First woman detained under India's controversial Love Jihad laws 'forced into miscarriage'
Joe Wallen
The Telegrap Sat, December 12, 2020, 9:48 AM CST
Rashid & Pinky have been forced apart
The first woman detained under India's controversial new 'Love Jihad' laws has miscarried in custody, her family have told The Sunday Telegraph.
Yesterday a distraught Muskan Jahan, 22, called her mother-in-law, from a government shelter where she is being held in the city of Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh, saying she had bled profusely and then lost her baby.
Mrs Jahan believes her three-month-pregnant daughter-in-law was given an injection to abort the baby by staff because she converted from Hinduism to Islam and married a Muslim man.
“The tyrannical world has said goodbye to this child before he was able to see the world,” said Mrs Jahan.
Muskan's husband Rashid, 27, is being held in an unknown prison in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly coercing Muskan into converting from Hinduism to Islam by marrying her.
Uttar Pradesh passed legislation last month designed to prevent marriages arranged to convert Hindu women into Muslims, a practice known as 'Love Jihad'. But critics say the law is a poorly disguised attempt by the Hindu nationalist ruling party of prime minister Narendra Modi to break up interfaith unions.
The arrests have driven protests against BJP-lead government
The arrests have driven protests against BJP-lead government
A further four Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled (BJP) states are expected to pass similar laws later this month, despite the Indian government admitting in February it had not been able to find one case of so-called 'Love Jihad' nationwide.
While the law doesn’t specify any religion, police in Uttar Pradesh are targeting Muslims - at least ten Muslim men have been arrested so far but no Hindus.
Muskan and Rashid met when Rashid left his impoverished family home to work as a hairdresser in the northern Indian city of Dehradun.
Scraping to get by, he began to grow close to another migrant worker from Uttar Pradesh, a woman then known as Pinky.
The pair were employed by adjacent salons and Rashid began walking to work every morning with Pinky, making her laugh.
“Then, around five months ago, we got a sudden call from Rashid, he was very excited and he said that he had married the Hindu girl,” Mrs Jahan told the Sunday Telegraph.
“I scolded him that he did a wrong thing and asked him why he didn’t consult with us first. But, then he said he was coming home in July and we treated Pinky like our own daughter.”
Rashid got a new job in a salon in Moradabad and Pinky - who had taken the decision to convert to Islam and adopt the name Muskan before her marriage in July - soon fell pregnant, much to the delight of her mother-in-law.
“Like every mother, I also had a dream that my son should get married and then the happiness of all of us increased with the news of Muskan’s pregnancy,” said Mrs Jahan.
“There is no small baby in our house that we could play with on our lap and we had dreams of making the baby a good person through education.”
Rashid's family
Rashid's family
Hindus and Muslims have lived side-by-side in Uttar Pradesh for hundreds of years and while interfaith marriages are rare, they constitute three percent of unions.
However, since Mr Modi was re-elected with a landslide win in 2019, the BJP has implemented a string of policies protecting Hinduism. He has regularly been accused of Islamophobia.
The BJP has argued that Muslim men trying to brainwash Hindu women to convert to Islam before marriage to enact demographic change, a practice described as 'Love Jihad'. India’s Muslim community constitutes just 14 per cent of the population.
On Tuesday, the police arrested Haider Ali, a Muslim from the town of Kushinagar, tortured him and threatened to “skin him alive”. Mr Ali was released the next day after it was discovered his bride was born a Muslim.
Rashid was arrested on Sunday after the family visited a lawyer in Moradabad to register their marriage in Uttar Pradesh, as the couple had married in neighbouring Uttarakhand.
The family’s route home was blocked by the Bajrang Dal, a hardline Hindu nationalist group, who threatened them and called the police.
The police arrested Rashid and took Muskan to the shelter home, despite her protesting the couple were happily married.
“This is what Muslims do, first they love, and then they carry out Love Jihad after a few months. We know Pinky [Muskan] is seeing love right now, but after a few days she will find it very difficult to live her life,” said Gaurav Bhatnagar, the Bajrang Dal leader from Moradabad.
“Our workers are active in the street, locality, villages, cities, everywhere. Our job is to inform the police when Love Jihad cases occur and then it’s the court’s job to punish them.”
When Mrs Jahan tried to visit Muskan at the Nari Niketan shelter on Saturday morning, she was refused inside the building.
“Fear aggravates in our family, I do not know what will happen when both of them get released but I am very scared,” said Mrs Jahan.
The Sunday Telegraph approached the shelter where Muskan is held but did not receive a response.
Additional reporting by Mohammad Sartaj Alam
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/fi ... 36521.html
Islam and Hinduism's blurred lines
'Love Jihad' couple reunited in India as doctors back claims of forced miscarriage
Joe Wallen
The Telegraph Sat, December 19, 2020, 1:03 PM CST
Rashid and Muskan have been reunited after their ordeal shocked India
Rashid and Muskan have been reunited after their ordeal shocked India
The first couple detained under India’s controversial ‘Love Jihad’ laws have been reunited after authorities released the husband following outrage over his wife's miscarriage in detention.
Rashid, 22, was released after police in his home city of Moradabad, in Uttar Pradesh, admitted they had no evidence to prosecute him under new laws designed to crack down on Hindus converting to Muslims.
The new rules in Uttar Pradesh are designed to stamp out so-called ‘Love Jihad’, but critics say they are a poorly disguised attempt by the Hindu nationalist ruling party of prime minister Narendra Modi to break up genuine interfaith unions.
While the laws do not specify any religion, police in Uttar Pradesh are targeting Muslims - at least ten Muslim men have been arrested so far but no Hindus.
The release of Rashid, 22, came after The Sunday Telegraph revealed his three-month pregnant wife Muskan, 22, had been forced to undergo an abortion while she was in detention, triggering national outrage.
After being released from detention at a women’s shelter in Moradabad, Muskan underwent an ultrasound on Wednesday, which confirmed she had a miscarriage.
Muskan alleges that she was administered abortifacient injections by the Moradabad District Hospital after she was admitted with stomach pain.
The Moradabad District Hospital did not give Ms Jahan any antibiotics or painkillers to prevent post-miscarriage infections, which can result in a reduction in future fertility.
“I am so sad about my baby and my wife, Muskan. When I heard about Muskan’s bad health and what happened to our baby, I cried, I couldn’t stop my tears,” Rashid told The Telegraph after his release. “I want justice for the sake of Muskan, I will go to the high court for her pain and tears.”
He added: “I can’t believe I have come home, everything happened so quickly that it feels like a dream."
“Rashid was released not only because the marriage happened in July but because it was apparent from the start that Muskan converted to Islam and got married of her own choice, and had been living happily for months in her own home,” said Kavita Krishnan, Secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association, after visiting Rashid and Muskan on Saturday.
The Sunday Telegraph contacted the Uttar Pradesh Police and Moradabad District Hospital for comment but did not receive a response.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/lo ... 40198.html
Joe Wallen
The Telegraph Sat, December 19, 2020, 1:03 PM CST
Rashid and Muskan have been reunited after their ordeal shocked India
Rashid and Muskan have been reunited after their ordeal shocked India
The first couple detained under India’s controversial ‘Love Jihad’ laws have been reunited after authorities released the husband following outrage over his wife's miscarriage in detention.
Rashid, 22, was released after police in his home city of Moradabad, in Uttar Pradesh, admitted they had no evidence to prosecute him under new laws designed to crack down on Hindus converting to Muslims.
The new rules in Uttar Pradesh are designed to stamp out so-called ‘Love Jihad’, but critics say they are a poorly disguised attempt by the Hindu nationalist ruling party of prime minister Narendra Modi to break up genuine interfaith unions.
While the laws do not specify any religion, police in Uttar Pradesh are targeting Muslims - at least ten Muslim men have been arrested so far but no Hindus.
The release of Rashid, 22, came after The Sunday Telegraph revealed his three-month pregnant wife Muskan, 22, had been forced to undergo an abortion while she was in detention, triggering national outrage.
After being released from detention at a women’s shelter in Moradabad, Muskan underwent an ultrasound on Wednesday, which confirmed she had a miscarriage.
Muskan alleges that she was administered abortifacient injections by the Moradabad District Hospital after she was admitted with stomach pain.
The Moradabad District Hospital did not give Ms Jahan any antibiotics or painkillers to prevent post-miscarriage infections, which can result in a reduction in future fertility.
“I am so sad about my baby and my wife, Muskan. When I heard about Muskan’s bad health and what happened to our baby, I cried, I couldn’t stop my tears,” Rashid told The Telegraph after his release. “I want justice for the sake of Muskan, I will go to the high court for her pain and tears.”
He added: “I can’t believe I have come home, everything happened so quickly that it feels like a dream."
“Rashid was released not only because the marriage happened in July but because it was apparent from the start that Muskan converted to Islam and got married of her own choice, and had been living happily for months in her own home,” said Kavita Krishnan, Secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association, after visiting Rashid and Muskan on Saturday.
The Sunday Telegraph contacted the Uttar Pradesh Police and Moradabad District Hospital for comment but did not receive a response.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/lo ... 40198.html
Indian Muslims flee their homes after Love Jihad laws leave them in fear of Hindu neighbours
Mohammad Sartaj Alam
The Telegraph Fri, January 1, 2021, 9:33 AM CST
Nearly 40 Muslim families in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh are planning to flee their village after saying they had been subjected to a campaign of harassment by a Hindu nationalist group, one month after laws were passed criminalizing marriage between Hindus and Muslims.
On Dec 23, two dozen members of the Bajrang Dal fired bullets at the house of a Muslim shopkeeper in the village of Mavi Meera after he refused to give them free cigarettes.
The shopkeeper and his family did not sustain injuries but members of Mavi Meera's Muslim minority population immediately decided to leave the village, placing signs on their homes that read: “This house is on sale. We are migrating from this village.”
Sartaj Alam, 25, was the first to flee this week with his family, saying they no longer felt safe. “The Hindu community wants us to vacate the village. They have been attacking us and harassing us for a long time," he told the Telegraph.
"I left my village with my wife and rented a house in a Muslim-dominated town. Others are also leaving the village.”
Mavi Meera is home to approximately 600 families, and tensions between its Hindu and Muslim residents have existed since 2013. But since the “Love Jihad” laws were passed in November, the Bajrang Dal group has stepped up its regular sermons in the village and described Muslims as outsiders.
“Earlier, there would have been scuffles between the two communities and Hindus would beat us with canes, but now they feel confident to have fired bullets. It is better to leave this village before it turns ugly," said Mr Alam.
When Muslims approached the local police to register the shootings, some Hindu officers allegedly told them to drop the claims or face charges themselves.
“Our families are waiting for the return of relatives who are working in different parts of India and then we will find a safe place to migrate to from here," said Arif Malik, a relative of the shopkeeper.
The Uttar Pradesh Police denied they were pressuring the village’s Muslims to drop the charges and said they were investigating the incident when contacted by the Telegraph.
Zakir Ali Tyagi, a leading human rights activist, said the migration of Muslims from Hindu-majority villages in Uttar Pradesh to Muslim towns and cities was increasing.
India has become a “dangerous and violent space for Muslim minorities” ever since the Hindu nationalist BJP scrapped the autonomous status afforded to its then only Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019, according to the 2020 South Asia State of Minorities Report.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/in ... 43988.html
Mohammad Sartaj Alam
The Telegraph Fri, January 1, 2021, 9:33 AM CST
Nearly 40 Muslim families in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh are planning to flee their village after saying they had been subjected to a campaign of harassment by a Hindu nationalist group, one month after laws were passed criminalizing marriage between Hindus and Muslims.
On Dec 23, two dozen members of the Bajrang Dal fired bullets at the house of a Muslim shopkeeper in the village of Mavi Meera after he refused to give them free cigarettes.
The shopkeeper and his family did not sustain injuries but members of Mavi Meera's Muslim minority population immediately decided to leave the village, placing signs on their homes that read: “This house is on sale. We are migrating from this village.”
Sartaj Alam, 25, was the first to flee this week with his family, saying they no longer felt safe. “The Hindu community wants us to vacate the village. They have been attacking us and harassing us for a long time," he told the Telegraph.
"I left my village with my wife and rented a house in a Muslim-dominated town. Others are also leaving the village.”
Mavi Meera is home to approximately 600 families, and tensions between its Hindu and Muslim residents have existed since 2013. But since the “Love Jihad” laws were passed in November, the Bajrang Dal group has stepped up its regular sermons in the village and described Muslims as outsiders.
“Earlier, there would have been scuffles between the two communities and Hindus would beat us with canes, but now they feel confident to have fired bullets. It is better to leave this village before it turns ugly," said Mr Alam.
When Muslims approached the local police to register the shootings, some Hindu officers allegedly told them to drop the claims or face charges themselves.
“Our families are waiting for the return of relatives who are working in different parts of India and then we will find a safe place to migrate to from here," said Arif Malik, a relative of the shopkeeper.
The Uttar Pradesh Police denied they were pressuring the village’s Muslims to drop the charges and said they were investigating the incident when contacted by the Telegraph.
Zakir Ali Tyagi, a leading human rights activist, said the migration of Muslims from Hindu-majority villages in Uttar Pradesh to Muslim towns and cities was increasing.
India has become a “dangerous and violent space for Muslim minorities” ever since the Hindu nationalist BJP scrapped the autonomous status afforded to its then only Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019, according to the 2020 South Asia State of Minorities Report.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/in ... 43988.html
Muslim comedian detained by police in India for five days in free speech crackdown
Joe Wallen
The Telegraph Tue, January 5, 2021, 9:10 AM CST
A Muslim comedian has been detained for five days in India after he was accused of insulting Hindu gods at a gig.
Munawar Faruqui, a popular stand-up who is often critical of the government, was performing in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led state of Madhya Pradesh when the son of a local politician stormed the stage and accused him of sacrilege.
Mr Faruqui was assaulted by a mob after the gig and brought by the politician's son, Eklavya Gaur, to the police station.
He has been detained along with four friends on the grounds of "hurting religious sentiments".
However, police in Indore city admitted on Tuesday that they had no evidence of Mr Faruqui making any anti-Hindu remarks during the show.
“There’s no evidence against him for insulting Hindu deities or Union Minister Amit Shah,” said a police spokesperson in Indore, who clarified that anti-Hindu videos submitted by Mr Gaur were actually of another comedian.
Members of the audience had also shared videos of the gig, where Mr Faruqui was not seen to be insulting Hinduism or Home Office minister Amit Shah, another of the allegations.
Fellow comedians have called for his release, arguing the case is yet another example of a crackdown on freedom of speech in India. “A fellow Indian, a fellow comedian is in jail and got beaten up by a mob because of the words he uttered. Here he’s trying to logically, calmly present his case but our systems now just want to brutally silence every voice,” said Varun Grover, an Indian stand-up comedian.
India’s ruling BJP has detained opposition activists and politicians since Prime Minister Narendra Modi was re-elected with a landslide victory in 2019, as well as introducing a string of Islamophobic policies.
Madhya Pradesh became the third Indian state to pass legislation effectively criminalizing marriages between Muslims and Hindus in December, emboldening Hindu nationalist mobs who have since attacked several mosques.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/mu ... 22810.html
Joe Wallen
The Telegraph Tue, January 5, 2021, 9:10 AM CST
A Muslim comedian has been detained for five days in India after he was accused of insulting Hindu gods at a gig.
Munawar Faruqui, a popular stand-up who is often critical of the government, was performing in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led state of Madhya Pradesh when the son of a local politician stormed the stage and accused him of sacrilege.
Mr Faruqui was assaulted by a mob after the gig and brought by the politician's son, Eklavya Gaur, to the police station.
He has been detained along with four friends on the grounds of "hurting religious sentiments".
However, police in Indore city admitted on Tuesday that they had no evidence of Mr Faruqui making any anti-Hindu remarks during the show.
“There’s no evidence against him for insulting Hindu deities or Union Minister Amit Shah,” said a police spokesperson in Indore, who clarified that anti-Hindu videos submitted by Mr Gaur were actually of another comedian.
Members of the audience had also shared videos of the gig, where Mr Faruqui was not seen to be insulting Hinduism or Home Office minister Amit Shah, another of the allegations.
Fellow comedians have called for his release, arguing the case is yet another example of a crackdown on freedom of speech in India. “A fellow Indian, a fellow comedian is in jail and got beaten up by a mob because of the words he uttered. Here he’s trying to logically, calmly present his case but our systems now just want to brutally silence every voice,” said Varun Grover, an Indian stand-up comedian.
India’s ruling BJP has detained opposition activists and politicians since Prime Minister Narendra Modi was re-elected with a landslide victory in 2019, as well as introducing a string of Islamophobic policies.
Madhya Pradesh became the third Indian state to pass legislation effectively criminalizing marriages between Muslims and Hindus in December, emboldening Hindu nationalist mobs who have since attacked several mosques.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/mu ... 22810.html
Modi accused of remaking India in his image after renaming world's largest stadium after himself
Ben Farmer
The Telegraph Sat, February 27, 2021, 11:14 AM
The renaming of the world's largest cricket stadium after India's prime minister, has renewed accusations of narcissism and a growing personality cult around the nationalist leader, in the latest row over politically-driven name changes in the country.
The announcement that the 132,000-seat venue formerly known as Sardar Patel Stadium in Ahmedabad would be become the Narendra Modi Stadium sparked delight in his supporters and scorn from political opponents.
Mr Modi's gift for oratory and keen populist instincts have made him by far the most popular politician in India, and in 2019 won his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a second term.
Yet he has also attracted accusations of vanity and attempting to glorify himself as the founder of a new Hindu India. Critics last week asked whether the stadium's new name was an attempt to bolster his legacy with a relabelling spree.
Dedicating sports stadiums to former prime ministers is common in India, but renaming such a high-profile venue for a sitting leader is rare.
The prime minister's allies hit back by pointing to a host of public buildings and government projects named after members of the Congress' Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that governed India for decades.
Mr Modi's nationalist BJP party has also gained a reputation for aggressively pursuing name changes. The intent behind them ranges from pure vanity and political point-scoring to more ambitious attempts to rewrite history and eclipse the role played by non-Hindus in the nation, commentators say.
In one of the most recent examples, in December the government announced the Rajiv Gandhi Biotechnology Centre in Kerala would be renamed to celebrate MS Golwalkar, a Hindu nationalist ideologue.
While previous governments have replaced colonial Anglicised names, such as changing Bombay to Mumbai and Madras to Chennai, the current government has been accused of going further to try to erase non-Hindu identities and particularly Muslim history.
In 2018, the Modi government approved the renaming of 25 towns and villages across India, and among the pending proposals is one for the state of West Bengal to be switched to Bangla.
That year, the BJP-ruled state of Uttar Pradesh, which has the highest Muslim population in India, changed the name of Allahabad to Prayagraja to reference a Hindu pilgrimage site.
The name Allahabad had dated to the 16th century and the Mughal Emperor Akbar. "Today, the BJP government has rectified the mistake made by Akbar," a BJP official was quoted as saying when the name was altered.
Indian historian and novelist Prof Mukul Kesavan said the renaming of the stadium was trivial compared to the campaign to rename Muslim sites.
“With the changeover from Allahabad to Prayagraj, what we are seeing is an assertion that India is a Hindu state and its place names should be appropriately Hindu. And that is a dangerous kind of renaming. We have to distinguish between different kinds of renaming – some kinds of renaming are acts of individual vanity like the cricket stadium. But other kinds of renaming are historically more important. They are trying to erase historical meaning.”
He said: “When they change the name of a city, they change our history, language, cultural references. They make us foreigners in our own country. Whether we are Muslim, Hindu or Sikh, when you are officially declared to be dead then what happens you no longer recognizes the world around us and this is the ambition.”
General view of the "Statue of Unity" portraying Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, one of the founding fathers of India, during its inauguration in Kevadia, in the western state of Gujarat, India - AMIT DAVE /Reuters
General view of the "Statue of Unity" portraying Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, one of the founding fathers of India, during its inauguration in Kevadia, in the western state of Gujarat, India - AMIT DAVE /Reuters
Mr Modi's opponents say he has not only used name changes to boost his profile and secure a lasting grip on the country's cultural fabric.
In 2018, he unveiled the world’s largest statue in a bid to showcase his position as leader of a new, world-beating India. The 597ft “Statue of Unity” depicts Vallabhbhai 'Sardar' Patel, one of the heroes of India’s independence movement.
His grandiose plan to redevelop the Indian parliament and Delhi's central vista were last year dismissed by the acclaimed Indian-born sculptor Anish Kapoor as an “expensive vanity project”,.
Mr Kapoor said the project was a “way of placing himself at the centre and cementing his legacy as the ruler-maker-builder of a new Hindu India”.
Prof Rakesh Sinha, a BJP member of parliament, said the renaming of cities and towns “ is returning to originality” and said Allahabad had originally been called Prayagraj.
As for the parliament plans, he said India should decolonize its architecture.
“Why should we go with colonially designed structures? Why not independent India design its own structure? We are decolonizing not only minds but also architecture.
“Decolonization is not about Britishers having left India, it means we have to erase everything and anything which is making a negative impact on the minds of our people.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/mo ... 43248.html
Ben Farmer
The Telegraph Sat, February 27, 2021, 11:14 AM
The renaming of the world's largest cricket stadium after India's prime minister, has renewed accusations of narcissism and a growing personality cult around the nationalist leader, in the latest row over politically-driven name changes in the country.
The announcement that the 132,000-seat venue formerly known as Sardar Patel Stadium in Ahmedabad would be become the Narendra Modi Stadium sparked delight in his supporters and scorn from political opponents.
Mr Modi's gift for oratory and keen populist instincts have made him by far the most popular politician in India, and in 2019 won his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a second term.
Yet he has also attracted accusations of vanity and attempting to glorify himself as the founder of a new Hindu India. Critics last week asked whether the stadium's new name was an attempt to bolster his legacy with a relabelling spree.
Dedicating sports stadiums to former prime ministers is common in India, but renaming such a high-profile venue for a sitting leader is rare.
The prime minister's allies hit back by pointing to a host of public buildings and government projects named after members of the Congress' Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that governed India for decades.
Mr Modi's nationalist BJP party has also gained a reputation for aggressively pursuing name changes. The intent behind them ranges from pure vanity and political point-scoring to more ambitious attempts to rewrite history and eclipse the role played by non-Hindus in the nation, commentators say.
In one of the most recent examples, in December the government announced the Rajiv Gandhi Biotechnology Centre in Kerala would be renamed to celebrate MS Golwalkar, a Hindu nationalist ideologue.
While previous governments have replaced colonial Anglicised names, such as changing Bombay to Mumbai and Madras to Chennai, the current government has been accused of going further to try to erase non-Hindu identities and particularly Muslim history.
In 2018, the Modi government approved the renaming of 25 towns and villages across India, and among the pending proposals is one for the state of West Bengal to be switched to Bangla.
That year, the BJP-ruled state of Uttar Pradesh, which has the highest Muslim population in India, changed the name of Allahabad to Prayagraja to reference a Hindu pilgrimage site.
The name Allahabad had dated to the 16th century and the Mughal Emperor Akbar. "Today, the BJP government has rectified the mistake made by Akbar," a BJP official was quoted as saying when the name was altered.
Indian historian and novelist Prof Mukul Kesavan said the renaming of the stadium was trivial compared to the campaign to rename Muslim sites.
“With the changeover from Allahabad to Prayagraj, what we are seeing is an assertion that India is a Hindu state and its place names should be appropriately Hindu. And that is a dangerous kind of renaming. We have to distinguish between different kinds of renaming – some kinds of renaming are acts of individual vanity like the cricket stadium. But other kinds of renaming are historically more important. They are trying to erase historical meaning.”
He said: “When they change the name of a city, they change our history, language, cultural references. They make us foreigners in our own country. Whether we are Muslim, Hindu or Sikh, when you are officially declared to be dead then what happens you no longer recognizes the world around us and this is the ambition.”
General view of the "Statue of Unity" portraying Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, one of the founding fathers of India, during its inauguration in Kevadia, in the western state of Gujarat, India - AMIT DAVE /Reuters
General view of the "Statue of Unity" portraying Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, one of the founding fathers of India, during its inauguration in Kevadia, in the western state of Gujarat, India - AMIT DAVE /Reuters
Mr Modi's opponents say he has not only used name changes to boost his profile and secure a lasting grip on the country's cultural fabric.
In 2018, he unveiled the world’s largest statue in a bid to showcase his position as leader of a new, world-beating India. The 597ft “Statue of Unity” depicts Vallabhbhai 'Sardar' Patel, one of the heroes of India’s independence movement.
His grandiose plan to redevelop the Indian parliament and Delhi's central vista were last year dismissed by the acclaimed Indian-born sculptor Anish Kapoor as an “expensive vanity project”,.
Mr Kapoor said the project was a “way of placing himself at the centre and cementing his legacy as the ruler-maker-builder of a new Hindu India”.
Prof Rakesh Sinha, a BJP member of parliament, said the renaming of cities and towns “ is returning to originality” and said Allahabad had originally been called Prayagraj.
As for the parliament plans, he said India should decolonize its architecture.
“Why should we go with colonially designed structures? Why not independent India design its own structure? We are decolonizing not only minds but also architecture.
“Decolonization is not about Britishers having left India, it means we have to erase everything and anything which is making a negative impact on the minds of our people.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/mo ... 43248.html
A Muslim boy was beaten in India for entering and drinking water from a Hindu temple, multiple Indian media outlets reported on Sunday.
