No secular India if Hindu ethos undermined: Advani

Apr. 30, 2005

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president L.K. Advani Saturday warned that India would not remain secular and would even cease to be India if its Hindu identity was undermined. Making a pitch for next year's Tamil Nadu elections while addressing a seminar in the state capital, Advani gave a strong call for protecting Hindu ethos while deploring what he described as a penchant for running down Hindus. "The BJP will raise its powerful voice against any attempts to dilute or erase the essentially Hindu identity and personality of Tamil Nadu - indeed, of India as a whole," he said. "We believe firmly and unreservedly in secularism but, equally, we hold that India is secular because of her Hindu ethos. In other words, India will not remain secular - indeed, India will not remain India as we know it and Tamil Nadu will not remain Tamil Nadu as the people of this great state know it - if this essential Hindu ethos and identity are undermined." Advani said the BJP had decided to go it alone in the state because one of the two main regional parties chose to part ways with it while the other "has conducted itself in such a manner that it became impossible to continue our alliance with it". "We believe that Tamil Nadu is waiting for, and fully deserves, liberation from the politics of vendetta, confrontation and negativism that has marked the alternating regimes of the two main parties in the state," he said. Stating that his party was proud of its ideology, Advani asserted that when the BJP spoke of cultural nationalism, it was not only about the construction of a Hindu temple at the site of the razed Babri mosque in Ayodhya. The BJP would not allow Hindus to be divided on caste lines by "pseudo-secular" parties with an eye on votes, he said, appealing to people of the state to embrace a new political culture. This, he said, entailed protecting and celebrating the hallowed Hindu history, spirituality, art and culture, and personality of Tamil Nadu. Advani said he was "distressed" to see how certain parties in Tamil Nadu had propagated atheism as their credo. "What is especially disturbing is their penchant to deride Hinduism and Hindu society. I wonder why they don''t preach atheism to Muslims and Christians, and why they don''t ever raise issues of social reform and social justice among non-Hindu communities. "The time has come for the people of Tamil Nadu to boldly question those who think that, it is alright if someone says ''I am proud to be a Muslim'' or ''I am proud to be a Christian'', but it is downright communal and obscurantist if a Hindu says ''I am proud to be a Hindu''." The BJP's ideology had three salient points, said Advani: commitment to nationalism, healthy regional pride and a belief that religion is the soul of India.

Secularism and national integration

Author: Subhas Chandra Goswami
Publication: Assam Tibune
Date: April 24, 2005

Recently deceased Pope John Paul II commented that it was not capitalism or communalism but secularism which was the real threat to mankind. He used the dictionary meaning of secularism, meaning non-religious, non-spiritual. However, in our constitution secularism does not mean irreligion. It means that there is no state recognised charts or religion. The constitution guarantees freedom of worship and religion as well as outlaw discrimination on the ground of religion. In the preamble of the constitution the clause "sovereign socialist secular democratic republic" was incorporated in place of "sovereign democratic republic" by the 42nd Amendment Act of 1976. This amendment was made during the emergency by the Indira Gandhi government, without proper national debate and discussion as most of the opposition leaders were inside the jail and the amendment was more or less a party affair. The amendment sought to tilt balance of power in favour of executive and away from the judiciary and legislature. Before inserting the word "secularism" in the preamble it was not as is secularism was not practiced in the country. The whole process was gone through with political benefit in mind and the secular lobby of the country continuing with the practice. In the same amendment, the words "unity of the nation" in the clause explaining "fraternity" have been changed into "unity and integrity of the nation". However, in practice, in the last 25 years or so, the actions of the fundamentalists and senseless abetment by a section of pseudo secular politicians, the integrity of the nation is once more threatened.

The integrity of the country was once disturbed earlier at the time of independence, when the country was partitioned on the basis of two nation theory. A section of the Muslims then believed that Hindus and Muslims are two different nations and majority Hindus will suppress the minority Muslims after independence and hence the creation of Pakistan with the Muslim majority areas. This is still the notion behind the Kashmir problem and if not attended to properly there is every possibility of a problem in Assam coming up much earlier than we perceive.

