army to their targets. Sydney H. Schanberg, The New York Times correspondent to Dhaka in 1971, gave the first hand account of the brutal massacre of Hindus in Bangladesh. Schanberg reported “Hardest hit have been members of the Hindu community who have been robbed of their lands and shops, systematically slaughtered, and in some places, painted with yellow patches marked ‘H’. All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad.”
Women were subjected to unimaginable misery and they became victim, for just being born into a different faith, to baleful deleteriousness ‘medieval’ brutality. Schanberg shedding light on the disturbing plight of Hindu women at the hands of Muslim Army wrote “The Pakistan army and the Razakars did not stop at simply massacring Hindus. They also took to raping Bengali women. During nine months in 1971, over 200,000 Bengali women and girls were raped. Many were taken as sex slaves and raped multiple times by the Pakistani army.”
Tribal Hindu housewives, gang raped by Islamic fanatics. The insult made them speechless. (Mukti-Mona.com/Sujit Das)
Insult to injury was Bharatiya ‘secular’ media’s systematic blackout of the massacre. Never they made for the way for realism in reporting and never they reported what foreign media did with grit. Majority of the Bharatiya populace were unaware of that planned destruction of their kith and kin.
The 1971 genocide was a construct and a manifestation of the idea that led to series of minor jihadi incidents affecting the innocent Hindus ever since the 1947 partition. 1971 was neither the start nor the end.
The Unnatural Change of Demographics
The pattern of degradation and destruction of Hindu community, demography, culture and religion as a whole shows crystallinity about systematic-ness of it. Right from the 1951, we see a rapid and consistent decline in Hindu population in Bangladesh (East Pakistan 1947-1971).
Before partition Hindus in the then East Bengal comprised 30-31% of the total population. Partition led to huge influx of Hindus in Bharat and out-flux of Muslims in East Pakistan. Migration reduced the number of Hindus in East Pakistan to about 22% of the total population as per the 1951 survey. Decades after partition, when the sands were settled, the religious demography of East Pakistan was supposed to be stable. But it didn’t settle, instead the Hindus were consistently diminishing and reducing in numbers.
With the same Socio-economic conditions, ethnicity, landscape, fertility and mortality rate, stable and continues religious demography was something naturally expected. But despite similar conditions, the minorities in Bangladesh, unnaturally, kept on vanishing. “Due to unabated persecution, intimidation, and forcible conversion to Islam, the Hindu-Minority population kept on dwindling” wrote Rahul Gupta for Hindu Jagruti Samiti.
A study of government data from 1941-2011 shows clear signs of diminishing Hindu population and unnatural change in demographics. In 1961, Hindu population decreased to 18.50% of total population. As a result of genocide, it further sliced to 13.50% in 1971. Eventually decreasing to 10.70% according to latest census of 2011. But at the same time the Muslim population kept on increasing and expanding from 78.90% in 1951 to 89.10% by 2011.
The effects of forceful change in demographics touched the vicinal West Bengal also, where Hindu population between 1951 and 1991 decreased by 4.1% while the Muslim population increased by 3.6%.
The continuous hate crimes, prosecution, killings, forceful conversions, mass destruction, religious desecration and slow demographical vanishing of Hindu community are crystalline and pellucid indications of a horrific ethnic cleansing of Bangladeshi Hindus. But the world is still either unaware or intentionally silent on this systematic ethnic cleansing.
In a globalised world where illegal Rohingya refugees are revered and garlanded with, the innocent Hindus of Bangladesh are met with step-motherly inhumanly treatment. Large international organisations like United Nations never uttered a word in favour of millions of Hindus subjected to this brutality and hate crimes.
Every nation has intentionally sided themselves with the culprits by choosing to remain silent, including the state of Bharat. Each global media has betrayed the ethics of journalism and essential values of humanity by ignoring such a huge case of ongoing ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh. Bangladesh establishment is equally responsible and participant in this crime, as they chose to create a system and ‘culture of impunity’ for the culprits.
But when we try to dig deep and search for the biggest reason behind this generalisation of prosecutions of Hindus, there comes no one to blame more than the Hindus themselves. It is the Hindus across the globe most responsible for such generalisation as they chose ignorance, silence, inaction and pseudo secularism over cultural values, warrior mentality, dharma philosophy, divine teachings of protecting dharma and courageous attitude.
If it wasn’t for Hindu silence on Hindu causes, none would have dared to carry such heinous systematic destruction of Bangladeshi Hindus. The mighty Hindu community must understand that the lack of cultural and religious coordination, the lack of will and determination and the lack of co-religionist cooperation will only harm the Hindu and Santana interests leading to degradation of idea of Bharat.
It is time, the world speaks against the inhuman barbarity by the subjects of Bangladesh against its minorities and put the Bangladeshi establishment accountable for prosecution of Hindus.
As Elie Wiesel once said, “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” It is time the humanity speaks against this ethnic cleansing of Bangladeshi Hindus.
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