The incident took place on Thursday in the city of Dasna in Ghaziabad district, which lies in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
The 14-year-old boy had entered the temple to drink water when he was noticed by the temple caretaker, Shringi Nandan Yadav, 23, who proceeded to beat the boy, the boy's family told the Hindustan Times.
“My son stopped to drink water from a tap located inside the temple as he was thirsty. He was beaten up after they asked his identity. He suffered a head injury," said the father, adding that his son usually didn't frequent the temple and has been told to stay clear of it in the future.
"He was badly beaten up and humiliated. Does water have a religion? I don’t think there is any religion that can refuse water to a thirsty person," he said while speaking to The Indian Express. He lamented that the temple had been open to the public in the past but that changed, adding that he hoped his son would receive justice.
Ghaziabad police took notice of the incident and arrested the main accused, Yadav, along with Shivanand Saraswati, another caretaker, who had recorded the incident. The recorded video was circulated online on social media platforms and went viral on Friday evening.
Cases were registered against the two men under Indian Penal Code sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult to provoke breach of peace), 352 (assault or criminal force otherwise than on grave provocation), 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) and also provisions of the Information Technology Act.
Senior Superintendent of Police Ghaziabad Kalanidhi Naithani said the main accused had been arrested shortly after the incident had first come to light.
"Any person found indulging in anti-social activities will face strict action by the police," he told The Indian Express.
Yadav had been staying in the temple for the past three months and both arrested individuals had contributed to the viral spread of the video, said another police officer.
Police officials said Yadav, hailing from Bihar, had shifted to Ghaziabad six months ago. He was doing voluntary service at the Dasna Devi Temple and considered himself a disciple of its caretaker, Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati.
Priyank Kanoongo, chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) posted Yadav's picture on Twitter on Saturday. "[The] NCPCR Is committed to providing justice to the child."
'He's a good man'
The management committee of the temple, meanwhile, said it would extend its help to Yadav for legal aid. A member from the committee, Anil Yadav, said the temple bore full responsibility for the event.
"There is a conspiracy; that boy was not alone," he said, chalking the incident off as an attempt to charge the atmosphere.
He defended Yadav as a "good man" who had lost his job as an engineer during the Covid-19 pandemic and decided to volunteer at the temple by managing their IT system. "We will make sure he’s free."
Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati alleged the boy had been caught spitting in the temple and the temple authorities would seek bail for the two arrested individuals.
Temple authorities said they had prohibited entry of non-Hindu people while it is written on a board placed outside the temple, "This temple is a holy place for Hindus, it is forbidden for Muslims to enter. By order of Narsinghanand Saraswati.”
Saraswati is a rightwing preacher whose inflammatory speeches were also shared by the main accused on his social media, along with pictures of him holding various
weapons.https://www.dawn.com/news/1612503/musli ... e-in-india
The incident took place on Thursday in the city of Dasna in Ghaziabad district, which lies in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
The 14-year-old boy had entered the temple to drink water when he was noticed by the temple caretaker, Shringi Nandan Yadav, 23, who proceeded to beat the boy, the boy's family told the Hindustan Times.
“My son stopped to drink water from a tap located inside the temple as he was thirsty. He was beaten up after they asked his identity. He suffered a head injury," said the father, adding that his son usually didn't frequent the temple and has been told to stay clear of it in the future.
"He was badly beaten up and humiliated. Does water have a religion? I don’t think there is any religion that can refuse water to a thirsty person," he said while speaking to The Indian Express. He lamented that the temple had been open to the public in the past but that changed, adding that he hoped his son would receive justice.
Ghaziabad police took notice of the incident and arrested the main accused, Yadav, along with Shivanand Saraswati, another caretaker, who had recorded the incident. The recorded video was circulated online on social media platforms and went viral on Friday evening.
Cases were registered against the two men under Indian Penal Code sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult to provoke breach of peace), 352 (assault or criminal force otherwise than on grave provocation), 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) and also provisions of the Information Technology Act.
Senior Superintendent of Police Ghaziabad Kalanidhi Naithani said the main accused had been arrested shortly after the incident had first come to light.
"Any person found indulging in anti-social activities will face strict action by the police," he told The Indian Express.
Yadav had been staying in the temple for the past three months and both arrested individuals had contributed to the viral spread of the video, said another police officer.
Police officials said Yadav, hailing from Bihar, had shifted to Ghaziabad six months ago. He was doing voluntary service at the Dasna Devi Temple and considered himself a disciple of its caretaker, Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati.
Priyank Kanoongo, chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) posted Yadav's picture on Twitter on Saturday. "[The] NCPCR Is committed to providing justice to the child."
'He's a good man'
The management committee of the temple, meanwhile, said it would extend its help to Yadav for legal aid. A member from the committee, Anil Yadav, said the temple bore full responsibility for the event.
"There is a conspiracy; that boy was not alone," he said, chalking the incident off as an attempt to charge the atmosphere.
He defended Yadav as a "good man" who had lost his job as an engineer during the Covid-19 pandemic and decided to volunteer at the temple by managing their IT system. "We will make sure he’s free."
Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati alleged the boy had been caught spitting in the temple and the temple authorities would seek bail for the two arrested individuals.
Temple authorities said they had prohibited entry of non-Hindu people while it is written on a board placed outside the temple, "This temple is a holy place for Hindus, it is forbidden for Muslims to enter. By order of Narsinghanand Saraswati.”
Saraswati is a rightwing preacher whose inflammatory speeches were also shared by the main accused on his social media, along with pictures of him holding various
weapons.https://www.dawn.com/news/1612503/musli ... e-in-india
India’s court paves way for Rohingya deportation
Reuters Published April 9, 2021 - Updated 2 days
Two refugees petitioned the Supreme Court for the release of Rohingya men and women detained in India-occupied Jammu last month, and block the government from deporting them.
NEW DELHI: India’s Supreme Court rejected a plea on Thursday to stop the government from deporting to Myanmar some 150 Rohingya MUSLIM police detained last month, paving the way for them to be sent to a country where hundreds have been killed following a military coup.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been trying to send back Rohingyas, a Muslim minority from Myanmar who have found refuge in India after fleeing persecution and waves of violence over the years.
Two refugees petitioned the Supreme Court for the release of Rohingya men and women detained in India-occupied Jammu last month, and block the government from deporting them.
But Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde said the deportation could go ahead as long as officials followed due process. “It is not possible to grant the interim relief prayed for,” the judge said in his order.
“Regarding the contention raised on behalf of the petitioners about the present state of affairs in Myanmar, we have to state that we cannot comment upon something happening in another country,” he added.
Hundreds of people have been killed in Myanmar since the army seized power in a coup on Feb 1.
The ruling triggered panic among refugees in India, a Rohingya community leader in New Delhi said.
“This is a terrifying order made by the highest court in India,” he said. “Given the horrifying situation in Myanmar, I had really hoped the judge would rule in our favour.”
The Modi government says the Rohingya are in the country illegally and a security threat. A total of 12 Rohingya have been deported since 2017, according to community leaders.
Last week, officials tried deporting a 16-year-old Rohingya girl to Myanmar and drove her to the border, but that attempt failed as authorities in Myanmar were not reachable.
Many of the Rohingya in India carry identity cards issued by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) recognizing them as refugees, but the country is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention. India also rejects a UN position that deporting the Rohingya violates the principle of refoulement _ forcible return of refugees to a country where they face danger.
Thursday’s order shows a “blatant disregard” for that principle, said Fazal Abdali, a lawyer involved in Rohingya deportation cases.
“It sends a message that India is no longer a refuge for persecuted minorities,” Abdali said.
Published in Dawn, April 9th, 2021
https://www.dawn.com/news/1617237/india ... eportation
Reuters Published April 9, 2021 - Updated 2 days
Two refugees petitioned the Supreme Court for the release of Rohingya men and women detained in India-occupied Jammu last month, and block the government from deporting them.
NEW DELHI: India’s Supreme Court rejected a plea on Thursday to stop the government from deporting to Myanmar some 150 Rohingya MUSLIM police detained last month, paving the way for them to be sent to a country where hundreds have been killed following a military coup.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been trying to send back Rohingyas, a Muslim minority from Myanmar who have found refuge in India after fleeing persecution and waves of violence over the years.
Two refugees petitioned the Supreme Court for the release of Rohingya men and women detained in India-occupied Jammu last month, and block the government from deporting them.
But Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde said the deportation could go ahead as long as officials followed due process. “It is not possible to grant the interim relief prayed for,” the judge said in his order.
“Regarding the contention raised on behalf of the petitioners about the present state of affairs in Myanmar, we have to state that we cannot comment upon something happening in another country,” he added.
Hundreds of people have been killed in Myanmar since the army seized power in a coup on Feb 1.
The ruling triggered panic among refugees in India, a Rohingya community leader in New Delhi said.
“This is a terrifying order made by the highest court in India,” he said. “Given the horrifying situation in Myanmar, I had really hoped the judge would rule in our favour.”
The Modi government says the Rohingya are in the country illegally and a security threat. A total of 12 Rohingya have been deported since 2017, according to community leaders.
Last week, officials tried deporting a 16-year-old Rohingya girl to Myanmar and drove her to the border, but that attempt failed as authorities in Myanmar were not reachable.
Many of the Rohingya in India carry identity cards issued by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) recognizing them as refugees, but the country is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention. India also rejects a UN position that deporting the Rohingya violates the principle of refoulement _ forcible return of refugees to a country where they face danger.
Thursday’s order shows a “blatant disregard” for that principle, said Fazal Abdali, a lawyer involved in Rohingya deportation cases.
“It sends a message that India is no longer a refuge for persecuted minorities,” Abdali said.
Published in Dawn, April 9th, 2021
https://www.dawn.com/news/1617237/india ... eportation
By Rohan Venkataramakrishnan
April 13, 2021
“This is not negligence. It’s a serious criminal act.”
“Spreading Covid-19 is also like terrorism, and all those who are spreading the virus are traitors.”
“The government should not sit quietly. It should gun down a few to ensure they follow lockdown norms.”
Those are just a few of the comments by ministers and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members from 2020, referring to a gathering by the Tablighi Jamaat group in Delhi that turned out to be an early Covid-19 hotspot. Though the congregation began before the novel coronavirus had been declared a health emergency in the country, some believe that the actions of the Jamaat were condemnable. Court cases filed against members have led to numerous acquittals.
What is much more evident is how the incident and the BJP’s rhetoric fueled hate speech and bigotry against Muslims in the early stages of the pandemic. Muslims were blamed for deliberately spreading the virus across India by waging what Hindutva adherents claimed was a “corona jihad”.
For months, headlines, incendiary statements, and viral videos sought to convey the idea that the spread of the virus in the country was the responsibility of a single community.
Imagine if the TABLIGHI Jamaat gathering had been happening right now, with India in the grip of a brutal second wave of Covid-19 and daily case counts hitting numbers far higher than the worst days of 2020. Imagine the response of the BJP and India’s pro-government news channels if a police person had said something like this:
“We are continuously appealing to people to follow Covid appropriate behaviour. But due to the huge crowd, it is practically not possible to issue challans today. It is very difficult to ensure social distancing… A stampede-like situation may arise if we would try to enforce social distancing at ghats so we are unable to enforce social distancing here.”
It is not hard to imagine the anger and demands for accountability that might have been unleashed by a comment like that, from a senior police officer.
So what explains the relative silence of the government and the BJP when the same comment comes from the Inspector General of the Kumbh Mela currently taking place in Uttarakhand?
The point is, of course, not to encourage bigotry or hatred directed towards the millions of people who have congregated on the banks of the Ganga for the Kumbh but to point out the blatant double standards—and the utter lack of accountability from the authorities.
In the Tablighi Jamaat incident, it was clear that the government had failed to dissipate a gathering that eventually became a hotpsot and then proceeded to make things worse by stigmatising the disease and making Indians afraid about getting tested.
In the case of the Kumbh, the dangers are much more obvious.
As new variants are ripping through states around the country, with patients filling up hospitals and crematoriums struggling to handle the numbers of dead, the Uttarakhand government did not just fail to take action limiting numbers at the Hindu festival—it actively encouraged people to come and told them not to worry about Covid-19 restrictions.
This was what Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat said on March 20:
“I invite all devotees across the world to come to Haridwar and take a holy dip in the Ganga during Mahakumbh. Nobody will be stopped in the name of Covid-19 as we are sure the faith in God will overcome the fear of the virus.”
While claiming that all Central guidelines would be followed and that only those with a negative RT-PCR would be allowed to come, Rawat repeatedly said there would be no “rok-tok” or obstacles. “There is no strictness,” he said. “But Covid-19 guidelines should be followed… It’s open for everyone.”
https://qz.com/india/1996084/modi-gover ... source=YPL
April 13, 2021
“This is not negligence. It’s a serious criminal act.”
“Spreading Covid-19 is also like terrorism, and all those who are spreading the virus are traitors.”
“The government should not sit quietly. It should gun down a few to ensure they follow lockdown norms.”
Those are just a few of the comments by ministers and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members from 2020, referring to a gathering by the Tablighi Jamaat group in Delhi that turned out to be an early Covid-19 hotspot. Though the congregation began before the novel coronavirus had been declared a health emergency in the country, some believe that the actions of the Jamaat were condemnable. Court cases filed against members have led to numerous acquittals.
What is much more evident is how the incident and the BJP’s rhetoric fueled hate speech and bigotry against Muslims in the early stages of the pandemic. Muslims were blamed for deliberately spreading the virus across India by waging what Hindutva adherents claimed was a “corona jihad”.
For months, headlines, incendiary statements, and viral videos sought to convey the idea that the spread of the virus in the country was the responsibility of a single community.
Imagine if the TABLIGHI Jamaat gathering had been happening right now, with India in the grip of a brutal second wave of Covid-19 and daily case counts hitting numbers far higher than the worst days of 2020. Imagine the response of the BJP and India’s pro-government news channels if a police person had said something like this:
“We are continuously appealing to people to follow Covid appropriate behaviour. But due to the huge crowd, it is practically not possible to issue challans today. It is very difficult to ensure social distancing… A stampede-like situation may arise if we would try to enforce social distancing at ghats so we are unable to enforce social distancing here.”
It is not hard to imagine the anger and demands for accountability that might have been unleashed by a comment like that, from a senior police officer.
So what explains the relative silence of the government and the BJP when the same comment comes from the Inspector General of the Kumbh Mela currently taking place in Uttarakhand?
The point is, of course, not to encourage bigotry or hatred directed towards the millions of people who have congregated on the banks of the Ganga for the Kumbh but to point out the blatant double standards—and the utter lack of accountability from the authorities.
In the Tablighi Jamaat incident, it was clear that the government had failed to dissipate a gathering that eventually became a hotpsot and then proceeded to make things worse by stigmatising the disease and making Indians afraid about getting tested.
In the case of the Kumbh, the dangers are much more obvious.
As new variants are ripping through states around the country, with patients filling up hospitals and crematoriums struggling to handle the numbers of dead, the Uttarakhand government did not just fail to take action limiting numbers at the Hindu festival—it actively encouraged people to come and told them not to worry about Covid-19 restrictions.
This was what Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat said on March 20:
“I invite all devotees across the world to come to Haridwar and take a holy dip in the Ganga during Mahakumbh. Nobody will be stopped in the name of Covid-19 as we are sure the faith in God will overcome the fear of the virus.”
While claiming that all Central guidelines would be followed and that only those with a negative RT-PCR would be allowed to come, Rawat repeatedly said there would be no “rok-tok” or obstacles. “There is no strictness,” he said. “But Covid-19 guidelines should be followed… It’s open for everyone.”
https://qz.com/india/1996084/modi-gover ... source=YPL
Punjab’s only Muslim-majority town Malerkotla to become state’s 23rd district
Chief minister also announced Rs 500-crore medical college, women's college, new bus stand and women police station in Malerkotla
Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday announced the creation of a new district of Malerkotla, carving the state’s only Muslim-majority town from Sangrur district.
Adjoining Amargarh and Ahmedgarh will also form part of Punjab’s 23rd district, according to the announcement at a state-level event on Eid-ul-Fitr.
According Malerkotla, which is 35 km from the Sangrur district headquarters, a district status was a pre-poll promise by the Congress.
The chief minister also announced a Rs 500-crore medical college, a women’s college, a new bus stand and a women police station in Malerkotla.
“I know this has been a long-pending demand,” he said through video conference.
In a tweet later, he said, “Happy to share that on the auspicious occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr, my govt has announced Malerkotla as the newest district in the state. The 23rd district holds huge historical significance. Have ordered to immediately locate a suitable site for the district administrative complex.”
The CM said Punjab had 13 district at Independence.
The chief minister underscored India’s secular character, which he said was manifested in the defeat of “communal forces” in the recent assembly elections in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.
Recalling the rich history of Malerkotla, Amarinder Singh said the creation of the new district will ease hardships of people in dealing with administrative problems.
Initially, subdivisions of Malerkotla and Ahmedgarh as well as the sub-tehsil of Amargarh will be included in the district.
The process of bringing villages under the jurisdiction of Malerkotla district will begin later after the conclusion of the Census operations, he added.
Amarinder Singh directed the Sangrur deputy commissioner to find a suitable building to immediately start the functioning of the district administration office, according to an official statement.
The deputy commissioner for the newly carved out district will be appointed soon, he said.
Announcing various development projects, the CM said a government medical college in the name of Sher Mohammed Khan, who had been a Nawab of Malerkotla, will soon be set up and the state government has already allotted 25 acres on the Raikot road for it.
The first instalment of Rs 50 crore has already been sanctioned, he added. The chief minister also announced the establishment of a government college for women.
A new bus stand will be constructed at a cost of Rs 10 crore, he said, adding Malekotla will also get a women police station.
To ensure holistic development of Malerkotla, the CM also announced a sum of Rs 6 crore under the Urban Environment Improvement Programme (UEIP).
To promote the cultural heritage of Malerkotla, the CM said he has written to Aga Khan Foundation to undertake conservation and restoration of the Mubarak Manzil Palace.
The Punjab government has acquired the 150-year-old palace and its restoration and upkeep will be a befitting tribute to the Nawabs of Malerkotla, he said.
Tracing the town’s history, the chief minister said it was established in 1454 by Sheikh Sadruddin-i-Jahan from Afghanistan and subsequently the State of Malerkotla was established in 1657 by Bayazid Khan.
Malerkotla was later merged with other nearby princely states to create the Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU).
During the reorganisation of states in 1956, the territory of the erstwhile State of Malerkotla became part of Punjab.
Going down memory lane, the chief minister, who belongs to the erstwhile Patiala royals, recalled his cordial ties with the then Nawab of Malerkotla, whom he fondly called chachaji and who lovingly addressed him bhateej (nephew) during his early childhood visits to the town.
The CM said people across the globe, especially Sikhs, revered Sher Mohammed Khan, former Nawab of Malerkotla, who protested against the inhuman act of torture and bricking alive of younger sons of Guru Gobind Singh–Baba Zorawar Singh and Baba Fateh Singh–by the then governor of Sirhind Wazir Khan.
Amarinder said thereafter, Guru Gobind Singh blessed Nawab Sher Mohammed Khan and people of Malerkotla that the town will live in peace and happiness.
Malerkotla remained largely peaceful during the Partition in 1947, which saw communal clashes and large-scale migration of people across the India-Pakistan border.
He further noted that the town is also blessed by Sufi saint Baba Haider Sheikh, whose dargah also exists there.
Punjab minister and Malerkotla MLA Razia Sultana and state Congress president Sunil Jakhar also spoke on the occasion.
https://www.siasat.com/punjabs-only-mus ... t-2137232/
Chief minister also announced Rs 500-crore medical college, women's college, new bus stand and women police station in Malerkotla
Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday announced the creation of a new district of Malerkotla, carving the state’s only Muslim-majority town from Sangrur district.
Adjoining Amargarh and Ahmedgarh will also form part of Punjab’s 23rd district, according to the announcement at a state-level event on Eid-ul-Fitr.
According Malerkotla, which is 35 km from the Sangrur district headquarters, a district status was a pre-poll promise by the Congress.
The chief minister also announced a Rs 500-crore medical college, a women’s college, a new bus stand and a women police station in Malerkotla.
“I know this has been a long-pending demand,” he said through video conference.
In a tweet later, he said, “Happy to share that on the auspicious occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr, my govt has announced Malerkotla as the newest district in the state. The 23rd district holds huge historical significance. Have ordered to immediately locate a suitable site for the district administrative complex.”
The CM said Punjab had 13 district at Independence.
The chief minister underscored India’s secular character, which he said was manifested in the defeat of “communal forces” in the recent assembly elections in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.
Recalling the rich history of Malerkotla, Amarinder Singh said the creation of the new district will ease hardships of people in dealing with administrative problems.
Initially, subdivisions of Malerkotla and Ahmedgarh as well as the sub-tehsil of Amargarh will be included in the district.
The process of bringing villages under the jurisdiction of Malerkotla district will begin later after the conclusion of the Census operations, he added.
Amarinder Singh directed the Sangrur deputy commissioner to find a suitable building to immediately start the functioning of the district administration office, according to an official statement.
The deputy commissioner for the newly carved out district will be appointed soon, he said.
Announcing various development projects, the CM said a government medical college in the name of Sher Mohammed Khan, who had been a Nawab of Malerkotla, will soon be set up and the state government has already allotted 25 acres on the Raikot road for it.
The first instalment of Rs 50 crore has already been sanctioned, he added. The chief minister also announced the establishment of a government college for women.
A new bus stand will be constructed at a cost of Rs 10 crore, he said, adding Malekotla will also get a women police station.
To ensure holistic development of Malerkotla, the CM also announced a sum of Rs 6 crore under the Urban Environment Improvement Programme (UEIP).
To promote the cultural heritage of Malerkotla, the CM said he has written to Aga Khan Foundation to undertake conservation and restoration of the Mubarak Manzil Palace.
The Punjab government has acquired the 150-year-old palace and its restoration and upkeep will be a befitting tribute to the Nawabs of Malerkotla, he said.
Tracing the town’s history, the chief minister said it was established in 1454 by Sheikh Sadruddin-i-Jahan from Afghanistan and subsequently the State of Malerkotla was established in 1657 by Bayazid Khan.
Malerkotla was later merged with other nearby princely states to create the Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU).
During the reorganisation of states in 1956, the territory of the erstwhile State of Malerkotla became part of Punjab.
Going down memory lane, the chief minister, who belongs to the erstwhile Patiala royals, recalled his cordial ties with the then Nawab of Malerkotla, whom he fondly called chachaji and who lovingly addressed him bhateej (nephew) during his early childhood visits to the town.
The CM said people across the globe, especially Sikhs, revered Sher Mohammed Khan, former Nawab of Malerkotla, who protested against the inhuman act of torture and bricking alive of younger sons of Guru Gobind Singh–Baba Zorawar Singh and Baba Fateh Singh–by the then governor of Sirhind Wazir Khan.
Amarinder said thereafter, Guru Gobind Singh blessed Nawab Sher Mohammed Khan and people of Malerkotla that the town will live in peace and happiness.
Malerkotla remained largely peaceful during the Partition in 1947, which saw communal clashes and large-scale migration of people across the India-Pakistan border.
He further noted that the town is also blessed by Sufi saint Baba Haider Sheikh, whose dargah also exists there.
Punjab minister and Malerkotla MLA Razia Sultana and state Congress president Sunil Jakhar also spoke on the occasion.
https://www.siasat.com/punjabs-only-mus ... t-2137232/
Most Indians oppose interfaith marriage, survey shows
Lebo Diseko - Global Religion Correspondent
Tue, June 29, 2021, 7:18 PM
Several Indian states have introduced a controversial law that criminalizes interfaith love.
Most Indians see themselves and their country as religiously tolerant but are against interfaith marriage, a survey from Pew Research Center has found.
People across different faiths in the country said stopping interfaith marriage was a "high priority" for them.
The research comes after laws were introduced in several Indian states criminalizing interfaith love.
Pew interviewed 30,000 people across India in 17 languages for the study.
The interviewees were from 26 states and three federally administered territories.
According to the survey, 80% of the Muslims who were interviewed felt it was important to stop people from their community from marrying into another religion. Around 65% of Hindus felt the same.
The survey also asked about the relationship between faith and nationality. It found that Hindus "tend to see their religious identity and Indian national identity as closely intertwined".
Nearly two-thirds of Hindus (64%) said it was very important to be Hindu in order to be "truly Indian".
The study found that despite sharing certain values and religious beliefs, members of India's major religious communities "often don't feel they have much in common".
"Indians simultaneously express enthusiasm for religious tolerance and a consistent preference for keeping their religious communities in segregated spheres - they live together separately," the study said.
Many lead religiously segregated lives, it added, when it comes to friendships, and "would prefer to keep people of certain religions out of their residential areas or village".
Marriages between Hindus and Muslims have long attracted censure in conservative Indian families, but couples are also facing legal hurdles now.
India's Special Marriage Act mandates a 30-day notice period for interfaith couples. And some Indian states led by the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have taken further steps, introducing laws which ban "unlawful conversion" by force or fraudulent means.
It is in response to what right-wing Hindu groups call "love jihad" - a baseless conspiracy theory that accuses Muslim men of luring Hindu women with the sole purpose of converting them to Islam.
Interfaith lovers face several challenges, both from societal attitudes and the Indian law.
The opposition to interfaith relationships is something Sumit Chauhan and his wife Azra Parveen can relate to. Mr Chauhan is from a Hindu family, although he identifies by his Dalit caste (formerly known as untouchables). Ms Parveen is a Muslim.
Mr Chauhan said his Hindu relatives "had some misconceptions about the Muslim community, but I convinced my mother and sister and brother."
But for Ms Parveen, things were not as simple. Her family refused to let them marry, she said. The couple decided to tie the knot in secret, and Ms Parveen's family did not talk to the couple for almost three years, Mr Chauhan said.
And even though they are now on speaking terms, Ms Parveen's parents still won't publicly acknowledge the marriage.
"Last year, my wife's younger sister got married but we were not invited," Mr Chauhan said. "You shouldn't have to change your religion to marry someone you love."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/mo ... 15454.html
Lebo Diseko - Global Religion Correspondent
Tue, June 29, 2021, 7:18 PM
Several Indian states have introduced a controversial law that criminalizes interfaith love.
Most Indians see themselves and their country as religiously tolerant but are against interfaith marriage, a survey from Pew Research Center has found.
People across different faiths in the country said stopping interfaith marriage was a "high priority" for them.
The research comes after laws were introduced in several Indian states criminalizing interfaith love.
Pew interviewed 30,000 people across India in 17 languages for the study.
The interviewees were from 26 states and three federally administered territories.
According to the survey, 80% of the Muslims who were interviewed felt it was important to stop people from their community from marrying into another religion. Around 65% of Hindus felt the same.
The survey also asked about the relationship between faith and nationality. It found that Hindus "tend to see their religious identity and Indian national identity as closely intertwined".
Nearly two-thirds of Hindus (64%) said it was very important to be Hindu in order to be "truly Indian".
The study found that despite sharing certain values and religious beliefs, members of India's major religious communities "often don't feel they have much in common".
"Indians simultaneously express enthusiasm for religious tolerance and a consistent preference for keeping their religious communities in segregated spheres - they live together separately," the study said.
Many lead religiously segregated lives, it added, when it comes to friendships, and "would prefer to keep people of certain religions out of their residential areas or village".
Marriages between Hindus and Muslims have long attracted censure in conservative Indian families, but couples are also facing legal hurdles now.
India's Special Marriage Act mandates a 30-day notice period for interfaith couples. And some Indian states led by the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have taken further steps, introducing laws which ban "unlawful conversion" by force or fraudulent means.
It is in response to what right-wing Hindu groups call "love jihad" - a baseless conspiracy theory that accuses Muslim men of luring Hindu women with the sole purpose of converting them to Islam.
Interfaith lovers face several challenges, both from societal attitudes and the Indian law.
The opposition to interfaith relationships is something Sumit Chauhan and his wife Azra Parveen can relate to. Mr Chauhan is from a Hindu family, although he identifies by his Dalit caste (formerly known as untouchables). Ms Parveen is a Muslim.
Mr Chauhan said his Hindu relatives "had some misconceptions about the Muslim community, but I convinced my mother and sister and brother."
But for Ms Parveen, things were not as simple. Her family refused to let them marry, she said. The couple decided to tie the knot in secret, and Ms Parveen's family did not talk to the couple for almost three years, Mr Chauhan said.
And even though they are now on speaking terms, Ms Parveen's parents still won't publicly acknowledge the marriage.
"Last year, my wife's younger sister got married but we were not invited," Mr Chauhan said. "You shouldn't have to change your religion to marry someone you love."
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/mo ... 15454.html
LA Times
An Indian island paradise escaped COVID-19. Then a Hindu nationalist official arrived
David Pierson, Varsha Torgalkar
Wed, June 30, 2021, 5:00 AM
A security person checks on a visitor, left as activists of Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) gather for a protest outside the Lakshadweep administration office in Kochi, Kerala state, India, Tuesday, June 15, 2021. A dozen activists of the CITU staged a peaceful protest here Tuesday expressing solidarity with the inhabitants of the archipelago who have been protesting against the reforms of a new administrator appointed by the Indian government.
A dozen activists of the Center of Indian Trade Unions stage a peaceful demonstration in Kochi, India, on June 15, 2021, expressing solidarity with the inhabitants of Lakshadweep against changes made by a new administrator.
For 44 years, Nijamuddin K. lived his life in peace on Kavaratti, a sandy atoll surrounded by turquoise water 200 miles west of India’s Malabar coast.
On a good day, when the winds cooperated and the fish were running, he could take his wooden boat with the creaky motor out to sea and catch up to 60 tuna. Steady demand for the prized fish on the Indian mainland made him the breadwinner for an extended family of 14.
The turbulence of modern India has long eluded Kavaratti and the 35 other flecks of idyllic tropical land scattered across the Arabian Sea and known as Lakshadweep. That serenity was upended in December, when a newly appointed administrator for the federal territory named Praful Khoda Patel visited the archipelago following the death of his predecessor.
Patel lifted restrictions on travel to the islands that had kept Lakshadweep remarkably free of COVID-19. The relaxation came just as India’s disastrous second wave was developing, resulting in a sudden and deadly outbreak in the island community.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks with the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh at a campaign rally in 2019.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right, seen in 2019 with Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh state Yogi Adityanath. Under the Modi government, Muslims have been increasingly marginalized in a country where they make up 14% of the population.
But what sparked protests and turned this rarely noticed collection of reefs into national news was prompted when Patel, a loyalist of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, introduced sweeping plans to overhaul life in the Muslim enclave. It was as if the targeting of Muslims that has riven the mainland in recent years had suddenly made its way across the sea.
Without consulting anyone in Lakshadweep, Patel proposed giving the government unchecked powers to seize property and relocate residents in the name of developing the island chain into a tourist destination that could rival the nearby Maldives.
He then suggested a ban on beef and a lifting of prohibitions on alcohol, an affront to local religious sensibilities. Patel also wanted to bar anyone with more than two children from running for local elections, a move widely seen as a ploy to weaken the political standing of Muslims, who make up 95% of the population.
Patel also wants to hand authorities the power to detain anyone without public disclosure for up to a year — a rule more commonly used in parts of India with national security concerns, not a place like Lakshadweep where there’s virtually no crime.
“It’s no secret they want to eradicate our community,” said Nijamuddin. “It makes me angry and sad. They could have learned about our lifestyle and culture instead of imposing all these rules.”
Nijamuddin’s problems began on April 27 when workers employed by the federal government demolished his beach shed and disconnected his electricity supply without warning. The government has been clearing beachfront land in Kavaratti and other inhabited islands in Lakshadweep, declaring structures like sheds illegal.
Nijamuddin had dipped into his savings to construct the shed made of bamboo and coconut leaves to store his fishing nets and shelter his boat when it needed repair. The vessel still has a gash on its bow from Cyclone Tauktae earlier this year.
The following month, Nijamuddin’s 75-year-old father died of COVID-19. He had been struggling to breathe for weeks, but there was little doctors could do at a government hospital overwhelmed by patients and short on beds.
“We used to feel safe here because there were no cases while there were millions in other parts of India,” said Nijamuddin, who suspects everyone in his family has been infected, most asymptomatically.
Lakshadweep’s residents are now under lockdown to contain a wave of COVID-19 that’s infected more than 9,000 people and killed at least 46, making it one of the worst outbreaks in India on a per capita basis.
Unable to fish, Nijamuddin has had to borrow money from friends and relatives to make ends meet. Growing signs of a third wave in India mean Lakshadweep could be months from recovery.
“I have a family of 14 people to feed and fishing is the only way of earning money,” Nijamuddin said. “Now that is also taken away and I don’t know how I am going to survive.”
The father of two was so frustrated that he joined the so-called Black Day protest on June 14 organized by local activists. Thousands of island residents wore black in solidarity and posted signs outside their homes that read “Go back Patel.”
More demonstrations have followed, including a hunger strike. The hashtag #SaveLakshadweep has been trending in India. Authorities have responded to the uproar by arresting nearly two dozen demonstrators.
Patel, who could not be reached for comment, has defended his plan by saying the “BJP administration is trying to uplift the lives of coconut growers and fishermen of the island.”
He said the stringent security laws are needed “so that youth are not misguided.”
Residents don’t believe they will benefit from Lakshadweep’s development of luxury hotels. They say they are being pushed aside because of their faith.
Under the Modi government, Muslims have been increasingly marginalized in a country where they make up 14% of the population. They’ve been targeted by police and violent mobs. And in a bid by Modi’s ruling party to make India more of a Hindu nation, many could be rendered stateless by a citizenship law that excludes Muslim migrants.
Human rights activists say Patel epitomizes Modi’s imprint on the world’s largest democracy by suppressing dissent and ignoring the interests of Lakshadweep’s Muslim population to advance his party’s ideology.
“Lakshadweep is an indication of how the Hindu nationalist agenda of the Modi administration has seeped into what should be nonpartisan governance structures,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “Political appointments have resulted in arbitrary actions to enforce the governing ideology without consultation or taking into account rights protections and constitutional freedoms.”
The result, Ganguly said, was an avoidable crisis of the government’s own making.
“The biggest problem in Lakshadweep is there was no problem,” she said. “What were they trying to solve?”
Patel’s proposals are awaiting approval by the Home Ministry and Modi’s Cabinet. Opposition lawmakers have criticized the plans, which have also attracted the attention of celebrities, including Aisha Sulthana, a popular filmmaker and native of Lakshadweep, who likened Patel to a “bioweapon” for relaxing COVID-19 travel restrictions and triggering an outbreak. Sulthana has since been charged by police with sedition for the remark.
Residents of Lakshadweep say Patel’s actions suggest he’s trying to purge the islands of their inhabitants. In another unpopular move, the federal government has cited budget constraints after laying off hundreds of employees and contractors on the islands.
Raida C.K., a former office assistant at Lakshadweep’s recreation department, was fired after she spent two weeks in jail for participating in a demonstration against Patel’s relaxed COVID-19 rules. Gone is her $150 monthly salary needed to take care of her mother and brother. The family has been feeding itself thanks to the generosity of neighbors.
“Our freedom is being taken away,” said Raida, 30. “People on these islands are simple, straightforward people. We don't know how to deal with this attack on our culture and traditions.”
Nijamuddin spends his days restless, stuck at home. His nets are dry and he doesn't know when he'll get back to sea. He has trouble sleeping most nights as he lies awake thinking about how to repay his debts and his family's future in Lakshadweep.
"If they take our lands," he said, "we have nowhere else to go."
Times staff writer Pierson reported from Singapore and special correspondent Torgalkar from Pune.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/in ... 50306.html
An Indian island paradise escaped COVID-19. Then a Hindu nationalist official arrived
David Pierson, Varsha Torgalkar
Wed, June 30, 2021, 5:00 AM
A security person checks on a visitor, left as activists of Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) gather for a protest outside the Lakshadweep administration office in Kochi, Kerala state, India, Tuesday, June 15, 2021. A dozen activists of the CITU staged a peaceful protest here Tuesday expressing solidarity with the inhabitants of the archipelago who have been protesting against the reforms of a new administrator appointed by the Indian government.
A dozen activists of the Center of Indian Trade Unions stage a peaceful demonstration in Kochi, India, on June 15, 2021, expressing solidarity with the inhabitants of Lakshadweep against changes made by a new administrator.
For 44 years, Nijamuddin K. lived his life in peace on Kavaratti, a sandy atoll surrounded by turquoise water 200 miles west of India’s Malabar coast.
On a good day, when the winds cooperated and the fish were running, he could take his wooden boat with the creaky motor out to sea and catch up to 60 tuna. Steady demand for the prized fish on the Indian mainland made him the breadwinner for an extended family of 14.
The turbulence of modern India has long eluded Kavaratti and the 35 other flecks of idyllic tropical land scattered across the Arabian Sea and known as Lakshadweep. That serenity was upended in December, when a newly appointed administrator for the federal territory named Praful Khoda Patel visited the archipelago following the death of his predecessor.
Patel lifted restrictions on travel to the islands that had kept Lakshadweep remarkably free of COVID-19. The relaxation came just as India’s disastrous second wave was developing, resulting in a sudden and deadly outbreak in the island community.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks with the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh at a campaign rally in 2019.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right, seen in 2019 with Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh state Yogi Adityanath. Under the Modi government, Muslims have been increasingly marginalized in a country where they make up 14% of the population.
But what sparked protests and turned this rarely noticed collection of reefs into national news was prompted when Patel, a loyalist of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, introduced sweeping plans to overhaul life in the Muslim enclave. It was as if the targeting of Muslims that has riven the mainland in recent years had suddenly made its way across the sea.
Without consulting anyone in Lakshadweep, Patel proposed giving the government unchecked powers to seize property and relocate residents in the name of developing the island chain into a tourist destination that could rival the nearby Maldives.
He then suggested a ban on beef and a lifting of prohibitions on alcohol, an affront to local religious sensibilities. Patel also wanted to bar anyone with more than two children from running for local elections, a move widely seen as a ploy to weaken the political standing of Muslims, who make up 95% of the population.
Patel also wants to hand authorities the power to detain anyone without public disclosure for up to a year — a rule more commonly used in parts of India with national security concerns, not a place like Lakshadweep where there’s virtually no crime.
“It’s no secret they want to eradicate our community,” said Nijamuddin. “It makes me angry and sad. They could have learned about our lifestyle and culture instead of imposing all these rules.”
Nijamuddin’s problems began on April 27 when workers employed by the federal government demolished his beach shed and disconnected his electricity supply without warning. The government has been clearing beachfront land in Kavaratti and other inhabited islands in Lakshadweep, declaring structures like sheds illegal.
Nijamuddin had dipped into his savings to construct the shed made of bamboo and coconut leaves to store his fishing nets and shelter his boat when it needed repair. The vessel still has a gash on its bow from Cyclone Tauktae earlier this year.
The following month, Nijamuddin’s 75-year-old father died of COVID-19. He had been struggling to breathe for weeks, but there was little doctors could do at a government hospital overwhelmed by patients and short on beds.
“We used to feel safe here because there were no cases while there were millions in other parts of India,” said Nijamuddin, who suspects everyone in his family has been infected, most asymptomatically.
Lakshadweep’s residents are now under lockdown to contain a wave of COVID-19 that’s infected more than 9,000 people and killed at least 46, making it one of the worst outbreaks in India on a per capita basis.
Unable to fish, Nijamuddin has had to borrow money from friends and relatives to make ends meet. Growing signs of a third wave in India mean Lakshadweep could be months from recovery.
“I have a family of 14 people to feed and fishing is the only way of earning money,” Nijamuddin said. “Now that is also taken away and I don’t know how I am going to survive.”
The father of two was so frustrated that he joined the so-called Black Day protest on June 14 organized by local activists. Thousands of island residents wore black in solidarity and posted signs outside their homes that read “Go back Patel.”
More demonstrations have followed, including a hunger strike. The hashtag #SaveLakshadweep has been trending in India. Authorities have responded to the uproar by arresting nearly two dozen demonstrators.
Patel, who could not be reached for comment, has defended his plan by saying the “BJP administration is trying to uplift the lives of coconut growers and fishermen of the island.”
He said the stringent security laws are needed “so that youth are not misguided.”
Residents don’t believe they will benefit from Lakshadweep’s development of luxury hotels. They say they are being pushed aside because of their faith.
Under the Modi government, Muslims have been increasingly marginalized in a country where they make up 14% of the population. They’ve been targeted by police and violent mobs. And in a bid by Modi’s ruling party to make India more of a Hindu nation, many could be rendered stateless by a citizenship law that excludes Muslim migrants.
Human rights activists say Patel epitomizes Modi’s imprint on the world’s largest democracy by suppressing dissent and ignoring the interests of Lakshadweep’s Muslim population to advance his party’s ideology.
“Lakshadweep is an indication of how the Hindu nationalist agenda of the Modi administration has seeped into what should be nonpartisan governance structures,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “Political appointments have resulted in arbitrary actions to enforce the governing ideology without consultation or taking into account rights protections and constitutional freedoms.”
The result, Ganguly said, was an avoidable crisis of the government’s own making.
“The biggest problem in Lakshadweep is there was no problem,” she said. “What were they trying to solve?”
Patel’s proposals are awaiting approval by the Home Ministry and Modi’s Cabinet. Opposition lawmakers have criticized the plans, which have also attracted the attention of celebrities, including Aisha Sulthana, a popular filmmaker and native of Lakshadweep, who likened Patel to a “bioweapon” for relaxing COVID-19 travel restrictions and triggering an outbreak. Sulthana has since been charged by police with sedition for the remark.
Residents of Lakshadweep say Patel’s actions suggest he’s trying to purge the islands of their inhabitants. In another unpopular move, the federal government has cited budget constraints after laying off hundreds of employees and contractors on the islands.
Raida C.K., a former office assistant at Lakshadweep’s recreation department, was fired after she spent two weeks in jail for participating in a demonstration against Patel’s relaxed COVID-19 rules. Gone is her $150 monthly salary needed to take care of her mother and brother. The family has been feeding itself thanks to the generosity of neighbors.
“Our freedom is being taken away,” said Raida, 30. “People on these islands are simple, straightforward people. We don't know how to deal with this attack on our culture and traditions.”
Nijamuddin spends his days restless, stuck at home. His nets are dry and he doesn't know when he'll get back to sea. He has trouble sleeping most nights as he lies awake thinking about how to repay his debts and his family's future in Lakshadweep.
"If they take our lands," he said, "we have nowhere else to go."
Times staff writer Pierson reported from Singapore and special correspondent Torgalkar from Pune.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/in ... 50306.html
BBC
Sulli Deals: The Indian Muslim women 'up for sale' on an app
Geeta Pandey - BBC News, Delhi
Fri, July 9, 2021, 6:10 PM·5 min read
Last Sunday, dozens of Muslim women in India found they had been put up for sale online.
Hana Khan, a commercial pilot whose name was on the list, told the BBC she was alerted to it when a friend sent her a tweet.
The tweet took her to "Sulli Deals", an app and website that had taken publicly available pictures of women and created profiles, describing the women as "deals of the day".
The app's landing page had a photo of an unknown woman. On the next two pages Ms Khan saw photos of her friends. On the page after that she saw herself.
"I counted 83 names. There could be more," she told the BBC. "They'd taken my photo from Twitter and it had my user name. This app was running for 20 days and we didn't even know about it. It sent chills down my spine."
The app pretended to offer users the chance to buy a "Sulli" - a derogatory slang term used by right-wing Hindu trolls for Muslim women. There was no real auction of any kind - the purpose of the app was just to degrade and humiliate.
Ms Khan said she had been targeted was because of her religion. "I'm a Muslim woman who's seen and heard," she said. "And they want to silence us."
GitHub - the web platform that hosted the open source app - shut it down quickly following complaints. "We suspended user accounts following the investigation of reports of such activity, all of which violate our policies," the company said in a statement.
But the experience has left women scarred. Those who featured on the app were all vocal Muslims, including journalists, activists, artists or researchers. A few have since deleted their social media accounts and many others said they were afraid of further harassment.
"No matter how strong you are, but if your picture and other personal information is made public, it scares you, it disturbs you," another woman told the BBC Hindi service.
But several of the women whose details were shared on the app have taken to social media to call out the "perverts", and vowed to fight. A dozen have formed a WhatsApp group to seek - and offer - support and some of them, including Ms Khan, have lodged complaints with the police.
Prominent citizens, activists and leaders have also spoken out against the harassment. The police said they had opened an investigation but refused to say who could be behind the app.
The people who made the app used fake identities, but Hasiba Amin, a social media coordinator for the opposition Congress party, blamed several accounts which regularly attack Muslims, especially Muslim women, and claim to support right-wing politics.
This is not the first time, Ms Amin said, that Muslim women have been targeted in this manner. On 13 May, as Muslims celebrated the festival of Eid, a YouTube channel ran an "Eid Special" - a live "auction" of Muslim women from India and Pakistan.
"People were bidding five rupees (67 cents; 48 pence) and 10 rupees, they were rating women based on their body parts and describing sexual acts and threatening rape," Ms Khan said.
Ms Amin told me that later that day, an anonymous account tried to "auction" her on Twitter. Several others - one called @sullideals101, which has since been suspended - joined in, "abusing me, body shaming me and describing gross sexual acts", Ms Khan said.
She believes that those who tried to auction her on Twitter are the same people who are behind the Sulli Deals app and the YouTube channel - which has since been taken down by the platform.
In the past week, Twitter has suspended accounts that claimed they were behind the app and it would be back up soon.
Muslim women in India
Campaigners say women from religious minorities and disadvantaged castes face more online harassment
Campaigners say online abuse has the power to "belittle, demean, intimidate and eventually silence women".
Last week, more than 200 prominent actors, musicians, journalists and government officials from around the world wrote an open letter, urging CEOs of Facebook, Google, TikTok and Twitter to make women's safety "a priority".
"The internet is the town square of the 21st century," they wrote. "It is where debate takes place, communities are built, products are sold and reputations are made. But the scale of online abuse means that, for too many women, these digital town squares are unsafe."
An Amnesty International report on online harassment in India last year showed the more vocal a woman was, the more she was targeted. And just as black women were more likely to be picked on in Britain and the United States, women from religious minorities and disadvantaged castes were harassed more in India.
Nazia Erum, author and former spokesperson of Amnesty in India, said there were few Muslim women on social media and those that were were "hunted and haunted".
"This targeted and planned attack is an attempt to take away the mic from the educated Muslim women who express their opinion and speak out against Islamophobia. It's an attempt to silence them, to shame them, to take away the space they occupy," she said.
Ms Amin said the harassers had "no fear because they know they will get away with it".
She pointed to several recent cases of atrocities against Muslims encouraged by supporters of the ruling BJP party, such as a government minister who garlanded eight Hindus convicted for lynching a Muslim, and the country's new broadcasting minister who was seen last year in a viral video working up a Hindu crowd to "shoot Muslims".
For the women whose identities were taken and used by the "Sulli Deals" app, the fight for justice could be long and tough. But they are determined to have it.
"If police don't find those who put us up for sale, I will go to the courts," Ms Khan said. "I'm going to pursue it till the end."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/sulli-deals- ... p_deeplink
Sulli Deals: The Indian Muslim women 'up for sale' on an app
Geeta Pandey - BBC News, Delhi
Fri, July 9, 2021, 6:10 PM·5 min read
Last Sunday, dozens of Muslim women in India found they had been put up for sale online.
Hana Khan, a commercial pilot whose name was on the list, told the BBC she was alerted to it when a friend sent her a tweet.
The tweet took her to "Sulli Deals", an app and website that had taken publicly available pictures of women and created profiles, describing the women as "deals of the day".
The app's landing page had a photo of an unknown woman. On the next two pages Ms Khan saw photos of her friends. On the page after that she saw herself.
"I counted 83 names. There could be more," she told the BBC. "They'd taken my photo from Twitter and it had my user name. This app was running for 20 days and we didn't even know about it. It sent chills down my spine."
The app pretended to offer users the chance to buy a "Sulli" - a derogatory slang term used by right-wing Hindu trolls for Muslim women. There was no real auction of any kind - the purpose of the app was just to degrade and humiliate.
Ms Khan said she had been targeted was because of her religion. "I'm a Muslim woman who's seen and heard," she said. "And they want to silence us."
GitHub - the web platform that hosted the open source app - shut it down quickly following complaints. "We suspended user accounts following the investigation of reports of such activity, all of which violate our policies," the company said in a statement.
But the experience has left women scarred. Those who featured on the app were all vocal Muslims, including journalists, activists, artists or researchers. A few have since deleted their social media accounts and many others said they were afraid of further harassment.
"No matter how strong you are, but if your picture and other personal information is made public, it scares you, it disturbs you," another woman told the BBC Hindi service.
But several of the women whose details were shared on the app have taken to social media to call out the "perverts", and vowed to fight. A dozen have formed a WhatsApp group to seek - and offer - support and some of them, including Ms Khan, have lodged complaints with the police.
Prominent citizens, activists and leaders have also spoken out against the harassment. The police said they had opened an investigation but refused to say who could be behind the app.
The people who made the app used fake identities, but Hasiba Amin, a social media coordinator for the opposition Congress party, blamed several accounts which regularly attack Muslims, especially Muslim women, and claim to support right-wing politics.
This is not the first time, Ms Amin said, that Muslim women have been targeted in this manner. On 13 May, as Muslims celebrated the festival of Eid, a YouTube channel ran an "Eid Special" - a live "auction" of Muslim women from India and Pakistan.
"People were bidding five rupees (67 cents; 48 pence) and 10 rupees, they were rating women based on their body parts and describing sexual acts and threatening rape," Ms Khan said.
Ms Amin told me that later that day, an anonymous account tried to "auction" her on Twitter. Several others - one called @sullideals101, which has since been suspended - joined in, "abusing me, body shaming me and describing gross sexual acts", Ms Khan said.
She believes that those who tried to auction her on Twitter are the same people who are behind the Sulli Deals app and the YouTube channel - which has since been taken down by the platform.
In the past week, Twitter has suspended accounts that claimed they were behind the app and it would be back up soon.
Muslim women in India
Campaigners say women from religious minorities and disadvantaged castes face more online harassment
Campaigners say online abuse has the power to "belittle, demean, intimidate and eventually silence women".
Last week, more than 200 prominent actors, musicians, journalists and government officials from around the world wrote an open letter, urging CEOs of Facebook, Google, TikTok and Twitter to make women's safety "a priority".
"The internet is the town square of the 21st century," they wrote. "It is where debate takes place, communities are built, products are sold and reputations are made. But the scale of online abuse means that, for too many women, these digital town squares are unsafe."
An Amnesty International report on online harassment in India last year showed the more vocal a woman was, the more she was targeted. And just as black women were more likely to be picked on in Britain and the United States, women from religious minorities and disadvantaged castes were harassed more in India.
Nazia Erum, author and former spokesperson of Amnesty in India, said there were few Muslim women on social media and those that were were "hunted and haunted".
"This targeted and planned attack is an attempt to take away the mic from the educated Muslim women who express their opinion and speak out against Islamophobia. It's an attempt to silence them, to shame them, to take away the space they occupy," she said.
Ms Amin said the harassers had "no fear because they know they will get away with it".
She pointed to several recent cases of atrocities against Muslims encouraged by supporters of the ruling BJP party, such as a government minister who garlanded eight Hindus convicted for lynching a Muslim, and the country's new broadcasting minister who was seen last year in a viral video working up a Hindu crowd to "shoot Muslims".
For the women whose identities were taken and used by the "Sulli Deals" app, the fight for justice could be long and tough. But they are determined to have it.
"If police don't find those who put us up for sale, I will go to the courts," Ms Khan said. "I'm going to pursue it till the end."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/sulli-deals- ... p_deeplink
Christian Science Monitor
Partition’s legacy transcends India-Pakistan border. Can commemoration?
Zehra Abid
Thu, August 12, 2021, 11:16 AM
Salman Rashid and Mohinder Pratab Sehgal had an unlikely friendship. It struck immediately after they met and lasted until Mr. Sehgal died. After all, the two had been looking for each other all their lives.
In 2008, Mr. Rashid set out from his home in Lahore, Pakistan, carrying a photo of his grandfather’s house in Jalandhar, India. The 80-mile journey might seem simple, for an acclaimed travel writer like Mr. Rashid, but this was a deeply personal quest. His father and some other relatives had survived the Partition, the violent end of British India in 1947. But there were no answers as to how his grandparents had died, or what had happened to his aunts. No one had heard from the women since the subcontinent’s division into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan – which led to the largest mass migration the world has ever witnessed.
There was complete silence in his house about Partition. Nobody ever talked about it. All that was passed on to Mr. Rashid was that the family must have died, because there were no Muslims left in Jalandhar. So he set off to find the answers himself.
As the British left India, after 200 years of rule, they left a territory divided in two, and pain that has lasted generations. How to divide this land was a decision made in five weeks by British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe on his first – and only – visit to India. Almost immediately, communal riots broke out among Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims who had lived together for centuries. Perhaps 1 million people died, and up to 20 million were displaced, though estimates vary. Women paid the highest price, with mass abductions, forced conversions, and rape.
This month marks 74 years since the Partition few imagined would last forever. Fleeing across the brand-new borders seemed temporary, survivors say – it was incomprehensible that they could never go home. But not only did it last; a quarter century later, the region was further divided, with further bloodshed, when East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh.
Like Mr. Rashid’s, many families tried to put the pain of Partition behind them. But the crisis is ever-present, its legacy everywhere from India and Pakistan’s constant tensions, to last year’s mob violence against Muslims in New Delhi. And now, digital spaces offer what was previously unimaginable: a place to collectively commemorate the shared pain and intrinsically connected histories of the people of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, who are geographically close, yet so far apart that to visit each other’s countries is a dream many die with.
“It may take a lifetime – or several lifetimes – to really engage with these stories, but remembrance is vital to deal with the communal issues across South Asia,” says Guneeta Singh Bhalla, founder of the 1947 Partition Archives, a digital collection of crowdsourced stories about Partition’s legacy.
“I have to ask forgiveness”
Unlike the Holocaust or world wars, the millions of dead and displaced of the Partition have no memorial that is accessible to the people of the three affected countries. There is no remembrance day, and it took 70 years for the first museum to open up in Amritsar, India.
Ms. Bhalla, who lives in the United States, is a third-generation survivor herself. It was at a Hiroshima memorial in Japan that she realized there was nothing to document the stories of Partition survivors, her grandmother among them, and she started her journey to record oral histories. Today, the 1947 Partition Archives has more than 10,000 stories from survivors in more than 700 cities around the world.
As much of the world went into lockdown, the archives launched Facebook Live sessions titled “Sunday Stories,” where academics, writers, and historians from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh discussed the myriad ways Partition shaped South Asia. Last month, during the series’ second season, Mr. Rashid spoke of going “home” to Jalandhar, a city he had never seen but always felt was his. Here he found his ancestral house, where six decades later, the neighborhood still remembered his grandfather with reverence, as “our doctor sahib.”
Like picking up clues left on a trail, Mr. Rashid made his way from person to person, looking for someone who would have the answers he was looking for. One day, the shopkeeper working below his grandfather’s house explained there was someone in the neighborhood who wanted to see Mr. Rashid, too – Mr. Sehgal, who had been just 13 at Partition. But as soon as the men met, Mr. Rashid recalls, the stranger erupted into an apology: “First of all, I have to ask forgiveness, for it was my father’s mistake.”
It took 61 years for Mr. Rashid to know that his aunts had been killed, and that it was Mr. Sehgal’s father who killed them. Twelve family members had died, shot in the room where they were hiding, their bodies eventually piled up on a pushcart and cremated.
For all his life, Mr. Sehgal had carried his father’s guilt, and Mr. Rashid, his father’s pain. There was no real explanation, except, as he remembers Mr. Sehgal telling him, “It was a time of great madness.”
Mr. Sehgal died several years ago, but not before the two men’s tragic connection grew into a genuine friendship. The killings were almost a shared loss – a bond. Mr. Rashid and his wife made several more trips to India, meeting their new friend each time with presents from Pakistan in tow. Both men, in Mr. Rashid’s eyes, were victims of Partition.
Past is present
Despite the nationalism that rages in all three countries today, comments below the “Sunday Stories” videos mostly show similar warmth, connection, and acknowledgment of shared pain. Viewership has grown from 150,000 last year, Ms. Bhalla says, to more than 400,000.
“What I find in Partition survivors is that they were so preoccupied in the day-to-day that processing the psychological trauma was a luxury,” says Shaili Jain, a psychiatrist at Stanford University. “If the original generation didn’t do it, then someone had to do it, that’s my belief as a PTSD specialist.”
The trajectory of Dr. Jain’s life itself has been directly affected by the Partition. Her grandfather too was killed in the riots of ’47, leaving her father orphaned and a refugee at the age of 10. Unable to find enough opportunities in India, he moved to England, where Dr. Jain was born and raised. “Because of the enormity of the event, you would be hard-pressed to find someone from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh who doesn’t have any connection at all – even if it’s not a direct connection – to the Partition,” she says. “The 1947 Partition really changed the trajectory of my family’s destiny.”
Although it’s been more than seven decades, the Partition is barely an event of the past. Its presence is not only seen in the second and third generation’s quest to know more, but also in the continued acts of religiously motivated violence seen across South Asia.
“With unprocessed trauma, you enter these cycles of reenactment, and this may not even be on a conscious level. But to me, the communal violence in South Asia is historical, generational, deep-rooted trauma that hasn’t been processed,” Dr. Jain adds. “And when trauma is not processed, it manifests as hate, as shame, as rage, as guilt, and those emotions have to go somewhere. Until we fully reconcile with that past, understand it, and heal from it, then such countries are just beholden to repeated cycles of violence.”
While Zoom has helped discussions go beyond borders, the digital space has not been entirely free. Last March, one of Pakistan’s leading universities organized a conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, bringing together scholars from both countries. Within hours of the conference schedule being shared on social media, it was canceled without explanation, widely interpreted as an act of self-censorship.
In spite of these circumstances, activists in Pakistan have carried on. The country’s leading feminist organization, the Women’s Action Forum (WAF), organized an online event on March 25, 2021, the day that marks the Pakistan army’s Operation Searchlight in what was then East Pakistan. The day after – March 26, 1971 – Bangladesh declared its independence.
During the following nine-month military operation by the Pakistan army, nearly 500,000 people were killed. Estimates of rape vary between thousands and a few hundred thousands.
“I don’t want to write or think about those days,” said Amena Mohsin, a professor at Dhaka University, recalling her memories of the time at the WAF event. She was visibly shaken as she read her sister’s letter from their days in an internment camp in Pakistan, where they were prisoners in a state that was once theirs.
“It took me 47 years to write about 1971,” she said.
And it had taken 50 years for Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis to come together in an inclusive space and share the grief – and guilt – they carried.
Bangladeshi scholars remembered the noise of the crows on the night of March 25, when “rivers of blood flew” and “bodies were strewn everywhere.” In a chat box, meanwhile, Pakistanis were sharing how much they wanted to apologize, with comments of how people had come together even in the worst of times, how a Hindu cook saved his Muslim employer’s life. In many Zoom windows, people just listened and cried.
Living memory
I was sitting in my Zoom window, too, dialing in from Islamabad. This was the closest I’d come to hearing direct accounts of the genocide. Though born more than a decade later, I inherited from my mother the guilt of this war. She first heard about the breakup of her country, Pakistan, through the All India Radio that could be heard from her neighbor’s house. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was addressing the Indian Parliament, which had supported the Bengalis, and declaring victory.
For three days of mourning, no food was cooked at their home. But when recounting better memories, my mother often talks about her uncle’s house, in present-day Bangladesh. This house was by the river in Khulna, and sometimes water would come up to the garden. And then there were nights when one could hear the bansuri player late into the night as the full moon shined over the river. I can picture this house so well that it feels like a reliable memory, as is often the nature of stories we’ve heard all our lives.
That was the Bangladesh on my mind as I listened, along with nearly 200 other people, to stories of the war that in many ways were all our stories.
“I was surprised how few of the Pakistanis knew about the internment camps that we had grown up hearing stories of all our lives. What is forgotten is what we have to tend to,” says Dina Siddqi, a professor at New York University who attended the WAF event.
Later, via NYU’s website, she hosted the conference that had been canceled in Pakistan. “Zoom has really transcended national borders,” said Professor Siddiqi, who studies gender and religion in Bangladesh, sharing how Pakistani and Bangladeshi scholars had come together to make it happen despite the backlash.
The event led to a shift within her, she says. “I would like to think of myself as someone who has transcended nationalist baggage, but it was during the conference that things began to resonate with me that I hadn’t emotionally explored. These conferences are opening up emotional spaces that I didn’t know existed.”
The stories she had grown up with came back like they hadn’t before: a cousin who had escaped an internment camp, making his way from Islamabad to Kabul in the rough winter months; a dear uncle who had died very young, after time as a prisoner of war in Pakistan.
“I had heard these stories all my life, yet during the conference I kept thinking of my uncle,” she says. “My aunt would always say that he died because the Pakistanis made him march in the hot desert sun for 10 hours. That kept coming back for me; I don’t know where it came from but all I could think of was that.”
I was surprised at how raw the wounds of an unwitnessed past felt for me – even in the simple, stark realization that this was the first time I had heard someone speak Bangla, the language of people who were once my own.
My brother and I were both tuned in – he in Berlin, I in Islamabad.
“Isn’t Bangla beautiful?” I texted him.
“Gorgeous,” he said.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/pa ... 54212.html
Partition’s legacy transcends India-Pakistan border. Can commemoration?
Zehra Abid
Thu, August 12, 2021, 11:16 AM
Salman Rashid and Mohinder Pratab Sehgal had an unlikely friendship. It struck immediately after they met and lasted until Mr. Sehgal died. After all, the two had been looking for each other all their lives.
In 2008, Mr. Rashid set out from his home in Lahore, Pakistan, carrying a photo of his grandfather’s house in Jalandhar, India. The 80-mile journey might seem simple, for an acclaimed travel writer like Mr. Rashid, but this was a deeply personal quest. His father and some other relatives had survived the Partition, the violent end of British India in 1947. But there were no answers as to how his grandparents had died, or what had happened to his aunts. No one had heard from the women since the subcontinent’s division into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan – which led to the largest mass migration the world has ever witnessed.
There was complete silence in his house about Partition. Nobody ever talked about it. All that was passed on to Mr. Rashid was that the family must have died, because there were no Muslims left in Jalandhar. So he set off to find the answers himself.
As the British left India, after 200 years of rule, they left a territory divided in two, and pain that has lasted generations. How to divide this land was a decision made in five weeks by British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe on his first – and only – visit to India. Almost immediately, communal riots broke out among Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims who had lived together for centuries. Perhaps 1 million people died, and up to 20 million were displaced, though estimates vary. Women paid the highest price, with mass abductions, forced conversions, and rape.
This month marks 74 years since the Partition few imagined would last forever. Fleeing across the brand-new borders seemed temporary, survivors say – it was incomprehensible that they could never go home. But not only did it last; a quarter century later, the region was further divided, with further bloodshed, when East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh.
Like Mr. Rashid’s, many families tried to put the pain of Partition behind them. But the crisis is ever-present, its legacy everywhere from India and Pakistan’s constant tensions, to last year’s mob violence against Muslims in New Delhi. And now, digital spaces offer what was previously unimaginable: a place to collectively commemorate the shared pain and intrinsically connected histories of the people of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, who are geographically close, yet so far apart that to visit each other’s countries is a dream many die with.
“It may take a lifetime – or several lifetimes – to really engage with these stories, but remembrance is vital to deal with the communal issues across South Asia,” says Guneeta Singh Bhalla, founder of the 1947 Partition Archives, a digital collection of crowdsourced stories about Partition’s legacy.
“I have to ask forgiveness”
Unlike the Holocaust or world wars, the millions of dead and displaced of the Partition have no memorial that is accessible to the people of the three affected countries. There is no remembrance day, and it took 70 years for the first museum to open up in Amritsar, India.
Ms. Bhalla, who lives in the United States, is a third-generation survivor herself. It was at a Hiroshima memorial in Japan that she realized there was nothing to document the stories of Partition survivors, her grandmother among them, and she started her journey to record oral histories. Today, the 1947 Partition Archives has more than 10,000 stories from survivors in more than 700 cities around the world.
As much of the world went into lockdown, the archives launched Facebook Live sessions titled “Sunday Stories,” where academics, writers, and historians from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh discussed the myriad ways Partition shaped South Asia. Last month, during the series’ second season, Mr. Rashid spoke of going “home” to Jalandhar, a city he had never seen but always felt was his. Here he found his ancestral house, where six decades later, the neighborhood still remembered his grandfather with reverence, as “our doctor sahib.”
Like picking up clues left on a trail, Mr. Rashid made his way from person to person, looking for someone who would have the answers he was looking for. One day, the shopkeeper working below his grandfather’s house explained there was someone in the neighborhood who wanted to see Mr. Rashid, too – Mr. Sehgal, who had been just 13 at Partition. But as soon as the men met, Mr. Rashid recalls, the stranger erupted into an apology: “First of all, I have to ask forgiveness, for it was my father’s mistake.”
It took 61 years for Mr. Rashid to know that his aunts had been killed, and that it was Mr. Sehgal’s father who killed them. Twelve family members had died, shot in the room where they were hiding, their bodies eventually piled up on a pushcart and cremated.
For all his life, Mr. Sehgal had carried his father’s guilt, and Mr. Rashid, his father’s pain. There was no real explanation, except, as he remembers Mr. Sehgal telling him, “It was a time of great madness.”
Mr. Sehgal died several years ago, but not before the two men’s tragic connection grew into a genuine friendship. The killings were almost a shared loss – a bond. Mr. Rashid and his wife made several more trips to India, meeting their new friend each time with presents from Pakistan in tow. Both men, in Mr. Rashid’s eyes, were victims of Partition.
Past is present
Despite the nationalism that rages in all three countries today, comments below the “Sunday Stories” videos mostly show similar warmth, connection, and acknowledgment of shared pain. Viewership has grown from 150,000 last year, Ms. Bhalla says, to more than 400,000.
“What I find in Partition survivors is that they were so preoccupied in the day-to-day that processing the psychological trauma was a luxury,” says Shaili Jain, a psychiatrist at Stanford University. “If the original generation didn’t do it, then someone had to do it, that’s my belief as a PTSD specialist.”
The trajectory of Dr. Jain’s life itself has been directly affected by the Partition. Her grandfather too was killed in the riots of ’47, leaving her father orphaned and a refugee at the age of 10. Unable to find enough opportunities in India, he moved to England, where Dr. Jain was born and raised. “Because of the enormity of the event, you would be hard-pressed to find someone from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh who doesn’t have any connection at all – even if it’s not a direct connection – to the Partition,” she says. “The 1947 Partition really changed the trajectory of my family’s destiny.”
Although it’s been more than seven decades, the Partition is barely an event of the past. Its presence is not only seen in the second and third generation’s quest to know more, but also in the continued acts of religiously motivated violence seen across South Asia.
“With unprocessed trauma, you enter these cycles of reenactment, and this may not even be on a conscious level. But to me, the communal violence in South Asia is historical, generational, deep-rooted trauma that hasn’t been processed,” Dr. Jain adds. “And when trauma is not processed, it manifests as hate, as shame, as rage, as guilt, and those emotions have to go somewhere. Until we fully reconcile with that past, understand it, and heal from it, then such countries are just beholden to repeated cycles of violence.”
While Zoom has helped discussions go beyond borders, the digital space has not been entirely free. Last March, one of Pakistan’s leading universities organized a conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, bringing together scholars from both countries. Within hours of the conference schedule being shared on social media, it was canceled without explanation, widely interpreted as an act of self-censorship.
In spite of these circumstances, activists in Pakistan have carried on. The country’s leading feminist organization, the Women’s Action Forum (WAF), organized an online event on March 25, 2021, the day that marks the Pakistan army’s Operation Searchlight in what was then East Pakistan. The day after – March 26, 1971 – Bangladesh declared its independence.
During the following nine-month military operation by the Pakistan army, nearly 500,000 people were killed. Estimates of rape vary between thousands and a few hundred thousands.
“I don’t want to write or think about those days,” said Amena Mohsin, a professor at Dhaka University, recalling her memories of the time at the WAF event. She was visibly shaken as she read her sister’s letter from their days in an internment camp in Pakistan, where they were prisoners in a state that was once theirs.
“It took me 47 years to write about 1971,” she said.
And it had taken 50 years for Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis to come together in an inclusive space and share the grief – and guilt – they carried.
Bangladeshi scholars remembered the noise of the crows on the night of March 25, when “rivers of blood flew” and “bodies were strewn everywhere.” In a chat box, meanwhile, Pakistanis were sharing how much they wanted to apologize, with comments of how people had come together even in the worst of times, how a Hindu cook saved his Muslim employer’s life. In many Zoom windows, people just listened and cried.
Living memory
I was sitting in my Zoom window, too, dialing in from Islamabad. This was the closest I’d come to hearing direct accounts of the genocide. Though born more than a decade later, I inherited from my mother the guilt of this war. She first heard about the breakup of her country, Pakistan, through the All India Radio that could be heard from her neighbor’s house. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was addressing the Indian Parliament, which had supported the Bengalis, and declaring victory.
For three days of mourning, no food was cooked at their home. But when recounting better memories, my mother often talks about her uncle’s house, in present-day Bangladesh. This house was by the river in Khulna, and sometimes water would come up to the garden. And then there were nights when one could hear the bansuri player late into the night as the full moon shined over the river. I can picture this house so well that it feels like a reliable memory, as is often the nature of stories we’ve heard all our lives.
That was the Bangladesh on my mind as I listened, along with nearly 200 other people, to stories of the war that in many ways were all our stories.
“I was surprised how few of the Pakistanis knew about the internment camps that we had grown up hearing stories of all our lives. What is forgotten is what we have to tend to,” says Dina Siddqi, a professor at New York University who attended the WAF event.
Later, via NYU’s website, she hosted the conference that had been canceled in Pakistan. “Zoom has really transcended national borders,” said Professor Siddiqi, who studies gender and religion in Bangladesh, sharing how Pakistani and Bangladeshi scholars had come together to make it happen despite the backlash.
The event led to a shift within her, she says. “I would like to think of myself as someone who has transcended nationalist baggage, but it was during the conference that things began to resonate with me that I hadn’t emotionally explored. These conferences are opening up emotional spaces that I didn’t know existed.”
The stories she had grown up with came back like they hadn’t before: a cousin who had escaped an internment camp, making his way from Islamabad to Kabul in the rough winter months; a dear uncle who had died very young, after time as a prisoner of war in Pakistan.
“I had heard these stories all my life, yet during the conference I kept thinking of my uncle,” she says. “My aunt would always say that he died because the Pakistanis made him march in the hot desert sun for 10 hours. That kept coming back for me; I don’t know where it came from but all I could think of was that.”
I was surprised at how raw the wounds of an unwitnessed past felt for me – even in the simple, stark realization that this was the first time I had heard someone speak Bangla, the language of people who were once my own.
My brother and I were both tuned in – he in Berlin, I in Islamabad.
“Isn’t Bangla beautiful?” I texted him.
“Gorgeous,” he said.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/pa ... 54212.html
Published August 23, 2021
The use of advanced technology by the police in India’s capital city may do more harm than good.
The Delhi police have been equipping their control room vehicles with facial recognition systems, and have already made at least 42 arrests with the help of this technology. However, recent research has shown that this technology could make Muslims more likely to be targeted. A key factor that makes the religious group vulnerable is the uneven distribution of police stations across Delhi.
The research was conducted by independent think tank Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and is based on the populations covered by various police station jurisdictions in Delhi.
Muslim-dominated areas in Delhi have more police stations than others, the research revealed. Police stations are spread unevenly across the city, with central Delhi and old Delhi being the most policed. Barring areas with low civilian populations—the places where important government or diplomatic buildings are located—nearly half of the districts in these localities have a significant Muslim presence. The study defines a “significant” population as more than that of Delhi’s average share of the Muslim population (12.86%).
“There are a few biases inherent in policing, including that policing disproportionately targets some groups of people. Such a bias creates a skewed spatial distribution of policing, which can intensify the disproportionate targeting,” Jai Vipra, senior resident fellow at Centre for Applied Law and Technology Research at Vidhi, noted. “This bias remains when new technology is applied to such a system. The victims of the shortcomings of policing technology will more likely be these disproportionately targeted groups.”
For one, it uses machine learning or other techniques to match or identify faces to a “training database,” which is a compilation of large troves of images of faces. “If the training database of FRT has an over-representation of certain types of faces, the technology tends to be better at identifying such faces,” Vipra wrote. “Even if it does not have a training bias, the technology is rarely completely accurate and can easily misidentify faces.”
Additionally, the bias can be exacerbated by the technologists designing the systems, who may not think to correct for certain errors or may mislabel certain images.
Facial recognition and CCTVs
The researchers aren’t proving that the placement of police stations in Delhi is intentionally designed to over-police Muslim areas. However, “given the fact that Muslims are represented more than the city average in the over-policed areas, and recognising historical systemic biases in policing Muslim communities in India in general and in Delhi in particular, we can reasonably state that any technological intervention that intensifies policing in Delhi will also aggravate this bias,” Vipra noted.
There’s already some proof of this. In the aftermath of the February 2020 Delhi riots, the police force used and misused this tech.
The think tank tried to acquire CCTV placement data to look for additional signs of bias in the region since areas with more cameras will likely be over-surveilled and over-policed, too. While it found CCTV distribution was uneven, there was nothing further to say since data was limited and several CCTV cameras are also lying defunct, distorting whatever data was available.
India against facial recognition
The wider concern is that the divide created by tech-enabled policing will occur not just across religious lines but also on the basis of caste, homelessness, and sex work, among other factors.
And it’s not just the national capital that’s adopting the worrisome tech with little due diligence. Forces in several cities across the country like Delhi, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Mumbai, Coimbatore, and Patiala have experimented with it but remain tight-lipped. When Vidhi filed Right to Information applications with some of these police departments asking for data on CCTV cameras and separately about the procedure used to implement FRT systems, the organisation either received evasive replies or none at all.
“It is also not the case that an equal and unbiased deployment of FRT by the police will necessarily benefit the public,” Vipra wrote. “The use of FRT in policing can impact privacy and liberty of people independently of bias as well.” Critics have raised concerns over privacy, calling the use of FRT an “act of mass surveillance.”
https://qz.com/india/2050652/delhi-poli ... source=YPL
The use of advanced technology by the police in India’s capital city may do more harm than good.
The Delhi police have been equipping their control room vehicles with facial recognition systems, and have already made at least 42 arrests with the help of this technology. However, recent research has shown that this technology could make Muslims more likely to be targeted. A key factor that makes the religious group vulnerable is the uneven distribution of police stations across Delhi.
The research was conducted by independent think tank Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and is based on the populations covered by various police station jurisdictions in Delhi.
Muslim-dominated areas in Delhi have more police stations than others, the research revealed. Police stations are spread unevenly across the city, with central Delhi and old Delhi being the most policed. Barring areas with low civilian populations—the places where important government or diplomatic buildings are located—nearly half of the districts in these localities have a significant Muslim presence. The study defines a “significant” population as more than that of Delhi’s average share of the Muslim population (12.86%).
“There are a few biases inherent in policing, including that policing disproportionately targets some groups of people. Such a bias creates a skewed spatial distribution of policing, which can intensify the disproportionate targeting,” Jai Vipra, senior resident fellow at Centre for Applied Law and Technology Research at Vidhi, noted. “This bias remains when new technology is applied to such a system. The victims of the shortcomings of policing technology will more likely be these disproportionately targeted groups.”
For one, it uses machine learning or other techniques to match or identify faces to a “training database,” which is a compilation of large troves of images of faces. “If the training database of FRT has an over-representation of certain types of faces, the technology tends to be better at identifying such faces,” Vipra wrote. “Even if it does not have a training bias, the technology is rarely completely accurate and can easily misidentify faces.”
Additionally, the bias can be exacerbated by the technologists designing the systems, who may not think to correct for certain errors or may mislabel certain images.
Facial recognition and CCTVs
The researchers aren’t proving that the placement of police stations in Delhi is intentionally designed to over-police Muslim areas. However, “given the fact that Muslims are represented more than the city average in the over-policed areas, and recognising historical systemic biases in policing Muslim communities in India in general and in Delhi in particular, we can reasonably state that any technological intervention that intensifies policing in Delhi will also aggravate this bias,” Vipra noted.
There’s already some proof of this. In the aftermath of the February 2020 Delhi riots, the police force used and misused this tech.
The think tank tried to acquire CCTV placement data to look for additional signs of bias in the region since areas with more cameras will likely be over-surveilled and over-policed, too. While it found CCTV distribution was uneven, there was nothing further to say since data was limited and several CCTV cameras are also lying defunct, distorting whatever data was available.
India against facial recognition
The wider concern is that the divide created by tech-enabled policing will occur not just across religious lines but also on the basis of caste, homelessness, and sex work, among other factors.
And it’s not just the national capital that’s adopting the worrisome tech with little due diligence. Forces in several cities across the country like Delhi, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Mumbai, Coimbatore, and Patiala have experimented with it but remain tight-lipped. When Vidhi filed Right to Information applications with some of these police departments asking for data on CCTV cameras and separately about the procedure used to implement FRT systems, the organisation either received evasive replies or none at all.
“It is also not the case that an equal and unbiased deployment of FRT by the police will necessarily benefit the public,” Vipra wrote. “The use of FRT in policing can impact privacy and liberty of people independently of bias as well.” Critics have raised concerns over privacy, calling the use of FRT an “act of mass surveillance.”
https://qz.com/india/2050652/delhi-poli ... source=YPL
Pew study: Little change in India's religious make-up in 70 years
Soutik Biswas - India correspondent
Tue, September 21, 2021, 10:04 AM
Hindus make up nearly 80% of India's 1.2 billion people
All religious groups in India have shown major declines in fertility rates, a study from Pew Research Center has found.
As a result there have been only "modest changes" in the religious make-up of the people since 1951.
The two largest groups, Hindus and Muslims, make up 94% of India's 1.2 billion people.
Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains together make up the remaining 6% of the population.
Based on data available in India's decennial census and the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the Pew study examines how the country's religious composition has changed, and the main reasons behind the changes.
India's population has more than trebled following the 1947 division of a colonial state into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan - from 361 million people in 1951, to more than 1.2 billion people in 2011. (Independent India held its first census in 1951, and the last one was conducted in 2011.)
During this period, every major religion in India saw its numbers rise, the study found.
The number of Hindus increased from 304 million to 966 million; Muslims grew from 35 million to 172 million; and the number of Indians who say they are Christian rose from 8 million to 28 million.
India Muslims
India is home to one of the world's largest Muslim populations, surpassed only by Indonesia
The religious make-up of Indians
Hindus make up 79.8% of India's 1.2 billion people in the 2021 census. 94% of the world's Hindus live in India
Muslims comprise 14.2% of Indians. India is home to one of the world's largest Muslim populations, surpassed only by Indonesia
Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains together make up 6% of the population
Only about 30,000 Indians described themselves as atheists in 2011
Around 8 million people said that they did not belong to any of the six largest groups
There were 83 smaller religious groups and each had at least 100 adherents
India gains roughly 1 million inhabitants every month, putting it on course to overtake China as the world's most populous country by 2030
Muslims still have the highest fertility rate (2.6 children per woman in 2015) among the major religious groups, followed by Hindus (2.1). Jains have the lowest fertility rate at 1.2.
The study says the general pattern is largely the same as it was in 1992, when Muslims had the highest fertility rate (4.4), followed by Hindus (3.3).
"But the gaps in childbearing between India's religious groups are generally much smaller than they used to be," the study said.
And the slowdown in population growth has been more pronounced among India's minority groups who outpaced Hindus in earlier decades.
What is striking is a fertility decline of nearly two children per woman under 25 years in a single generation among Muslims, according to Stephanie Kramer, a senior Pew researcher specialising in religion.
As the number of children Indian women had declined from an average of 3.4 per woman in the early 1990s to 2.2 in 2015, the rate among Muslims fell even more steeply from 4.4 to 2.6.
Over a period of 60 years, the Muslim share of India's population grew by 4%, while the Hindu share declined by about the same amount. The other groups held fairly steady.
The myth of India's population explosion
"The modest amount of demographic change can be explained by the fact that Muslim women have had more children, on average, than other Indian women, at least until fairly recently," Ms Kramer told the BBC.
Family sizes are influenced by a host of factors, making it "impossible to pinpoint exactly how much religious affiliation alone impacts fertility", the study says. Unlike in many countries, the impact of migration or religious conversion on demographic change in India is "negligible".
Fertility has been by far the "biggest driver" of the modest amount of religious change in India.
Population growth was driven also by the fact that groups with younger population have more women "entering their prime childbearing years and, as a result, tend to grow faster than the older populations". As of 2020, the study says, Hindus have a median age of 29, compared with 24 for Muslims and 31 for Christians.
The other drivers of population growth in India include education levels of women (highly educated women often marry later and have their first child later than less educated women) and wealth (poorer women tend to have more children so that they can contribute to household work and incomes).
The findings are not entirely surprising because India's overall fertility rate has been declining steeply in recent decades - an average Indian woman is expected to have 2.2 children in her lifetime.
That's higher than rates in countries such as the US (1.6), but lower than India's in 1992 (3.4) or 1950 (5.9).
One interesting finding of the study is that only a few Indians don't claim membership of any religious group. Globally, "none" is the third most common religious affiliation - after Christian and Muslim.
"So it is interesting to see the unaffiliated are barely represented in such a large country," Ms Kramer says.
Also, several religious groups are concentrated in India to an "unusual extent": 94% of all Hindus live there, as well as the vast majority of all Jains and over 90% of Sikhs. Most Sikhs in the world live in just one Indian state - Punjab.
Compare this to China, which has a larger population, houses about half of the world's Buddhists and most unaffiliated people, but "nothing like 90% of any major religious group".
"There's really no country with a similar religious landscape to India," says Ms Kramer.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/pe ... 30204.html
Soutik Biswas - India correspondent
Tue, September 21, 2021, 10:04 AM
Hindus make up nearly 80% of India's 1.2 billion people
All religious groups in India have shown major declines in fertility rates, a study from Pew Research Center has found.
As a result there have been only "modest changes" in the religious make-up of the people since 1951.
The two largest groups, Hindus and Muslims, make up 94% of India's 1.2 billion people.
Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains together make up the remaining 6% of the population.
Based on data available in India's decennial census and the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the Pew study examines how the country's religious composition has changed, and the main reasons behind the changes.
India's population has more than trebled following the 1947 division of a colonial state into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan - from 361 million people in 1951, to more than 1.2 billion people in 2011. (Independent India held its first census in 1951, and the last one was conducted in 2011.)
During this period, every major religion in India saw its numbers rise, the study found.
The number of Hindus increased from 304 million to 966 million; Muslims grew from 35 million to 172 million; and the number of Indians who say they are Christian rose from 8 million to 28 million.
India Muslims
India is home to one of the world's largest Muslim populations, surpassed only by Indonesia
The religious make-up of Indians
Hindus make up 79.8% of India's 1.2 billion people in the 2021 census. 94% of the world's Hindus live in India
Muslims comprise 14.2% of Indians. India is home to one of the world's largest Muslim populations, surpassed only by Indonesia
Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains together make up 6% of the population
Only about 30,000 Indians described themselves as atheists in 2011
Around 8 million people said that they did not belong to any of the six largest groups
There were 83 smaller religious groups and each had at least 100 adherents
India gains roughly 1 million inhabitants every month, putting it on course to overtake China as the world's most populous country by 2030
Muslims still have the highest fertility rate (2.6 children per woman in 2015) among the major religious groups, followed by Hindus (2.1). Jains have the lowest fertility rate at 1.2.
The study says the general pattern is largely the same as it was in 1992, when Muslims had the highest fertility rate (4.4), followed by Hindus (3.3).
"But the gaps in childbearing between India's religious groups are generally much smaller than they used to be," the study said.
And the slowdown in population growth has been more pronounced among India's minority groups who outpaced Hindus in earlier decades.
What is striking is a fertility decline of nearly two children per woman under 25 years in a single generation among Muslims, according to Stephanie Kramer, a senior Pew researcher specialising in religion.
As the number of children Indian women had declined from an average of 3.4 per woman in the early 1990s to 2.2 in 2015, the rate among Muslims fell even more steeply from 4.4 to 2.6.
Over a period of 60 years, the Muslim share of India's population grew by 4%, while the Hindu share declined by about the same amount. The other groups held fairly steady.
The myth of India's population explosion
"The modest amount of demographic change can be explained by the fact that Muslim women have had more children, on average, than other Indian women, at least until fairly recently," Ms Kramer told the BBC.
Family sizes are influenced by a host of factors, making it "impossible to pinpoint exactly how much religious affiliation alone impacts fertility", the study says. Unlike in many countries, the impact of migration or religious conversion on demographic change in India is "negligible".
Fertility has been by far the "biggest driver" of the modest amount of religious change in India.
Population growth was driven also by the fact that groups with younger population have more women "entering their prime childbearing years and, as a result, tend to grow faster than the older populations". As of 2020, the study says, Hindus have a median age of 29, compared with 24 for Muslims and 31 for Christians.
The other drivers of population growth in India include education levels of women (highly educated women often marry later and have their first child later than less educated women) and wealth (poorer women tend to have more children so that they can contribute to household work and incomes).
The findings are not entirely surprising because India's overall fertility rate has been declining steeply in recent decades - an average Indian woman is expected to have 2.2 children in her lifetime.
That's higher than rates in countries such as the US (1.6), but lower than India's in 1992 (3.4) or 1950 (5.9).
One interesting finding of the study is that only a few Indians don't claim membership of any religious group. Globally, "none" is the third most common religious affiliation - after Christian and Muslim.
"So it is interesting to see the unaffiliated are barely represented in such a large country," Ms Kramer says.
Also, several religious groups are concentrated in India to an "unusual extent": 94% of all Hindus live there, as well as the vast majority of all Jains and over 90% of Sikhs. Most Sikhs in the world live in just one Indian state - Punjab.
Compare this to China, which has a larger population, houses about half of the world's Buddhists and most unaffiliated people, but "nothing like 90% of any major religious group".
"There's really no country with a similar religious landscape to India," says Ms Kramer.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/pe ... 30204.html
Muslims barred from Friday prayer sites in India’s Gurgaon
Hindu right-wing groups hold religious event at a public ground where the city’s Muslims usually offer prayers every week.
Every Friday, Najis Mohammad would offer his afternoon prayers at a public ground near his barber shop in Gurugram, still popular by its old name Gurgaon – a satellite city on the outskirts of the Indian capital, New Delhi.
This Friday, however, he has no place to go. “Today, I am not sure if I can offer namaz anywhere,” he told Al Jazeera.
Reason: right-wing Hindu groups had erected large tents to perform a religious function at the same ground in the city’s Sector 12A area Nazim prayed at every Friday.
The event was attended by a number of politicians and Hindu priests, including Kapil Mishra, who belongs to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Mishra, 40, is accused of instigating religious violence in New Delhi last year – the worst the city had seen in decades – in which 53 people, most of them Muslims, were killed.
Permission for Muslim prayers revoked
Friday’s event came days after officials in the northern Indian state of Haryana revoked permission to offer Friday congregational prayers at eight of the 37 public grounds in Gurugram.
“Permission to offer prayers at eight previously-identified sites has been cancelled,” Gurugram police said in a statement on Tuesday. It added that if objections were raised by the residents at other places, “permission to offer prayers will be cancelled there as well”.
The police move followed a weeks-long campaign by Hindu groups and local residents who had been disrupting the Friday prayers at those sites by playing religious songs on loudspeakers and raising hate slogans.
An umbrella group of Hindu groups, called the Sanyukt Hindu Sangharsh Samiti (Joint Hindu Struggle Committee), even issued an “ultimatum” to the authorities, saying they would stop Muslim prayers themselves if the Gurugram administration fails to do so.
“We are giving a polite warning. We won’t submit more memorandums. It will then be the responsibility of the administration to maintain peace, not ours,” the Indian Express newspaper quoted Mahavir Bhardwaj, Haryana state president of the group, as saying last week.
“We are ready for lathis [sticks], we are ready to go to jail. We won’t run if we are shot at, but this will not be tolerated.”
A 2018 report by Scroll.in news website said there are 22 mosques in Gurugram, home to 1.1 million people, according to the 2011 census. Less than 5 percent of them are Muslims.
“There is no mosque nearby where we can go and offer our Jumah [Friday] prayer. The nearby mosque is almost 4 kilometres away,” Najis told Al Jazeera.
In a press statement shared with Al Jazeera, a group called the Muslim Community of Gurgaon said it has “decided not to offer” Friday prayers at the ground in Sector 12A “only for this week” as “vigilante groups” are organising “Govardhan Puja [prayers]” at the same spot.
“[Muslim prayers] will happen at rest of the 36 places as they were happening before. It is the duty of the administration and police to ensure law and order is maintained,” it said.
The statement urged Muslims “who are forced [to go] to these open sites due to lack of mosques in Gurgaon” to show “restraint and walk away in case troublemakers try to provoke or disrupt namaz at the remaining 36 sites”.
“The Muslim community of Gurgaon stands for peace and amity and will do everything in its might to ensure that communal harmony prevails in the city.”
Parliamentarian Asaduddin Owaisi said the Gurugram administration’s decision to ban Friday prayers at some sites was a violation of Article 25 of the Indian constitution that guarantees Indian citizens the freedom to profess, practise and propagate religion.
“How is it that practising my religion or offering my Jumah namaz [Friday prayers] once in a week for 15 to 20 minutes is hurting anyone?” he told Al Jazeera.
“This is a clear example of how radicalised these so-called protesters have become. This is a clear example of their hatred for Muslims.”
Amit Shah’s statement
Last week, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah, while launching the BJP’s election campaign in the northern state of Uttarakhand, said the main opposition party had practised “appeasement politics” by allowing Muslim prayers on roads.
“Earlier, when I came here during the Congress government, some people told me that the government had permitted the highways for namaz on Fridays. Congress does only appeasement and can’t do any welfare work for the people of Uttarakhand,” he said.
But Gurugram resident Shehzad Khan, member of a local group called the Muslim Ekta Manch (Muslim Unity Forum), told Al Jazeera they prayed in the open “out of compulsion”.
“There is a very limited number of mosques in Gurgaon. That is why we have to offer namaz in the open,” he said.
Khan said a majority of the city’s Hindu community was not against Muslims offering prayers at these sites. “It’s just a handful of people who are creating communal disharmony.”
Lawyer Kulbhushan Bhardwaj, one of the organisers of Friday’s event, when asked about Hindu rituals being held on the day Muslims usually prayed, said: “We learnt this from Muslims.”
“They [Muslims], instead of offering namaz in their mosques, pray in open spaces without caring about law or the government,” he told Al Jazeera.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/ ... ps-haryana
Hindu right-wing groups hold religious event at a public ground where the city’s Muslims usually offer prayers every week.
Every Friday, Najis Mohammad would offer his afternoon prayers at a public ground near his barber shop in Gurugram, still popular by its old name Gurgaon – a satellite city on the outskirts of the Indian capital, New Delhi.
This Friday, however, he has no place to go. “Today, I am not sure if I can offer namaz anywhere,” he told Al Jazeera.
Reason: right-wing Hindu groups had erected large tents to perform a religious function at the same ground in the city’s Sector 12A area Nazim prayed at every Friday.
The event was attended by a number of politicians and Hindu priests, including Kapil Mishra, who belongs to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Mishra, 40, is accused of instigating religious violence in New Delhi last year – the worst the city had seen in decades – in which 53 people, most of them Muslims, were killed.
Permission for Muslim prayers revoked
Friday’s event came days after officials in the northern Indian state of Haryana revoked permission to offer Friday congregational prayers at eight of the 37 public grounds in Gurugram.
“Permission to offer prayers at eight previously-identified sites has been cancelled,” Gurugram police said in a statement on Tuesday. It added that if objections were raised by the residents at other places, “permission to offer prayers will be cancelled there as well”.
The police move followed a weeks-long campaign by Hindu groups and local residents who had been disrupting the Friday prayers at those sites by playing religious songs on loudspeakers and raising hate slogans.
An umbrella group of Hindu groups, called the Sanyukt Hindu Sangharsh Samiti (Joint Hindu Struggle Committee), even issued an “ultimatum” to the authorities, saying they would stop Muslim prayers themselves if the Gurugram administration fails to do so.
“We are giving a polite warning. We won’t submit more memorandums. It will then be the responsibility of the administration to maintain peace, not ours,” the Indian Express newspaper quoted Mahavir Bhardwaj, Haryana state president of the group, as saying last week.
“We are ready for lathis [sticks], we are ready to go to jail. We won’t run if we are shot at, but this will not be tolerated.”
A 2018 report by Scroll.in news website said there are 22 mosques in Gurugram, home to 1.1 million people, according to the 2011 census. Less than 5 percent of them are Muslims.
“There is no mosque nearby where we can go and offer our Jumah [Friday] prayer. The nearby mosque is almost 4 kilometres away,” Najis told Al Jazeera.
In a press statement shared with Al Jazeera, a group called the Muslim Community of Gurgaon said it has “decided not to offer” Friday prayers at the ground in Sector 12A “only for this week” as “vigilante groups” are organising “Govardhan Puja [prayers]” at the same spot.
“[Muslim prayers] will happen at rest of the 36 places as they were happening before. It is the duty of the administration and police to ensure law and order is maintained,” it said.
The statement urged Muslims “who are forced [to go] to these open sites due to lack of mosques in Gurgaon” to show “restraint and walk away in case troublemakers try to provoke or disrupt namaz at the remaining 36 sites”.
“The Muslim community of Gurgaon stands for peace and amity and will do everything in its might to ensure that communal harmony prevails in the city.”
Parliamentarian Asaduddin Owaisi said the Gurugram administration’s decision to ban Friday prayers at some sites was a violation of Article 25 of the Indian constitution that guarantees Indian citizens the freedom to profess, practise and propagate religion.
“How is it that practising my religion or offering my Jumah namaz [Friday prayers] once in a week for 15 to 20 minutes is hurting anyone?” he told Al Jazeera.
“This is a clear example of how radicalised these so-called protesters have become. This is a clear example of their hatred for Muslims.”
Amit Shah’s statement
Last week, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah, while launching the BJP’s election campaign in the northern state of Uttarakhand, said the main opposition party had practised “appeasement politics” by allowing Muslim prayers on roads.
“Earlier, when I came here during the Congress government, some people told me that the government had permitted the highways for namaz on Fridays. Congress does only appeasement and can’t do any welfare work for the people of Uttarakhand,” he said.
But Gurugram resident Shehzad Khan, member of a local group called the Muslim Ekta Manch (Muslim Unity Forum), told Al Jazeera they prayed in the open “out of compulsion”.
“There is a very limited number of mosques in Gurgaon. That is why we have to offer namaz in the open,” he said.
Khan said a majority of the city’s Hindu community was not against Muslims offering prayers at these sites. “It’s just a handful of people who are creating communal disharmony.”
Lawyer Kulbhushan Bhardwaj, one of the organisers of Friday’s event, when asked about Hindu rituals being held on the day Muslims usually prayed, said: “We learnt this from Muslims.”
“They [Muslims], instead of offering namaz in their mosques, pray in open spaces without caring about law or the government,” he told Al Jazeera.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/ ... ps-haryana
Indian city to remove non-vegetarian food stalls from main roads
Authorities in Ahmedabad order removal of non-vegetarian food stalls from main roads – the fourth city in Gujarat state to do so in recent days.
Mohammad Rafiq, centre, sells egg 'bhajias' (fried eggs wrapped with potato and chickpea batter) in Ahmedabad [File: Sam Panthaky/AFP]
New Delhi, India – Authorities in Ahmedabad have ordered the removal of non-vegetarian food stalls from its main roads – the fourth city in the western Indian state of Gujarat to do so in recent days.
In an order on Monday, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation said it will remove stalls selling non-vegetarian food items from the city’s main roads as well as within the 100-metre (330 feet) radius of schools, colleges and religious places.
Devang Dani, chairman of the corporation’s town planning committee, told news agency ANI that the execution of the order will start on Tuesday.
The restriction came days after municipal corporations in Gujarat’s Rajkot, Bhavnagar and Vadodara cities, led by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), took similar measures.
Gujarat, one of the wealthiest states of India, is the home state of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who served as its chief minister for nearly 13 years before he won the national elections in 2014.
The civic administration in Vadodara and Rajkot even ordered the shopkeepers and hawkers to cover non-vegetarian food, including eggs, saying it could “hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus”.
It also stated that smoke emanating from such places could cause public health hazards.
“The practice of displaying meat, fish, and eggs at stalls might have continued for several years but it was time to end it,” Vadodara Municipal Corporation standing committee’s chairman Hitendra Patel was quoted as saying, according to local media reports.
Gujarat’s current Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel on Monday said the prohibition was not a “question of vegetarian and non-vegetarian” food items.
“People are free to eat whatever they want. But the food being sold at stalls should not be harmful and the stalls should not obstruct traffic flow,” he told reporters.
BJP spokesman in Gujarat, Yamal Vyas, claimed the decisions have been taken by the respective municipal offices and not his party.
“It’s not the BJP’s decision. It’s a decision by the respective municipal corporation … Party as a whole has not taken any stand on this issue,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Only thing is that all these stalls should not be a hindrance to the traffic … BJP does not object to non-vegetarian food per se. We object to food which is not very hygienic.”
Play Video
02:34
Muslims barred from public prayer sites in Indian city
The opposition Congress party said the BJP wants to “divert the attention of people” from the main issues, including unemployment and price rise.
“BJP has failed on the promises it made to people – be it employment or clean water. The main agenda of the BJP is to create polarisation by raising such non-issues,” Gujarat Congress spokesman Manish Doshi told Al Jazeera.
Doshi said the ban on non-vegetarian food stalls in Gujarat’s cities was an “election gimmick” by the BJP to further deepen the religious divide in the state.
“It should be left to an individual what he wants to eat, drink and wear. It’s a personal choice and the government should not impose that on people. This [ban on non-vegetarian stall] is an election gimmick of the BJP,” Doshi said.
“It is very dangerous for our democracy.”
Assembly elections in Gujarat, a BJP-governed state for more than 25 straight years, are due next year.
Non-vegetarian eateries, especially in BJP-governed states, have been facing increasing pressure from the party and Hindu supremacist groups affiliated to it.
Shamshad Pathan, a politician belonging to the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in Gujarat, told Al Jazeera the decision will hurt the poor and called it a part of the BJP’s “hidden agenda” to benefit multinational companies.
“A majority of vendors in Gujarat who sell non-vegetarian food are either Muslims, Dalits or Adivasis [Indigenous]. This is to target them and benefit the big corporations,” Pathan said.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/ ... ood-stalls
Authorities in Ahmedabad order removal of non-vegetarian food stalls from main roads – the fourth city in Gujarat state to do so in recent days.
Mohammad Rafiq, centre, sells egg 'bhajias' (fried eggs wrapped with potato and chickpea batter) in Ahmedabad [File: Sam Panthaky/AFP]
New Delhi, India – Authorities in Ahmedabad have ordered the removal of non-vegetarian food stalls from its main roads – the fourth city in the western Indian state of Gujarat to do so in recent days.
In an order on Monday, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation said it will remove stalls selling non-vegetarian food items from the city’s main roads as well as within the 100-metre (330 feet) radius of schools, colleges and religious places.
Devang Dani, chairman of the corporation’s town planning committee, told news agency ANI that the execution of the order will start on Tuesday.
The restriction came days after municipal corporations in Gujarat’s Rajkot, Bhavnagar and Vadodara cities, led by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), took similar measures.
Gujarat, one of the wealthiest states of India, is the home state of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who served as its chief minister for nearly 13 years before he won the national elections in 2014.
The civic administration in Vadodara and Rajkot even ordered the shopkeepers and hawkers to cover non-vegetarian food, including eggs, saying it could “hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus”.
It also stated that smoke emanating from such places could cause public health hazards.
“The practice of displaying meat, fish, and eggs at stalls might have continued for several years but it was time to end it,” Vadodara Municipal Corporation standing committee’s chairman Hitendra Patel was quoted as saying, according to local media reports.
Gujarat’s current Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel on Monday said the prohibition was not a “question of vegetarian and non-vegetarian” food items.
“People are free to eat whatever they want. But the food being sold at stalls should not be harmful and the stalls should not obstruct traffic flow,” he told reporters.
BJP spokesman in Gujarat, Yamal Vyas, claimed the decisions have been taken by the respective municipal offices and not his party.
“It’s not the BJP’s decision. It’s a decision by the respective municipal corporation … Party as a whole has not taken any stand on this issue,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Only thing is that all these stalls should not be a hindrance to the traffic … BJP does not object to non-vegetarian food per se. We object to food which is not very hygienic.”
Play Video
02:34
Muslims barred from public prayer sites in Indian city
The opposition Congress party said the BJP wants to “divert the attention of people” from the main issues, including unemployment and price rise.
“BJP has failed on the promises it made to people – be it employment or clean water. The main agenda of the BJP is to create polarisation by raising such non-issues,” Gujarat Congress spokesman Manish Doshi told Al Jazeera.
Doshi said the ban on non-vegetarian food stalls in Gujarat’s cities was an “election gimmick” by the BJP to further deepen the religious divide in the state.
“It should be left to an individual what he wants to eat, drink and wear. It’s a personal choice and the government should not impose that on people. This [ban on non-vegetarian stall] is an election gimmick of the BJP,” Doshi said.
“It is very dangerous for our democracy.”
Assembly elections in Gujarat, a BJP-governed state for more than 25 straight years, are due next year.
Non-vegetarian eateries, especially in BJP-governed states, have been facing increasing pressure from the party and Hindu supremacist groups affiliated to it.
Shamshad Pathan, a politician belonging to the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in Gujarat, told Al Jazeera the decision will hurt the poor and called it a part of the BJP’s “hidden agenda” to benefit multinational companies.
“A majority of vendors in Gujarat who sell non-vegetarian food are either Muslims, Dalits or Adivasis [Indigenous]. This is to target them and benefit the big corporations,” Pathan said.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/ ... ood-stalls
India's proud tradition of celebrating multiculturalism is facing a crisis
Arun A.K., Contributing Writer
Tue, December 7, 2021, 8:56 AM
In Saeed Akhtar Mirza's 1995 film Naseem (streaming on Mubi), an ailing old man regales his granddaughter with anecdotes of his youth, a time when India's Hindus and Muslims rejoiced in one another's festivities and fought in solidarity against British colonial rule. The grandfather's narrative of religious harmony and national integration is juxtaposed with the tensions leading up to the Babri Mosque demolition in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, by Hindu extremists on December 6, 1992 — a tragic event now widely considered to be a turning point in the rise of Hindu nationalism.
The film's fraught backdrop, as witnessed by 15-year-old Naseem (Mayuri Kango), offers a stark contrast to the pre-independence past described by her grandfather as India's secular fabric begins to slowly erode. But what sadly makes Naseem as relevant today as it was upon its release — if not more so — is that contemporary India continues to mirror the tumultuous nation depicted in the film. In fact, now more than ever, India is consumed by hate towards the "other," marking a shift away from the more pluralistic values historically espoused in its films, poetry, music, and even (to the ire of the conservative ruling party) its TV ads.
Naseem ultimately ends with the death of the grandfather coinciding with the demolition of the Babri Mosque, symbolically marking the fall of India's pluralistic bastion. Actor and Urdu-language poet Kaifi Azmi, whose grandfather character is the embodiment of secularism in the film, was pained by the grinding down of his country's secularism in real life, too. His lament found expression in the poem "Doosra Banwas" ("The Second Exile"), which imagines the Hindu deity Rama visiting his birthplace, Ayodhya, on the day of demolition and becoming despondent upon witnessing the carnage and politics played out in his name. Rama subsequently decides to go into exile again.
Fortunately for Azmi, when he recited the poem at an event in the late 1990s, the sociopolitical climate of India was a bit more tolerant than it is now. If such an act of "blasphemy" were to be attempted today, in all probability the socialist poet would have to languish in jail alongside many other artists and activists, on account of "hurting religious sentiments."
Ever since the right-wing forces rose to power in the previous decade, a wave of religious intolerance has been sweeping over India, rendering artists and their work extremely vulnerable to attack. Stand-up comic Munawar Faruqui found himself at the receiving end of such bigoted absurdity at the beginning of the new year when he was arrested on Jan. 1 in the central Indian city of Indore for allegedly making objectionable jokes about Hindu deities, following a complaint by the son of a politician who belonged to the ruling right-wing party, BJP. Faruqui was eventually released on bail after more than a month in prison.
That witch-hunt mentality might also explain the outcry by many educated Indians over an advertisement for the jewelry brand Tanishq. The 45-second ad depicts a baby shower for a Hindu wife by her Muslim in-laws, but right-wingers criticized the clip for promoting love jihad, a term used by radical Hindu groups to accuse Muslim men of converting Hindu women by marriage. Similarly, consumer goods company Dabur recently withdrew an advertisement for a skin-bleaching cream that showed a same-sex couple celebrating Karwa Chauth — a Hindu festival where married women observe fast from sunrise to moonrise for the safety and longevity of their husbands — hours after the home minister of India's second-largest state, Narottam Mishra, warned of legal action against the firm.
Meanwhile, the clothing company Fabindia came under fire for running a Diwali-themed advertisement for a clothing collection named "Jashn-e-Riwaaz," an Urdu phrase meaning "celebration of tradition." Advertising a collection by that name in connection with the Hindu festival of Diwali drew accusations of "unnecessarily uplifting secularism and Muslim ideologies" from critics who "claimed it hurt their religious sentiments," The New Indian Express recounts. BJP leader Tejasvi Surya further slammed Fabindia for its "deliberate attempt of Abrahamanization of Hindu festivals and depicting models without traditional Hindu attire." The message was loud and clear: The secular rhetoric of a pluralistic society needs to give way to the hegemony of Hindutva ideology. Further, any individual, entity, or even brand acting as proponents of a composite culture must be prepared to face clampdown.
But such close-mindedness flies in the face of a long history of progressivism that can easily be located in India's art; arguably, even the narrative commercials censored by the government are an extension of this tradition. Ironically, it is the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which had a long history of religious syncretism before the Babri mayhem, that has been at the forefront of the deepening religious divide in the country. Yet long before the spread of fundamentalism in the state, Uttar Pradesh was emblematic of the "Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb," a poetic phrase comparing the Hindu-Muslim camaraderie to the holy confluence of India's major rivers, the Ganga and Yamuna. The late musician Ustad Bismillah Khan and his predecessors — who hailed from the city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh — stand as easy examples of this inclusive culture, since their Muslim identities never prevented them from performing at temples and Hindu festivals.
India's tradition of multiculturalism can be further witnessed in Niharika Popli's documentary Rasan Piya (2015), about the life of renowned Hindustani (Indian) classical musician Ustad Abdul Rashid Khan. Belonging to a lineage of artists who performed in provinces of diverse faiths, he was appointed as a court singer to the Hindu king of Gwalior in the state of Madhya Pradesh. An exemplar of polytheism and yet a devout Muslim, Rashid Khan was also a devotee of the Hindu god Lord Krishna, and would fast on Janmashtami (the birth anniversary of Krishna) every year.
It is evident that for centuries, then, the heterogeneous culture of India was capable of embracing the ethos of the Sanskrit phrase "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam," meaning "the world is one family." However, any traces of "unity in diversity" that persist today stand threatened by the hijackers of culture and religion who are hellbent on ignoring the nation's age-old multicultural narrative, otherwise so evident and celebrated in its art.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/in ... 42886.html
Arun A.K., Contributing Writer
Tue, December 7, 2021, 8:56 AM
In Saeed Akhtar Mirza's 1995 film Naseem (streaming on Mubi), an ailing old man regales his granddaughter with anecdotes of his youth, a time when India's Hindus and Muslims rejoiced in one another's festivities and fought in solidarity against British colonial rule. The grandfather's narrative of religious harmony and national integration is juxtaposed with the tensions leading up to the Babri Mosque demolition in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, by Hindu extremists on December 6, 1992 — a tragic event now widely considered to be a turning point in the rise of Hindu nationalism.
The film's fraught backdrop, as witnessed by 15-year-old Naseem (Mayuri Kango), offers a stark contrast to the pre-independence past described by her grandfather as India's secular fabric begins to slowly erode. But what sadly makes Naseem as relevant today as it was upon its release — if not more so — is that contemporary India continues to mirror the tumultuous nation depicted in the film. In fact, now more than ever, India is consumed by hate towards the "other," marking a shift away from the more pluralistic values historically espoused in its films, poetry, music, and even (to the ire of the conservative ruling party) its TV ads.
Naseem ultimately ends with the death of the grandfather coinciding with the demolition of the Babri Mosque, symbolically marking the fall of India's pluralistic bastion. Actor and Urdu-language poet Kaifi Azmi, whose grandfather character is the embodiment of secularism in the film, was pained by the grinding down of his country's secularism in real life, too. His lament found expression in the poem "Doosra Banwas" ("The Second Exile"), which imagines the Hindu deity Rama visiting his birthplace, Ayodhya, on the day of demolition and becoming despondent upon witnessing the carnage and politics played out in his name. Rama subsequently decides to go into exile again.
Fortunately for Azmi, when he recited the poem at an event in the late 1990s, the sociopolitical climate of India was a bit more tolerant than it is now. If such an act of "blasphemy" were to be attempted today, in all probability the socialist poet would have to languish in jail alongside many other artists and activists, on account of "hurting religious sentiments."
Ever since the right-wing forces rose to power in the previous decade, a wave of religious intolerance has been sweeping over India, rendering artists and their work extremely vulnerable to attack. Stand-up comic Munawar Faruqui found himself at the receiving end of such bigoted absurdity at the beginning of the new year when he was arrested on Jan. 1 in the central Indian city of Indore for allegedly making objectionable jokes about Hindu deities, following a complaint by the son of a politician who belonged to the ruling right-wing party, BJP. Faruqui was eventually released on bail after more than a month in prison.
That witch-hunt mentality might also explain the outcry by many educated Indians over an advertisement for the jewelry brand Tanishq. The 45-second ad depicts a baby shower for a Hindu wife by her Muslim in-laws, but right-wingers criticized the clip for promoting love jihad, a term used by radical Hindu groups to accuse Muslim men of converting Hindu women by marriage. Similarly, consumer goods company Dabur recently withdrew an advertisement for a skin-bleaching cream that showed a same-sex couple celebrating Karwa Chauth — a Hindu festival where married women observe fast from sunrise to moonrise for the safety and longevity of their husbands — hours after the home minister of India's second-largest state, Narottam Mishra, warned of legal action against the firm.
Meanwhile, the clothing company Fabindia came under fire for running a Diwali-themed advertisement for a clothing collection named "Jashn-e-Riwaaz," an Urdu phrase meaning "celebration of tradition." Advertising a collection by that name in connection with the Hindu festival of Diwali drew accusations of "unnecessarily uplifting secularism and Muslim ideologies" from critics who "claimed it hurt their religious sentiments," The New Indian Express recounts. BJP leader Tejasvi Surya further slammed Fabindia for its "deliberate attempt of Abrahamanization of Hindu festivals and depicting models without traditional Hindu attire." The message was loud and clear: The secular rhetoric of a pluralistic society needs to give way to the hegemony of Hindutva ideology. Further, any individual, entity, or even brand acting as proponents of a composite culture must be prepared to face clampdown.
But such close-mindedness flies in the face of a long history of progressivism that can easily be located in India's art; arguably, even the narrative commercials censored by the government are an extension of this tradition. Ironically, it is the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which had a long history of religious syncretism before the Babri mayhem, that has been at the forefront of the deepening religious divide in the country. Yet long before the spread of fundamentalism in the state, Uttar Pradesh was emblematic of the "Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb," a poetic phrase comparing the Hindu-Muslim camaraderie to the holy confluence of India's major rivers, the Ganga and Yamuna. The late musician Ustad Bismillah Khan and his predecessors — who hailed from the city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh — stand as easy examples of this inclusive culture, since their Muslim identities never prevented them from performing at temples and Hindu festivals.
India's tradition of multiculturalism can be further witnessed in Niharika Popli's documentary Rasan Piya (2015), about the life of renowned Hindustani (Indian) classical musician Ustad Abdul Rashid Khan. Belonging to a lineage of artists who performed in provinces of diverse faiths, he was appointed as a court singer to the Hindu king of Gwalior in the state of Madhya Pradesh. An exemplar of polytheism and yet a devout Muslim, Rashid Khan was also a devotee of the Hindu god Lord Krishna, and would fast on Janmashtami (the birth anniversary of Krishna) every year.
It is evident that for centuries, then, the heterogeneous culture of India was capable of embracing the ethos of the Sanskrit phrase "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam," meaning "the world is one family." However, any traces of "unity in diversity" that persist today stand threatened by the hijackers of culture and religion who are hellbent on ignoring the nation's age-old multicultural narrative, otherwise so evident and celebrated in its art.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/in ... 42886.html
India’s Latest Religious and Cultural Flashpoint: Eggs
Food-cart rules spurred by conservative beliefs draw a backlash, showcasing the tensions around the country’s rising Hindu nationalist movement.
AHMEDABAD, India — The raid came just after sunset. Plainclothes municipal workers swarmed into the busy neighborhood, seizing contraband. The dealers ran or watched helplessly as the authorities took their illicit goods.
And with that, the government had conducted a successful crackdown on eggs.
Not just the eggs themselves, though city officials had confiscated hundreds of trays of those, too. The authorities grabbed everything — gas canisters, bread, vegetables, plates, glasses, stools — that one might need to run a food cart to sell eggs scrambled, fried or wrapped in a fragrant breading. On the curb, only broken shells remained.
The food-cart operators who got away counted themselves lucky to have escaped.
“We found out that the truck was approaching our location,” said Virendra Ram Chandra Singh, who added that he could prepare eggs 156 ways. “We ran home with our carts, pushing hard and fast.”
The place of the humble egg in the street food culture of Gujarat, a state in western India where people take their snacks seriously, has become the latest flash point in the growing role of religion in everyday life. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has a Hindu nationalist base, the national government has taken steps in recent years to promote the religion and to sideline Muslims and other groups.
Emboldened local governments have followed suit, enacting rules in some places that adhere closely to Hindu doctrine. That is especially true in Gujarat, which Mr. Modi led for 13 years before becoming prime minister and which is often seen as a laboratory for pushing policies to reshape India along his Hindu nationalist vision. Those include tightening a ban on alcohol and adding protections against the slaughter of cattle, which many Hindus consider sacred.
But even devout Hindus don’t always agree among themselves what practices the faithful should follow, a conflict that also raises issues of income and class. Hence the bitter disagreement over eggs.
Many Hindus are vegetarian, particularly among the elite within India’s traditional caste system, and some of them consider eggs to be meat products.
Citing complaints from Hindus as well as health concerns, local officials in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s largest city, and at least four other cities in mid-November banned the sale and display of meat, fish and eggs on the street. As the mayor of one city, Rajkot, told the local news media: “Carts with nonvegetarian food can be seen everywhere in the city. The religious sentiments of the people are hurt by this.”
The local authorities weren’t expecting the backlash. In recent days, facing a lawsuit and protests, officials in Ahmedabad relented and allowed sales of previously forbidden food to resume for now, though the dispute is being considered by the courts. They did not respond to requests for comment.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Food-cart rules spurred by conservative beliefs draw a backlash, showcasing the tensions around the country’s rising Hindu nationalist movement.
AHMEDABAD, India — The raid came just after sunset. Plainclothes municipal workers swarmed into the busy neighborhood, seizing contraband. The dealers ran or watched helplessly as the authorities took their illicit goods.
And with that, the government had conducted a successful crackdown on eggs.
Not just the eggs themselves, though city officials had confiscated hundreds of trays of those, too. The authorities grabbed everything — gas canisters, bread, vegetables, plates, glasses, stools — that one might need to run a food cart to sell eggs scrambled, fried or wrapped in a fragrant breading. On the curb, only broken shells remained.
The food-cart operators who got away counted themselves lucky to have escaped.
“We found out that the truck was approaching our location,” said Virendra Ram Chandra Singh, who added that he could prepare eggs 156 ways. “We ran home with our carts, pushing hard and fast.”
The place of the humble egg in the street food culture of Gujarat, a state in western India where people take their snacks seriously, has become the latest flash point in the growing role of religion in everyday life. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has a Hindu nationalist base, the national government has taken steps in recent years to promote the religion and to sideline Muslims and other groups.
Emboldened local governments have followed suit, enacting rules in some places that adhere closely to Hindu doctrine. That is especially true in Gujarat, which Mr. Modi led for 13 years before becoming prime minister and which is often seen as a laboratory for pushing policies to reshape India along his Hindu nationalist vision. Those include tightening a ban on alcohol and adding protections against the slaughter of cattle, which many Hindus consider sacred.
But even devout Hindus don’t always agree among themselves what practices the faithful should follow, a conflict that also raises issues of income and class. Hence the bitter disagreement over eggs.
Many Hindus are vegetarian, particularly among the elite within India’s traditional caste system, and some of them consider eggs to be meat products.
Citing complaints from Hindus as well as health concerns, local officials in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s largest city, and at least four other cities in mid-November banned the sale and display of meat, fish and eggs on the street. As the mayor of one city, Rajkot, told the local news media: “Carts with nonvegetarian food can be seen everywhere in the city. The religious sentiments of the people are hurt by this.”
The local authorities weren’t expecting the backlash. In recent days, facing a lawsuit and protests, officials in Ahmedabad relented and allowed sales of previously forbidden food to resume for now, though the dispute is being considered by the courts. They did not respond to requests for comment.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/worl ... 778d3e6de3
BBC
Tripura: Anti-Muslim violence flares up in Indian state
Subir Bhaumik - Kolkata
Thu, October 28, 2021, 3:59 AM
Tripura violence
Muslim properties have been targeted in the recent violence in Tripura
Tension prevails in India's north-eastern state of Tripura following attacks on mosques and properties owned by Muslims.
Security has been tightened and restrictions on gatherings have been enforced in the affected areas.
The violence followed clashes between Hindu groups and the police.
The groups were protesting against the police refusing them permission to hold a rally against recent attacks on Hindus in neighbouring Bangladesh.
At least seven people were killed, temples desecrated and hundreds of houses and businesses of the Hindu minority torched in Bangladesh earlier this month after rumours spread that the Quran had been insulted at a special pavilion set up for the annual Hindu religious festival of Durga Puja.
Bangladesh's Hindus living in fear following mob attacks
Tripura is encircled on three sides by Bangladesh and connected by a thin corridor to the neighbouring state of Assam. The state has been run by India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 2018 after 25 years of Communist rule.
More than 10 incidents of religious violence have been reported from the North Tripura district in the past four days.
Authorities enforced restrictions on large gatherings after Tuesday night's violence in the border town of Panisagar in which a mosque and several shops belonging to Muslims were vandalised.
The attacks followed a rally taken out by the hardline Hindu organisation, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) - a close ally of the BJP.
Soubhik Dey, a senior police official in Panisagar, said some 3,500 people had taken part in the rally.
"Some VHP activists participating in the rally ransacked a mosque in the Chamtilla area. Later, three houses and three shops were ransacked and two shops were set on fire in the Rowa Bazar area, around 800 yards from the first incident," Mr Dey said.
Police said the ransacked shops and houses belonged to Muslims and a case has been filed based on a complaint by one of them.
Narayan Das, a local leader of Bajrang Dal, another hardline Hindu group, has claimed that some youngsters in front of the mosque abused them and brandished swords, a charge that could not be independently verified.
The Tripura police tweeted that "some people are spreading rumours and circulating provocative messages on social media" and appealed to people to maintain peace.
Last week, the state unit of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, a Muslim organisation, had alleged that mobs had attacked mosques and neighbourhoods dominated by Muslims. The Tripura police said that they were providing security to more than 150 mosques in the state.
Muslims make up less than 9% of Tripura's 4.2 million population.
"Though a majority of Tripura's population is Hindu refugees from what is now Bangladesh, there has never been any backlash against Muslims here after previous religious disturbances in the neighbouring country," said Bikach Choudhury, a Tripura-based writer.
Opposition parties have blamed the "politically motivated fringe elements" close to the BJP for the attacks on Muslims.
Sushmita Dev, an MP from the regional Trinamul Congress party, told the BBC that the BJP was trying to use the recent violence in Bangladesh to "polarise" the voters ahead of the municipal elections in the state in November.
Tripura violence
The violence has mostly occurred in areas bordering Bangladesh
Calls to Tripura's Minority Affairs' Minister Ratanlal Nath went unanswered.
But a BJP leader, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, told the BBC that the opposition should "not try to spin political capital out of a few sporadic incidents in reaction to the massive attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh".
He claimed that "the state government had done what is needed to control the situation".
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/tr ... 04603.html
Tripura: Anti-Muslim violence flares up in Indian state
Subir Bhaumik - Kolkata
Thu, October 28, 2021, 3:59 AM
Tripura violence
Muslim properties have been targeted in the recent violence in Tripura
Tension prevails in India's north-eastern state of Tripura following attacks on mosques and properties owned by Muslims.
Security has been tightened and restrictions on gatherings have been enforced in the affected areas.
The violence followed clashes between Hindu groups and the police.
The groups were protesting against the police refusing them permission to hold a rally against recent attacks on Hindus in neighbouring Bangladesh.
At least seven people were killed, temples desecrated and hundreds of houses and businesses of the Hindu minority torched in Bangladesh earlier this month after rumours spread that the Quran had been insulted at a special pavilion set up for the annual Hindu religious festival of Durga Puja.
Bangladesh's Hindus living in fear following mob attacks
Tripura is encircled on three sides by Bangladesh and connected by a thin corridor to the neighbouring state of Assam. The state has been run by India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 2018 after 25 years of Communist rule.
More than 10 incidents of religious violence have been reported from the North Tripura district in the past four days.
Authorities enforced restrictions on large gatherings after Tuesday night's violence in the border town of Panisagar in which a mosque and several shops belonging to Muslims were vandalised.
The attacks followed a rally taken out by the hardline Hindu organisation, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) - a close ally of the BJP.
Soubhik Dey, a senior police official in Panisagar, said some 3,500 people had taken part in the rally.
"Some VHP activists participating in the rally ransacked a mosque in the Chamtilla area. Later, three houses and three shops were ransacked and two shops were set on fire in the Rowa Bazar area, around 800 yards from the first incident," Mr Dey said.
Police said the ransacked shops and houses belonged to Muslims and a case has been filed based on a complaint by one of them.
Narayan Das, a local leader of Bajrang Dal, another hardline Hindu group, has claimed that some youngsters in front of the mosque abused them and brandished swords, a charge that could not be independently verified.
The Tripura police tweeted that "some people are spreading rumours and circulating provocative messages on social media" and appealed to people to maintain peace.
Last week, the state unit of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, a Muslim organisation, had alleged that mobs had attacked mosques and neighbourhoods dominated by Muslims. The Tripura police said that they were providing security to more than 150 mosques in the state.
Muslims make up less than 9% of Tripura's 4.2 million population.
"Though a majority of Tripura's population is Hindu refugees from what is now Bangladesh, there has never been any backlash against Muslims here after previous religious disturbances in the neighbouring country," said Bikach Choudhury, a Tripura-based writer.
Opposition parties have blamed the "politically motivated fringe elements" close to the BJP for the attacks on Muslims.
Sushmita Dev, an MP from the regional Trinamul Congress party, told the BBC that the BJP was trying to use the recent violence in Bangladesh to "polarise" the voters ahead of the municipal elections in the state in November.
Tripura violence
The violence has mostly occurred in areas bordering Bangladesh
Calls to Tripura's Minority Affairs' Minister Ratanlal Nath went unanswered.
But a BJP leader, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, told the BBC that the opposition should "not try to spin political capital out of a few sporadic incidents in reaction to the massive attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh".
He claimed that "the state government had done what is needed to control the situation".
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/tr ... 04603.html
As Hindu Extremists Call for Killing of Muslims, India’s Leaders Keep Silent
Right-wing Hindu activists at a conference took an oath to harm Muslims if necessary to make “a Hindu-only nation,” the most blatant example of rising anti-Muslim sentiment across India.
Hundreds of right-wing Hindu activists and monks rose in unison at a conference this week to take an oath: They would turn India, constitutionally a secular republic, into a Hindu nation, even if doing so required dying and killing.
“If 100 of us are ready to kill two million of them, then we will win and make India a Hindu nation,” said Pooja Shakun Pandey, a leader of Hindu Mahasabha, a group that espouses militant Hindu nationalism, referring to the country’s Muslims. “Be ready to kill and go to jail.”
Even by the standards of the rising anti-Muslim fury in India, the three-day conference in the city of Haridwar, 150 miles north of New Delhi, produced the most blatant and alarming call for violence in recent years.
The crowded auditorium, where right-wing Hindu monks called for other Hindus to arm themselves and kill Muslims, included influential religious leaders with close ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing party, and even some members of the party.
Videos of the event have spread widely on social media in India this week. Yet Mr. Modi has maintained a characteristic silence that analysts say can be interpreted by his most extreme supporters as a tacit signal of protection.
The police, who readily jail rights activists and comedians on charges lacking evidence, have been slow to take action. Even opposition political groups have been restrained in their response, an indication of the degree to which right-wing Hindu nationalism has gripped the country since Mr. Modi came to office in 2014.
Pooja Shakun Pandey of Hindu Mahasabha, a Hindu nationalist group in India, recently called for violence against Muslims in India.Credit...Smita Sharma for The New York Times
The inflammatory remarks come as some states governed by Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., are holding elections, including in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where the conference was held. Mr. Modi was busy campaigning this week in Uttar Pradesh for Yogi Adityanath, his hard-line protégé and the state’s chief minister, who has frequently fanned anti-Muslim hatred.
Multiple episodes of violence against Muslims have been reported during election season, including attacks by mobs trying to close businesses owned by Muslims.
“There are virtually only a handful of political leaders left who even mention the need to preserve India’s secularism,” said Gilles Verniers, a professor of political science at Ashoka University near New Delhi. “The B.J.P. may face increasing political challenges, but it has won its cultural war, with lasting effects on India’s democracy, and on India’s largest minority.”
Right-wing Hindu nationalists have preached violence online for years, but the violence has recently spilled onto the streets. Muslim fruit sellers have been beaten and their earnings snatched away after being accused of luring Hindu women into marriage to convert them. Muslim activists have been threatened with prosecution under an antiterrorism law that has been scrutinized by courts.
In recent months, Hindu nationalists in Gurugram, a major technology center about 15 miles south of New Delhi, have confronted Muslims during Friday Prayer. Bands of right-wing Hindus have interrupted prayers with chants of “Jai Shri Ram!” Meaning “Hail Lord Ram,” a major Hindu god, the chant has become a battle cry for Hindu nationalists.
“We are fast losing everything in this country, including the right to worship,” said Niyaz Farooqi, a Muslim who works in an automobile showroom in Gurugram. “A right given to us by the Constitution of this country.”
On Friday, four days after the conference ended, and after the videos circulated widely, the police in Uttarakhand announced that they had opened an investigation but that no arrests had been made. Officials said they have registered a case against organizers of the conference for promoting “enmity between different groups on grounds of religion,” which can mean a jail term of five years.
A rally held by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his party in Uttar Pradesh this week. He has been silent about the anti-Muslim sentiment expressed at the conference.Credit...Ritesh Shukla/Getty Images
“We will do the investigation as per law and such types of incidents will not be tolerated,” said Ashok Kumar, a top police officer in the state of Uttarakhand.
During the conference, Swami Prabodhanand Giri, head of a right-wing Hindu organization in Uttarakhand, said the country now belongs to Hindus.
“This is why, like in Myanmar, the police here, the politicians here, the army and every Hindu must pick up weapons, and we will have to conduct this cleanliness drive,” he said while referring to Muslims. “There is no solution apart from this.”
Mr. Prabodhanand’s aides declined to comment for this article.
Videos from the conference also showed Suresh Chavhanke, who heads a news channel, administering an oath to turn India into a Hindu-first country.
“We make a resolution until our last breath: We will make India a Hindu nation, and keep it a Hindu-only nation,” he said. “We will fight and die if required, we will kill as well.” He then tweeted a video of the oath to his half a million followers.
Political observers say the government is allowing hate speech of this kind by remaining silent in the face of calls for violence, a silence underscored by the meekness of the political opposition.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a biographer of Mr. Modi who has written extensively on the rise of the Hindu right, said the B.J.P.’s earlier leaders thought they could use Hindu nationalism to mobilize constituencies but then contain the ideology. That calculation backfired in 1992, when Hindu activists demolished a major mosque.
Many earlier B.J.P. leaders expressed regrets about the episode, but Mr. Modi has no such qualms, Mr. Mukhopadhyay said at a recent book event.
“They thought they were going to ride the tiger, easily tame it and get down. But you can’t easily tame a tiger. If you ride the tiger, you have to decide that at some point the tiger is going to eat,” he said. “Modi decided to allow the tiger to eat sometimes and lead the tiger when he wants to.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/24/worl ... iversified
Right-wing Hindu activists at a conference took an oath to harm Muslims if necessary to make “a Hindu-only nation,” the most blatant example of rising anti-Muslim sentiment across India.
Hundreds of right-wing Hindu activists and monks rose in unison at a conference this week to take an oath: They would turn India, constitutionally a secular republic, into a Hindu nation, even if doing so required dying and killing.
“If 100 of us are ready to kill two million of them, then we will win and make India a Hindu nation,” said Pooja Shakun Pandey, a leader of Hindu Mahasabha, a group that espouses militant Hindu nationalism, referring to the country’s Muslims. “Be ready to kill and go to jail.”
Even by the standards of the rising anti-Muslim fury in India, the three-day conference in the city of Haridwar, 150 miles north of New Delhi, produced the most blatant and alarming call for violence in recent years.
The crowded auditorium, where right-wing Hindu monks called for other Hindus to arm themselves and kill Muslims, included influential religious leaders with close ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing party, and even some members of the party.
Videos of the event have spread widely on social media in India this week. Yet Mr. Modi has maintained a characteristic silence that analysts say can be interpreted by his most extreme supporters as a tacit signal of protection.
The police, who readily jail rights activists and comedians on charges lacking evidence, have been slow to take action. Even opposition political groups have been restrained in their response, an indication of the degree to which right-wing Hindu nationalism has gripped the country since Mr. Modi came to office in 2014.
Pooja Shakun Pandey of Hindu Mahasabha, a Hindu nationalist group in India, recently called for violence against Muslims in India.Credit...Smita Sharma for The New York Times
The inflammatory remarks come as some states governed by Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., are holding elections, including in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where the conference was held. Mr. Modi was busy campaigning this week in Uttar Pradesh for Yogi Adityanath, his hard-line protégé and the state’s chief minister, who has frequently fanned anti-Muslim hatred.
Multiple episodes of violence against Muslims have been reported during election season, including attacks by mobs trying to close businesses owned by Muslims.
“There are virtually only a handful of political leaders left who even mention the need to preserve India’s secularism,” said Gilles Verniers, a professor of political science at Ashoka University near New Delhi. “The B.J.P. may face increasing political challenges, but it has won its cultural war, with lasting effects on India’s democracy, and on India’s largest minority.”
Right-wing Hindu nationalists have preached violence online for years, but the violence has recently spilled onto the streets. Muslim fruit sellers have been beaten and their earnings snatched away after being accused of luring Hindu women into marriage to convert them. Muslim activists have been threatened with prosecution under an antiterrorism law that has been scrutinized by courts.
In recent months, Hindu nationalists in Gurugram, a major technology center about 15 miles south of New Delhi, have confronted Muslims during Friday Prayer. Bands of right-wing Hindus have interrupted prayers with chants of “Jai Shri Ram!” Meaning “Hail Lord Ram,” a major Hindu god, the chant has become a battle cry for Hindu nationalists.
“We are fast losing everything in this country, including the right to worship,” said Niyaz Farooqi, a Muslim who works in an automobile showroom in Gurugram. “A right given to us by the Constitution of this country.”
On Friday, four days after the conference ended, and after the videos circulated widely, the police in Uttarakhand announced that they had opened an investigation but that no arrests had been made. Officials said they have registered a case against organizers of the conference for promoting “enmity between different groups on grounds of religion,” which can mean a jail term of five years.
A rally held by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his party in Uttar Pradesh this week. He has been silent about the anti-Muslim sentiment expressed at the conference.Credit...Ritesh Shukla/Getty Images
“We will do the investigation as per law and such types of incidents will not be tolerated,” said Ashok Kumar, a top police officer in the state of Uttarakhand.
During the conference, Swami Prabodhanand Giri, head of a right-wing Hindu organization in Uttarakhand, said the country now belongs to Hindus.
“This is why, like in Myanmar, the police here, the politicians here, the army and every Hindu must pick up weapons, and we will have to conduct this cleanliness drive,” he said while referring to Muslims. “There is no solution apart from this.”
Mr. Prabodhanand’s aides declined to comment for this article.
Videos from the conference also showed Suresh Chavhanke, who heads a news channel, administering an oath to turn India into a Hindu-first country.
“We make a resolution until our last breath: We will make India a Hindu nation, and keep it a Hindu-only nation,” he said. “We will fight and die if required, we will kill as well.” He then tweeted a video of the oath to his half a million followers.
Political observers say the government is allowing hate speech of this kind by remaining silent in the face of calls for violence, a silence underscored by the meekness of the political opposition.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a biographer of Mr. Modi who has written extensively on the rise of the Hindu right, said the B.J.P.’s earlier leaders thought they could use Hindu nationalism to mobilize constituencies but then contain the ideology. That calculation backfired in 1992, when Hindu activists demolished a major mosque.
Many earlier B.J.P. leaders expressed regrets about the episode, but Mr. Modi has no such qualms, Mr. Mukhopadhyay said at a recent book event.
“They thought they were going to ride the tiger, easily tame it and get down. But you can’t easily tame a tiger. If you ride the tiger, you have to decide that at some point the tiger is going to eat,” he said. “Modi decided to allow the tiger to eat sometimes and lead the tiger when he wants to.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/24/worl ... iversified
Indian police probe Hindu event calling for mass killing of Muslims
AFP Published December 24, 2021 -
Indian police said on Friday they have launched an investigation into an event where Hindu hardliners called for mass killings of minority Muslims.
A speaker at the gathering earlier this month told the crowd that people should not worry about going to jail for killing Muslims, according to a video verified as genuine by AFP.
“Even if just a hundred of us become soldiers and kill two million of them, we will be victorious ... If you stand with this attitude only then will you able to protect sanatana dharma (an absolute form of Hinduism),” the woman said.
The meeting in the northern holy city of Haridwar was attended by at least one member of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The party stands accused of — but denies — encouraging the persecution of Muslims and other minorities by hardline Hindu nationalists since coming to power in 2014.
Read: No place to pray: Muslim worshippers under pressure in India
Prominent Muslim MP Asaduddin Owaisi tweeted that the comments in the video were a “clear case of incitement to genocide”.
Modi's government has not commented on the event.
The woman in the video reportedly added that Indians should “pray to Nathuram Godse”, the Hindu extremist who assassinated Indian independence icon Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.
'Cleansing'
Another delegate, Prabodhanand Giri — the head of a fringe Hindu group who is often photographed with senior BJP members — called for a “cleansing” and for those present to be “ready to die or kill”.
“Like Myanmar, the police, politicians, the army and every Hindu in India must pick up weapons and do this cleansing. There is no other option left,” he is heard to say.
A military crackdown in Myanmar on the heavily persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority is thought to have killed thousands and has forced huge numbers to flee.
A third speaker is heard to say that he wished he had killed Modi's predecessor, the main opposition Congress party's Manmohan Singh, who was the first Sikh prime minister of India.
Another said he had asked hotels from his state not to allow Christmas celebrations. The statement was met with cheers from the audience.
The BJP denies accusations that its agenda is to turn officially secular and pluralistic India into a pure Hindu nation.
Many in the Muslim community say they have been increasingly subject to attacks and threats since Modi, a lifelong member of a hardline Hindu group, came to power.
Christians have also been subject to violence and harassment, with the BJP government in the southern state of Karnataka this week becoming the latest to introduce legislation outlawing “forceful” religious conversions.
Police in Uttarakhand state, where the controversial gathering took place, told AFP they are “investigating the matter and strict action will be taken against the guilty.”
Michael Kugelman from the Wilson Centre hit out at the Indian government over its silence.
”... not a peep, much less a condemnation, from the govt. Sad truth is that this deafening silence isn't the least bit surprising,” he tweeted on Thursday.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1665572/india ... of-muslims
AFP Published December 24, 2021 -
Indian police said on Friday they have launched an investigation into an event where Hindu hardliners called for mass killings of minority Muslims.
A speaker at the gathering earlier this month told the crowd that people should not worry about going to jail for killing Muslims, according to a video verified as genuine by AFP.
“Even if just a hundred of us become soldiers and kill two million of them, we will be victorious ... If you stand with this attitude only then will you able to protect sanatana dharma (an absolute form of Hinduism),” the woman said.
The meeting in the northern holy city of Haridwar was attended by at least one member of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The party stands accused of — but denies — encouraging the persecution of Muslims and other minorities by hardline Hindu nationalists since coming to power in 2014.
Read: No place to pray: Muslim worshippers under pressure in India
Prominent Muslim MP Asaduddin Owaisi tweeted that the comments in the video were a “clear case of incitement to genocide”.
Modi's government has not commented on the event.
The woman in the video reportedly added that Indians should “pray to Nathuram Godse”, the Hindu extremist who assassinated Indian independence icon Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.
'Cleansing'
Another delegate, Prabodhanand Giri — the head of a fringe Hindu group who is often photographed with senior BJP members — called for a “cleansing” and for those present to be “ready to die or kill”.
“Like Myanmar, the police, politicians, the army and every Hindu in India must pick up weapons and do this cleansing. There is no other option left,” he is heard to say.
A military crackdown in Myanmar on the heavily persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority is thought to have killed thousands and has forced huge numbers to flee.
A third speaker is heard to say that he wished he had killed Modi's predecessor, the main opposition Congress party's Manmohan Singh, who was the first Sikh prime minister of India.
Another said he had asked hotels from his state not to allow Christmas celebrations. The statement was met with cheers from the audience.
The BJP denies accusations that its agenda is to turn officially secular and pluralistic India into a pure Hindu nation.
Many in the Muslim community say they have been increasingly subject to attacks and threats since Modi, a lifelong member of a hardline Hindu group, came to power.
Christians have also been subject to violence and harassment, with the BJP government in the southern state of Karnataka this week becoming the latest to introduce legislation outlawing “forceful” religious conversions.
Police in Uttarakhand state, where the controversial gathering took place, told AFP they are “investigating the matter and strict action will be taken against the guilty.”
Michael Kugelman from the Wilson Centre hit out at the Indian government over its silence.
”... not a peep, much less a condemnation, from the govt. Sad truth is that this deafening silence isn't the least bit surprising,” he tweeted on Thursday.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1665572/india ... of-muslims
INDIA NEWS
Forces’ ex-chiefs write to President, PM Modi on Haridwar, Delhi hate speeches
The letter has also been addressed to CJI NV Ramana, home minister Amit Shah, defence minister Rajnath Singh, Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu and Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla.
AISA and SFI members protest against the alleged hate speech in Haridwar, in New Delhi on December 27. (PTI)
Updated on Jan 01, 2022 04:46 AM IST
By
Kalyan Das
Dehradun
Five former chiefs of staff of the armed forces and more than 100 other prominent citizens have written a letter to President Ram Nath Kovind. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Justice of India N V Ramana, among others, over “calls for genocide” against Indian Muslims at various events, including the recently held controversial religious event in Haridwar.
The letter, which was also addressed to home minister Amit Shah, defence minister Rajnath Singh, Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu and Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla, said that such speeches were a threat to “national security and incitement to violence” and sought suitable action against those who made them.
Referring to an alleged hate speech delivered at the Dharma Sansad event in Haridwar, between December 17 and 19, the letter said: “We are seriously perturbed by the content of speeches made during a three day religious conclave called Dharma Sansad held in Haridwar from December 17-19. There were repeated calls for establishing a Hindu Rashtra and, if required, picking up weapons and killing of India’s Muslims in the name of protecting Hinduism.
The signatories of the letter also recalled a similar event in Delhi where a large number of persons publicly took an oath resolving to make India a Hindu nation.
“At about the same time, a large number of persons gathered in Delhi and publicly took an oath resolving to make India a Hindu nation, by fighting and killing necessary, and more such seditious meetings are being organised in other places,” the letter said.
Seeking action against people who made such speeches, the letter said: “Regardless of which persons or parties initiated calls for such genocide, government of India and the judiciary, at the highest level, need to take urgent action. We cannot allow such incitement to violence together with public expressions of hate, which not only constitute serious breaches of internal security, but which could also tear apart the social fabric of our nation.”
Four former chiefs of Naval staff, Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas (retd), Admiral RK Dhowan (retd), Admiral Vishnu Bhagat (retd), Admiral Arun Prakash, and one former chief of air staff, Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi (retd) were among bureaucrats, journalists, lawyers, economists and students who signed the letter.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/
Forces’ ex-chiefs write to President, PM Modi on Haridwar, Delhi hate speeches
The letter has also been addressed to CJI NV Ramana, home minister Amit Shah, defence minister Rajnath Singh, Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu and Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla.
AISA and SFI members protest against the alleged hate speech in Haridwar, in New Delhi on December 27. (PTI)
Updated on Jan 01, 2022 04:46 AM IST
By
Kalyan Das
Dehradun
Five former chiefs of staff of the armed forces and more than 100 other prominent citizens have written a letter to President Ram Nath Kovind. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Justice of India N V Ramana, among others, over “calls for genocide” against Indian Muslims at various events, including the recently held controversial religious event in Haridwar.
The letter, which was also addressed to home minister Amit Shah, defence minister Rajnath Singh, Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu and Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla, said that such speeches were a threat to “national security and incitement to violence” and sought suitable action against those who made them.
Referring to an alleged hate speech delivered at the Dharma Sansad event in Haridwar, between December 17 and 19, the letter said: “We are seriously perturbed by the content of speeches made during a three day religious conclave called Dharma Sansad held in Haridwar from December 17-19. There were repeated calls for establishing a Hindu Rashtra and, if required, picking up weapons and killing of India’s Muslims in the name of protecting Hinduism.
The signatories of the letter also recalled a similar event in Delhi where a large number of persons publicly took an oath resolving to make India a Hindu nation.
“At about the same time, a large number of persons gathered in Delhi and publicly took an oath resolving to make India a Hindu nation, by fighting and killing necessary, and more such seditious meetings are being organised in other places,” the letter said.
Seeking action against people who made such speeches, the letter said: “Regardless of which persons or parties initiated calls for such genocide, government of India and the judiciary, at the highest level, need to take urgent action. We cannot allow such incitement to violence together with public expressions of hate, which not only constitute serious breaches of internal security, but which could also tear apart the social fabric of our nation.”
Four former chiefs of Naval staff, Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas (retd), Admiral RK Dhowan (retd), Admiral Vishnu Bhagat (retd), Admiral Arun Prakash, and one former chief of air staff, Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi (retd) were among bureaucrats, journalists, lawyers, economists and students who signed the letter.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/
Destitute 'heir' of Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar demands ownership of New Delhi's Red Fort
AFP Published December 30, 2021 -
In this picture taken on Dec 22, 2021, Sultana Begum holds up a picture of last Mughal Emperor of India Bahadur Shah Zafar in her house in Kolkata. — AFP
A destitute Indian woman who claims she is heir to the dynasty that built the Taj Mahal has demanded ownership of an imposing palace once home to the Mughal emperors.
Sultana Begum lives in a cramped two-room hut nestled within a slum on the outskirts of Kolkata, surviving on a meagre pension.
Among her modest possessions are records of her marriage to Mirza Mohammad Bedar Bakht, purported to be the great-grandson of India's last Mughal ruler.
His death in 1980 left her struggling to survive, and she has spent the past decade petitioning authorities to recognise her royal status and compensate her accordingly.
“Can you imagine that the descendant of the emperors who built Taj Mahal now lives in desperate poverty?” the 68-year-old asked AFP.
Begum has lodged a court case seeking recognition that she is the rightful owner of the imposing 17th-century Red Fort, a sprawling and pockmarked castle in New Delhi that was once the seat of Mughal power.
“I hope the government will definitely give me justice,” she said. “When something belongs to someone, it should be returned.” Her case, supported by sympathetic campaigners, rests on her claim that her late husband's lineage can be traced to Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last emperor to reign.
By the time of Zafar's coronation in 1837, the Mughal empire had shrunk to the capital's boundaries, after the conquest of India by the commercial venture of British merchants known as the East India Company.
A massive rebellion two decades later — now hailed as India's first war of independence — saw mutinous soldiers declare the now frail 82-year-old as the leader of their insurrection.
The emperor, who preferred penning poetry to waging war, knew the chaotic uprising was doomed and was a reluctant leader.
British forces surrounded Delhi within a month and ruthlessly crushed the revolt, executing all 10 of Zafar's surviving sons despite the royal family's surrender.
Zafar himself was exiled to neighbouring Myanmar, travelling under guard in a bullock cart, and died penniless in captivity five years later.
Independence symbol
Many of the Red Fort's buildings were demolished in the years after the uprising and the complex fell into disrepair before colonial authorities ordered its renovation at the turn of the 20th century. It has since become a potent symbol of freedom from British rule.
India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the national flag from the fort's main gate to mark the first day of independence in August 1947, a solemn ritual now repeated annually by his successors.
Begum's court case hinges on the argument that India's government are the illegal occupants of the property, which she says should have been passed down to her.
The Delhi High Court rejected her petition last week as a “gross waste of time” — but did not rule on whether her claim to imperial ancestry was legitimate.
Instead, the court said her legal team had failed to justify why a similar case had not been brought by Zafar's descendants in the 150 years since his exile.
Her lawyer Vivek More said the case would continue.
“She has decided to file a plea before a higher bench of the court challenging the order,” he told AFP by phone.
'Justice will happen'
Begum has endured a precarious life, even before she was widowed and forced to move into the slum she now calls home.
Her husband — who she married in 1965 when she was just 14 — was 32 years her senior and earned some money as a soothsayer, but was unable to provide for their family.
“Poverty, fear and lack of resources pushed him to the brink,” she added.
Begum lives with one of her grandchildren in a small shack, sharing a kitchen with neighbours and washing at a communal tap down the street.
For some years she ran a small tea shop near her home but it was demolished to allow the widening of a road, and she now survives on a pension of 6,000 rupees ($80) per month.
But she has not given up hope that authorities will recognize her as the rightful beneficiary of India's imperial legacy, and of the Red Fort.
“I hope that today, tomorrow or in 10 years, I will get what I'm entitled to,” she said. “God willing, I will get it back... I'm certain justice will happen. “
https://www.dawn.com/news/1666649/desti ... s-red-fort
AFP Published December 30, 2021 -
In this picture taken on Dec 22, 2021, Sultana Begum holds up a picture of last Mughal Emperor of India Bahadur Shah Zafar in her house in Kolkata. — AFP
A destitute Indian woman who claims she is heir to the dynasty that built the Taj Mahal has demanded ownership of an imposing palace once home to the Mughal emperors.
Sultana Begum lives in a cramped two-room hut nestled within a slum on the outskirts of Kolkata, surviving on a meagre pension.
Among her modest possessions are records of her marriage to Mirza Mohammad Bedar Bakht, purported to be the great-grandson of India's last Mughal ruler.
His death in 1980 left her struggling to survive, and she has spent the past decade petitioning authorities to recognise her royal status and compensate her accordingly.
“Can you imagine that the descendant of the emperors who built Taj Mahal now lives in desperate poverty?” the 68-year-old asked AFP.
Begum has lodged a court case seeking recognition that she is the rightful owner of the imposing 17th-century Red Fort, a sprawling and pockmarked castle in New Delhi that was once the seat of Mughal power.
“I hope the government will definitely give me justice,” she said. “When something belongs to someone, it should be returned.” Her case, supported by sympathetic campaigners, rests on her claim that her late husband's lineage can be traced to Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last emperor to reign.
By the time of Zafar's coronation in 1837, the Mughal empire had shrunk to the capital's boundaries, after the conquest of India by the commercial venture of British merchants known as the East India Company.
A massive rebellion two decades later — now hailed as India's first war of independence — saw mutinous soldiers declare the now frail 82-year-old as the leader of their insurrection.
The emperor, who preferred penning poetry to waging war, knew the chaotic uprising was doomed and was a reluctant leader.
British forces surrounded Delhi within a month and ruthlessly crushed the revolt, executing all 10 of Zafar's surviving sons despite the royal family's surrender.
Zafar himself was exiled to neighbouring Myanmar, travelling under guard in a bullock cart, and died penniless in captivity five years later.
Independence symbol
Many of the Red Fort's buildings were demolished in the years after the uprising and the complex fell into disrepair before colonial authorities ordered its renovation at the turn of the 20th century. It has since become a potent symbol of freedom from British rule.
India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the national flag from the fort's main gate to mark the first day of independence in August 1947, a solemn ritual now repeated annually by his successors.
Begum's court case hinges on the argument that India's government are the illegal occupants of the property, which she says should have been passed down to her.
The Delhi High Court rejected her petition last week as a “gross waste of time” — but did not rule on whether her claim to imperial ancestry was legitimate.
Instead, the court said her legal team had failed to justify why a similar case had not been brought by Zafar's descendants in the 150 years since his exile.
Her lawyer Vivek More said the case would continue.
“She has decided to file a plea before a higher bench of the court challenging the order,” he told AFP by phone.
'Justice will happen'
Begum has endured a precarious life, even before she was widowed and forced to move into the slum she now calls home.
Her husband — who she married in 1965 when she was just 14 — was 32 years her senior and earned some money as a soothsayer, but was unable to provide for their family.
“Poverty, fear and lack of resources pushed him to the brink,” she added.
Begum lives with one of her grandchildren in a small shack, sharing a kitchen with neighbours and washing at a communal tap down the street.
For some years she ran a small tea shop near her home but it was demolished to allow the widening of a road, and she now survives on a pension of 6,000 rupees ($80) per month.
But she has not given up hope that authorities will recognize her as the rightful beneficiary of India's imperial legacy, and of the Red Fort.
“I hope that today, tomorrow or in 10 years, I will get what I'm entitled to,” she said. “God willing, I will get it back... I'm certain justice will happen. “
https://www.dawn.com/news/1666649/desti ... s-red-fort
https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/ind ... munalism-2
India
Nehru’s Word: On Hindu and Muslim communalism
In this article published in 'The Tribune' on Nov 30, 1933, Nehru explains the fundamentals of communalism, differences between minority & majority communalism, and how both are anti-national
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
The past fortnight has been witness to some of the most outrageous, extreme and virulent forms of communal hate speech by so-called Hindu religious figures. The father of the nation was abused in unspeakable language, brazen calls were made for ethnic cleansing of one minority community, and another minority community was targeted on the occasion of its most important festival. These actions have received due publicity in international forums as well, making us hang our heads in shame as Indians.
In this context, we bring to you the first part of an article published by Jawaharlal Nehru in The Tribune on 30 November 1933 in response to criticism of certain remarks he had made on Hindu communalists and the Hindu Mahasabha. In this extraordinarily prescient and perceptive piece, Nehru explains the fundamentals of communalism, the differences between minority and majority communalism, and how both are pro-imperialist anti-national.
***
“My recent remarks on Hindu communalists and the Hindu Mahasabha have evidently touched a sensitive spot of many people and have produced strong reactions. For many days every morning the newspapers brought me a tonic in the shape of criticisms and condemnations and I must express my gratitude for these, to all who indulged in them.
It is not given to everybody to see himself as others see him, and since this privilege has been accorded to me and my numerous failings in education, upbringing, heredity, culture, as well as those for which I am personally responsible, pointed out to me gently, I must need feel grateful. I shall try to profit by the chiding I have received but I am afraid I have outgrown the age when the background of one’s thought and action can be easily changed.
In regard to my main contention, however, I confess that I am unrepentant and I still hold that the activities of Hindu communal organisations, including the Mahasabha, have been communal, anti-national and reactionary.
I have not hastened to reply to the criticisms because I thought it as well for excitement to cool so that we might consider the question dispassionately and without reference to personalities. It is a vital question for all of us Indians, and especially for those who from birth or choice are in the Hindu fold….
In regard to my main contention, however, I confess that I am unrepentant and I still hold that the activities of Hindu communal organisations, including the Mahasabha, have been communal, anti-national and reactionary. Of course, this cannot apply to all the members of these organisations; it can apply only to the majority group in them or the group that controls them.
Organisations also change their policies from time to time and what may be true today may not have been wholly true yesterday. So far as I have been able to gather, Hindu communal organisations, especially in the Punjab and in Sind, have been progressively becoming more narrowly communal and anti-national and politically reactionary.
I am told that this is a consequence of Muslim communalism and reactionary policy and I have been chided for not blaming Muslim communalists. I have already pointed out that it would have been entirely out of place for me, speaking to a Hindu audience, to draw attention to Muslim communalists and reactionaries. It would have been preaching to the converted, as the average Hindu is well aware of them.
It is far more difficult to see one’s own fault than to see the failings of others. I also hold that it serves little purpose, in the prevailing atmosphere of mutual suspicion, to preach to the other community, although of course, whenever necessity arises, facts must be faced and the truth stated.
“It must be remembered that the communalism of a majority community must of necessity bear a closer resemblance to nationalism than the communalism of a minority group.”
I do not think that the Muslim communal organisations, chief among whom are the Muslim All Parties Conference and the Muslim League, represent any large group of Muslims in India except in the sense that they exploit the prevailing communal sentiment. But the fact remains that they claim to speak for Muslims and no other organisation has so far risen which can successfully challenge that claim.
Their aggressively communal character gives them a pull over the large number of nationalist Muslims who merge themselves in the Congress. The leaders of these organisations are patently and intensely communal. That, from the very nature of things, one can understand.
But it is equally obvious that most of them are definitely anti-national and political reactionaries of the worst kind. Apparently, they do not even look forward to any common nation developing in India. At a meeting in the British House of Commons last year, the Aga Khan, Sir Mohammad Iqbal and Dr. Shafaat Ahmad Khan are reported (in The Statesman of December 31, 1932) to have laid stress on "the inherent impossibility of securing any merger of Hindu and Muslim, political or indeed social, interests”.
The speakers further pointed out "the impracticability of ever governing India through anything but a British agency”. These statements leave no loophole for nationalism or for Indian freedom, now or even in the remote future….
Essentially, this is an attitude of pure reaction— political, cultural, national, social. And it is not surprising that this should be so if one examines the membership of these organisations. Most of the leading members are government officials, ex-officials, ministers, would-be ministers, knights and title-holders, big landlords etc.
Their leader is the Aga Khan, the head of a wealthy religious group, who combines in himself, most remarkably, the feudal order and the politics and habits of the British ruling class, with which he has been intimately associated for many years….
Between progress and reaction, between those who struggle for freedom and those who are content with servitude, and even wish to prolong it, there is no meeting ground. And it is this political reaction which has stalked the land under cover of communalism and taken advantage of the fear of each community of the other. It is the fear complex that we have to deal with in these communal problems. Honest communalism is fear; false communalism is political reaction.
To some extent this fear is justified, or is at least understandable, in a minority community. We see this fear overshadowing the communal sky in India as a whole so far as Muslims are concerned; we see it as an equally potent force in the Punjab and Sind so far as the Hindus are concerned, and in the Punjab, the Sikhs.
I have written all this about the attitude of the Muslim communalist leaders not only to complete the picture but because it is a necessary preliminary to the understanding of the Hindu communal attitude. There is no essential difference between the two. But there was this difference that the Congress drew into its ranks most of the vital elements of Hindu society and it dominated the situation and thus circumstances did not permit the Hindu communalists to play an important role in politics.
The Hindu Mahasabha leaders largely confined themselves to criticising the Congress. When, however, there was a lull in Congress activities, automatically the Hindu communalists came more to the front and their attitude was frankly reactionary.
It must be remembered that the communalism of a majority community must of necessity bear a closer resemblance to nationalism than the communalism of a minority group. One of the best tests of its true nature is what relation it bears to the national struggle. If it is politically reactionary or lays stress on communal problems rather than national ones then it is obviously anti-national.”
(Selected and edited by Mridula Mukherjee, former Professor of History at JNU and former Director of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library)
India
Nehru’s Word: On Hindu and Muslim communalism
In this article published in 'The Tribune' on Nov 30, 1933, Nehru explains the fundamentals of communalism, differences between minority & majority communalism, and how both are anti-national
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
The past fortnight has been witness to some of the most outrageous, extreme and virulent forms of communal hate speech by so-called Hindu religious figures. The father of the nation was abused in unspeakable language, brazen calls were made for ethnic cleansing of one minority community, and another minority community was targeted on the occasion of its most important festival. These actions have received due publicity in international forums as well, making us hang our heads in shame as Indians.
In this context, we bring to you the first part of an article published by Jawaharlal Nehru in The Tribune on 30 November 1933 in response to criticism of certain remarks he had made on Hindu communalists and the Hindu Mahasabha. In this extraordinarily prescient and perceptive piece, Nehru explains the fundamentals of communalism, the differences between minority and majority communalism, and how both are pro-imperialist anti-national.
***
“My recent remarks on Hindu communalists and the Hindu Mahasabha have evidently touched a sensitive spot of many people and have produced strong reactions. For many days every morning the newspapers brought me a tonic in the shape of criticisms and condemnations and I must express my gratitude for these, to all who indulged in them.
It is not given to everybody to see himself as others see him, and since this privilege has been accorded to me and my numerous failings in education, upbringing, heredity, culture, as well as those for which I am personally responsible, pointed out to me gently, I must need feel grateful. I shall try to profit by the chiding I have received but I am afraid I have outgrown the age when the background of one’s thought and action can be easily changed.
In regard to my main contention, however, I confess that I am unrepentant and I still hold that the activities of Hindu communal organisations, including the Mahasabha, have been communal, anti-national and reactionary.
I have not hastened to reply to the criticisms because I thought it as well for excitement to cool so that we might consider the question dispassionately and without reference to personalities. It is a vital question for all of us Indians, and especially for those who from birth or choice are in the Hindu fold….
In regard to my main contention, however, I confess that I am unrepentant and I still hold that the activities of Hindu communal organisations, including the Mahasabha, have been communal, anti-national and reactionary. Of course, this cannot apply to all the members of these organisations; it can apply only to the majority group in them or the group that controls them.
Organisations also change their policies from time to time and what may be true today may not have been wholly true yesterday. So far as I have been able to gather, Hindu communal organisations, especially in the Punjab and in Sind, have been progressively becoming more narrowly communal and anti-national and politically reactionary.
I am told that this is a consequence of Muslim communalism and reactionary policy and I have been chided for not blaming Muslim communalists. I have already pointed out that it would have been entirely out of place for me, speaking to a Hindu audience, to draw attention to Muslim communalists and reactionaries. It would have been preaching to the converted, as the average Hindu is well aware of them.
It is far more difficult to see one’s own fault than to see the failings of others. I also hold that it serves little purpose, in the prevailing atmosphere of mutual suspicion, to preach to the other community, although of course, whenever necessity arises, facts must be faced and the truth stated.
“It must be remembered that the communalism of a majority community must of necessity bear a closer resemblance to nationalism than the communalism of a minority group.”
I do not think that the Muslim communal organisations, chief among whom are the Muslim All Parties Conference and the Muslim League, represent any large group of Muslims in India except in the sense that they exploit the prevailing communal sentiment. But the fact remains that they claim to speak for Muslims and no other organisation has so far risen which can successfully challenge that claim.
Their aggressively communal character gives them a pull over the large number of nationalist Muslims who merge themselves in the Congress. The leaders of these organisations are patently and intensely communal. That, from the very nature of things, one can understand.
But it is equally obvious that most of them are definitely anti-national and political reactionaries of the worst kind. Apparently, they do not even look forward to any common nation developing in India. At a meeting in the British House of Commons last year, the Aga Khan, Sir Mohammad Iqbal and Dr. Shafaat Ahmad Khan are reported (in The Statesman of December 31, 1932) to have laid stress on "the inherent impossibility of securing any merger of Hindu and Muslim, political or indeed social, interests”.
The speakers further pointed out "the impracticability of ever governing India through anything but a British agency”. These statements leave no loophole for nationalism or for Indian freedom, now or even in the remote future….
Essentially, this is an attitude of pure reaction— political, cultural, national, social. And it is not surprising that this should be so if one examines the membership of these organisations. Most of the leading members are government officials, ex-officials, ministers, would-be ministers, knights and title-holders, big landlords etc.
Their leader is the Aga Khan, the head of a wealthy religious group, who combines in himself, most remarkably, the feudal order and the politics and habits of the British ruling class, with which he has been intimately associated for many years….
Between progress and reaction, between those who struggle for freedom and those who are content with servitude, and even wish to prolong it, there is no meeting ground. And it is this political reaction which has stalked the land under cover of communalism and taken advantage of the fear of each community of the other. It is the fear complex that we have to deal with in these communal problems. Honest communalism is fear; false communalism is political reaction.
To some extent this fear is justified, or is at least understandable, in a minority community. We see this fear overshadowing the communal sky in India as a whole so far as Muslims are concerned; we see it as an equally potent force in the Punjab and Sind so far as the Hindus are concerned, and in the Punjab, the Sikhs.
I have written all this about the attitude of the Muslim communalist leaders not only to complete the picture but because it is a necessary preliminary to the understanding of the Hindu communal attitude. There is no essential difference between the two. But there was this difference that the Congress drew into its ranks most of the vital elements of Hindu society and it dominated the situation and thus circumstances did not permit the Hindu communalists to play an important role in politics.
The Hindu Mahasabha leaders largely confined themselves to criticising the Congress. When, however, there was a lull in Congress activities, automatically the Hindu communalists came more to the front and their attitude was frankly reactionary.
It must be remembered that the communalism of a majority community must of necessity bear a closer resemblance to nationalism than the communalism of a minority group. One of the best tests of its true nature is what relation it bears to the national struggle. If it is politically reactionary or lays stress on communal problems rather than national ones then it is obviously anti-national.”
(Selected and edited by Mridula Mukherjee, former Professor of History at JNU and former Director of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library)
In his autobiography Nehru had criticized Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah (Aga Khan 3rd) as an agent of British government. He was of the opinion that Aga Khan 3rd was against the freedom of Hindustan.
During his first visit to India, when Prince Karim Aga Khan met Nehru the first prime minister of India, he laughingly criticized The Aga khan 3rd again.
During his first visit to India, when Prince Karim Aga Khan met Nehru the first prime minister of India, he laughingly criticized The Aga khan 3rd again.
Re: Islam and Hinduism's blurred lines
India has turned Muslims into a 'persecuted minority': Noam Chomsky
APP Published February 12, 2022 -
Renowned scholar Professor Noam Chomsky on Thursday said that Islamophobia has taken a “most lethal form” in India, turning some 250 million Indian Muslims into a “persecuted minority”.
“The pathology of Islamophobia is growing throughout the West — it is taking its most lethal form in India,” the famed author and activist, who is also Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a video message to a webinar organised by the Indian American Muslim Council, a Washington-based advocacy organization.
Apart from Chomsky, several other academics and activists took part in the webinar on “Worsening Hate Speech and Violence in India”.
Chomsky also said that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist regime has sharply escalated the “crimes” in Indian-occupied Kashmir (IoK).
“The crimes in Kashmir have a long history,” he said, adding that the state was now a “brutally occupied territory and its military control in some ways is similar to occupied Palestine”.
The situation in South Asia, Chomsky said, was painful in particular not because of what was happening but because of what was not happening. There was, however, hope and opportunities to solve South Asian torment but not for long, he added.
Annapurna Menon, an Indian author and lecturer at the University of Westminster, urged the international community to focus on the status of press freedom in India as, under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the situation has become a cause of concern.
“The situation on [the] ground is extremely alarming as four journalists have already been killed in 2022, simply for doing their job,” Menon said, adding journalists, especially women, have been exposed to all kinds of reprisals including harassment, illegal detention, police violence and sedition charges.
“The situation in IoK is even dire, where the journalists routinely face police questioning, ban on reporting, suspension of internet services and financial constraints in line with BJP’s recent ‘media policy’. The family of award-winning Srinagar-based photojournalist Masrat Zahra was subjected to harassment and intimidation by the Indian Police as a crackdown on the press in IoK continues to escalate," she said.
Fahad Shah, a renowned Kashmiri journalist who is the founder and editor of ‘‘The Kashmir Walla’’, was arrested recently by the police in Pulwama under terrorism and sedition laws, Menon pointed out. Similarly, Sajad Gul, another journalist of ‘‘The Kashmir Walla’’, was also arrested at the beginning of February 2022.
John Sifton, Asia Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said the greatest threat to the Indian constitution was the promotion of majority religion by the Indian government at the expense of minorities.
“BJP and its affiliates are making hateful remarks against Muslims to gain Hindu vote around elections,” he said.
The BJP government had adopted laws and policies that systematically discriminate against religious minorities and other groups and it also stigmatises its critics, the HRW official said. He added the government enacted the ‘Citizenship Act’ to target the minorities, particularly Indian Muslims.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Tiktok, Sifton said, had failed to control hatred spread through their platforms.
The US Congress, he said, must weigh on the Indian government to convey their concerns vis-a-vis the violation of human and minority rights in India.
Angana Chatterji, an Indian anthropologist and scholar at Berkeley University, California, said prejudices embedded in the government of the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP had infiltrated independent institutions, such as the police and the courts, empowering nationalist groups to threaten, harass and attack religious minorities with impunity.
“Hindu spiritual leaders are involved in [the] ethnic cleansing of Muslims,” she said, adding BJP leaders and affiliated groups have long portrayed minority communities, especially Muslims, as a threat to national security and to the Hindu way of life. They had raised the bogey of “love jihad” claiming that Muslim men lure Hindu women into marriages to convert them to Islam, labelled Muslim immigrants as extremists and accused them of hurting Hindu sentiment over cow slaughter.
Since Yogi Adityanath became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in 2017, Chatterji said the culture of violence and impunity had taken root, pointing out that UP police had carried out hundreds of extra-judicial killings of suspected criminals belonging to minorities, particularly Muslims.
By the time protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill spilt out on the streets of UP in December 2019, the police manhandled protesters, behaved in a vulgar manner with women, arrested whomsoever it wanted and framed prominent activists in criminal cases, she said.
As hundreds of thousands of farmers of various faiths began protesting against the government’s new farm laws in November 2020, senior BJP leaders, their supporters on social media, and pro-government media blamed the Sikhs as ‘Khalistani terrorists’, Chatterji said.
February 23, 2022, marks the two year anniversary of the communal violence in Delhi that killed 53 people, 40 of them Muslim.
Harsh Mander, a former Indian civil servant and human rights activist, said that while Mahatma Gandhi upheld the principles of non-violence, the Hindu supremacist ideology was currently being propagated by Indian leaders.
“Hate crimes have increased by a thousandfold during [the] BJP regime,” he said. BJP stigmatises and openly incites crimes against minorities, even Mother Teresa had been vilified, he added.
Muslims, Mander said, were falsely projected as bigots, unpatriotic, Jihadis and oppressors, adding that even Modi followed some of the hate mongers and refused to denounce them.
IoK, he said, was the most militarized region of the world.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1674696/india ... am-chomsky
APP Published February 12, 2022 -
Renowned scholar Professor Noam Chomsky on Thursday said that Islamophobia has taken a “most lethal form” in India, turning some 250 million Indian Muslims into a “persecuted minority”.
“The pathology of Islamophobia is growing throughout the West — it is taking its most lethal form in India,” the famed author and activist, who is also Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a video message to a webinar organised by the Indian American Muslim Council, a Washington-based advocacy organization.
Apart from Chomsky, several other academics and activists took part in the webinar on “Worsening Hate Speech and Violence in India”.
Chomsky also said that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist regime has sharply escalated the “crimes” in Indian-occupied Kashmir (IoK).
“The crimes in Kashmir have a long history,” he said, adding that the state was now a “brutally occupied territory and its military control in some ways is similar to occupied Palestine”.
The situation in South Asia, Chomsky said, was painful in particular not because of what was happening but because of what was not happening. There was, however, hope and opportunities to solve South Asian torment but not for long, he added.
Annapurna Menon, an Indian author and lecturer at the University of Westminster, urged the international community to focus on the status of press freedom in India as, under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the situation has become a cause of concern.
“The situation on [the] ground is extremely alarming as four journalists have already been killed in 2022, simply for doing their job,” Menon said, adding journalists, especially women, have been exposed to all kinds of reprisals including harassment, illegal detention, police violence and sedition charges.
“The situation in IoK is even dire, where the journalists routinely face police questioning, ban on reporting, suspension of internet services and financial constraints in line with BJP’s recent ‘media policy’. The family of award-winning Srinagar-based photojournalist Masrat Zahra was subjected to harassment and intimidation by the Indian Police as a crackdown on the press in IoK continues to escalate," she said.
Fahad Shah, a renowned Kashmiri journalist who is the founder and editor of ‘‘The Kashmir Walla’’, was arrested recently by the police in Pulwama under terrorism and sedition laws, Menon pointed out. Similarly, Sajad Gul, another journalist of ‘‘The Kashmir Walla’’, was also arrested at the beginning of February 2022.
John Sifton, Asia Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said the greatest threat to the Indian constitution was the promotion of majority religion by the Indian government at the expense of minorities.
“BJP and its affiliates are making hateful remarks against Muslims to gain Hindu vote around elections,” he said.
The BJP government had adopted laws and policies that systematically discriminate against religious minorities and other groups and it also stigmatises its critics, the HRW official said. He added the government enacted the ‘Citizenship Act’ to target the minorities, particularly Indian Muslims.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Tiktok, Sifton said, had failed to control hatred spread through their platforms.
The US Congress, he said, must weigh on the Indian government to convey their concerns vis-a-vis the violation of human and minority rights in India.
Angana Chatterji, an Indian anthropologist and scholar at Berkeley University, California, said prejudices embedded in the government of the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP had infiltrated independent institutions, such as the police and the courts, empowering nationalist groups to threaten, harass and attack religious minorities with impunity.
“Hindu spiritual leaders are involved in [the] ethnic cleansing of Muslims,” she said, adding BJP leaders and affiliated groups have long portrayed minority communities, especially Muslims, as a threat to national security and to the Hindu way of life. They had raised the bogey of “love jihad” claiming that Muslim men lure Hindu women into marriages to convert them to Islam, labelled Muslim immigrants as extremists and accused them of hurting Hindu sentiment over cow slaughter.
Since Yogi Adityanath became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in 2017, Chatterji said the culture of violence and impunity had taken root, pointing out that UP police had carried out hundreds of extra-judicial killings of suspected criminals belonging to minorities, particularly Muslims.
By the time protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill spilt out on the streets of UP in December 2019, the police manhandled protesters, behaved in a vulgar manner with women, arrested whomsoever it wanted and framed prominent activists in criminal cases, she said.
As hundreds of thousands of farmers of various faiths began protesting against the government’s new farm laws in November 2020, senior BJP leaders, their supporters on social media, and pro-government media blamed the Sikhs as ‘Khalistani terrorists’, Chatterji said.
February 23, 2022, marks the two year anniversary of the communal violence in Delhi that killed 53 people, 40 of them Muslim.
Harsh Mander, a former Indian civil servant and human rights activist, said that while Mahatma Gandhi upheld the principles of non-violence, the Hindu supremacist ideology was currently being propagated by Indian leaders.
“Hate crimes have increased by a thousandfold during [the] BJP regime,” he said. BJP stigmatises and openly incites crimes against minorities, even Mother Teresa had been vilified, he added.
Muslims, Mander said, were falsely projected as bigots, unpatriotic, Jihadis and oppressors, adding that even Modi followed some of the hate mongers and refused to denounce them.
IoK, he said, was the most militarized region of the world.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1674696/india ... am-chomsky
Re:
We just have to remember what Mowlana Hazar Imam said in his speech in Toronto in October 2010 that sometimes we have to work with people we don't like. So many people with whom the Imam has worked can be put into this basket, Idi Amyn Dada for example.
Re: Islam and Hinduism's blurred lines
Associated Press
Indian court sentences 38 to death for fatal 2008 bombings
ASHOK SHARMA
Fri, February 18, 2022, 1:50 AM
NEW DELHI (AP) — A court in India on Friday sentenced to death 38 people for a series of bomb blasts in 2008 that left more than 50 dead in Gujarat state, which has a history of violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims.
It was the first time that so many accused have received death sentences in a single case in India. The sentences must be confirmed by a higher court.
The attacks in Ahmedabad 13 years ago underscored communal tensions that are still reverberating in India.
A militant Islamic group called Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami claimed responsibility for the bombings. It was considered to be Pakistani-based but apparently is no longer active.
The Indian Mujahideen, a radicalized faction of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India, also was involved, said Sudhir Brahmbhatt, a government prosecutor in the case, citing police documents.
The group planned the explosions as revenge for the 2002 Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat in which more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed, the Press Trust of India news agency said. It was some of the worst religious violence India has seen since its independence from Britain in 1947.
The unrest was triggered by a fire on a train packed with Hindu pilgrims that killed 60 passengers. The cause was never proven, but Hindu extremists blamed the deaths on Muslims and reacted by rampaging through Muslim areas.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister — the top elected official — of Gujarat at the time. There were long-standing allegations that he didn’t do enough to stop the devastating religious riots. He has denied the accusations.
On Friday, Judge A. R. Patel also sentenced 11 people to life imprisonment in the case in which more than a dozen bombs went off in several parts of Ahmedabad on July 26, 2008.
All the 49 convicts are Muslims, Brahmbhatt said, adding that only one Hindu was arrested and acquitted by the court.
The judge described the case as the “rarest of rare,” Arvind Patel, another prosecutor, told reporters.
A group of people lit firecrackers and distributed sweets, hailing the verdict at one of the blast sites in Ahmedabad in western India.
The attacks occurred in two waves with explosive devices hidden in lunchboxes and bicycles. The first blast took place near crowded busy shopping centers in Ahmedabad and the second about 20 minutes later in and around hospitals where casualties were being taken.
Patel last week convicted the accused of charges of murder, conspiracy to wage war against the state and illegal possession of arms. He acquitted 28 others for lack of evidence. The trial concluded in September.
India’s overburdened courts are notorious for delays in trials with nearly 40 million cases pending across the country.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/in ... 35325.html
Indian court sentences 38 to death for fatal 2008 bombings
ASHOK SHARMA
Fri, February 18, 2022, 1:50 AM
NEW DELHI (AP) — A court in India on Friday sentenced to death 38 people for a series of bomb blasts in 2008 that left more than 50 dead in Gujarat state, which has a history of violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims.
It was the first time that so many accused have received death sentences in a single case in India. The sentences must be confirmed by a higher court.
The attacks in Ahmedabad 13 years ago underscored communal tensions that are still reverberating in India.
A militant Islamic group called Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami claimed responsibility for the bombings. It was considered to be Pakistani-based but apparently is no longer active.
The Indian Mujahideen, a radicalized faction of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India, also was involved, said Sudhir Brahmbhatt, a government prosecutor in the case, citing police documents.
The group planned the explosions as revenge for the 2002 Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat in which more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed, the Press Trust of India news agency said. It was some of the worst religious violence India has seen since its independence from Britain in 1947.
The unrest was triggered by a fire on a train packed with Hindu pilgrims that killed 60 passengers. The cause was never proven, but Hindu extremists blamed the deaths on Muslims and reacted by rampaging through Muslim areas.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister — the top elected official — of Gujarat at the time. There were long-standing allegations that he didn’t do enough to stop the devastating religious riots. He has denied the accusations.
On Friday, Judge A. R. Patel also sentenced 11 people to life imprisonment in the case in which more than a dozen bombs went off in several parts of Ahmedabad on July 26, 2008.
All the 49 convicts are Muslims, Brahmbhatt said, adding that only one Hindu was arrested and acquitted by the court.
The judge described the case as the “rarest of rare,” Arvind Patel, another prosecutor, told reporters.
A group of people lit firecrackers and distributed sweets, hailing the verdict at one of the blast sites in Ahmedabad in western India.
The attacks occurred in two waves with explosive devices hidden in lunchboxes and bicycles. The first blast took place near crowded busy shopping centers in Ahmedabad and the second about 20 minutes later in and around hospitals where casualties were being taken.
Patel last week convicted the accused of charges of murder, conspiracy to wage war against the state and illegal possession of arms. He acquitted 28 others for lack of evidence. The trial concluded in September.
India’s overburdened courts are notorious for delays in trials with nearly 40 million cases pending across the country.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/in ... 35325.html