Recently there was a meeting in Guwahati of the Jamiat-Ulema-E-Hind which was attendent along with others by the Governor of Assam, the Chief Minister of Assam Tarun Gogoi and a former Chief Minister of the State Prafulla Kr Mahanta. They attended the meeting pretending that Jamiat is a secular, non-political nationalistic organisation. It is a fact that Jamiat opposed the proposal of partition on the basis of religion advocated by Muslim league of Md Ali Jinnah. But considering the recent outburst of the leaders of the Jamiat do we perceive that there is no change in the thought process of the organisation in the last 50 years. There is doubt in the mind of every patriotic secular citizen of the country that Jamiat is no more a secular nationalistic organisation. With time an organisation changes, so changes a person, that is history. Till 1936 Md Ali Jinnah was considered as a liberal and progressive Muslim leader. In the initial stage he was away from Muslim league. He thought that politics is a gentleman's affair and religion has no place in it. He even rediculed Mahatma Gandhi as a religious person. But with the passage of time due to various reasons and high political ambition, the same man became father of Pakistan based on communal "two nation theory". While demanding Pakistan comprising Muslim majority provinces in the west and Muslim majority areas of Bengal and Assam in the east, Moinul Hoque Choudhury, the then private secretary of Jinnah told Jinnah that he would "present Assam to him on a silver platter". Jinnah confidently declared at Guwahati that Assam was in his pocket. Moinul Hoque Choudhury after independence remained in India and became a minister in Assam as well as in the Central Cabinet. This is also a part of history. If we feel that the communal disputes ended with the partition of India on the basis of "two nation theory" we are wrong, specifically for the people of Assam. Much after the portion of the country Zulfikar Ali Bhutto wrote in his book "Myths of Independence", "It would be wrong to think that Kashmir is the only dispute that divides India and Pakistan, though undoubtedly the most significant one, atleast it is nearly as important as the Kashmir dispute, that of Assam and some districts of India adjacent to East Pakistan. To these Pakistan has very good claims". Today there is no more East Pakistan. Creation of Bangladesh has proved the falacy of two nation theory. But there is no dearth of people who still think that Assam can be made a Muslim State or part of a Muslim State. This is a very very serious matter for the country and in this situation political leadership of different hues should forget petty political gains for preserving the integrity of the country.

On 10th April 1992, Hiteswar Saikia, the then Chief Minister of Assam stated that there were 3 million Bangladeshi illegal migrants in Assam. But when some of the minority leaders threatened that they could throw out the Saikia govt in a couple of minutes, Saikia retracted his statement after two days, stating that there were no illegal migrants in Assam. We see the same type of blackmailing tactics by minority leaders in the recently concluded meeting of Jamiat-Ulema-E-Hind. It is reported in the press that Jamiat chief Moulana Asad Madani in presence of the Chief Minister of Assam served six months deadline to the Chief Minister to solve the problems of the minority or else his government will be thrown out. He also demanded reservation of jobs in govt organisations as well as academic institutions reflecting the population pattern. We have not seen any leader from any of the political parties attending the meeting to remind the Jamiat leadership that as per constitution of India no reservation can be made on the basis of religion.

Now let us discuss about some of the secular leaders. RJD Supremo Laloo Prasad Yadav, who is out and out a casteist and communal person is getting away behaving as if he is the only torch bearer of the secular politics of the country. Another Yadav, Mulayam Singh is another secular leader who advocates reservation of jobs for Muslims in the name of minority, knowing fully that such provisions are not there in our constitution. Another secular party of the country, CPM wants to form a secular third front within next three years with Mulayam Singh Yadav as its leader. Ram Vilas Paswan wants the next Chief Minister of Bihar to be a Muslim. Pray why? There is no bar for a Muslim to be a Chief Minister. In fact in the past there was an able Muslim Chief Minister in Bihar. But if somebody puts a precondition on the basis of religion and gets away as a secular politician, there is problem for the country.

Coming back to recently concluded Jamiat meeting at Guwahati, the Governor of Assam, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi and a former Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta attended the meeting considering Jamiat a non-political nationalist organisation. Will these three gentlemen attend a meeting organised by RSS or Viswa Hindu Parishad, as these organisations also claim the same credential? Perhaps not and there lies the contradiction.

Kya lagaya hai, yeh secular, secular?

BY ARVIND LAVAKARE
March 18, 2005

The truth is finally out: Ram Vilas Paswan rooting for a Muslim chief minister in Bihar is 'secular,' but L K Advani rooting for a Ram temple at Ayodhya is 'communal' if not a 'fascist' as well.

If the country's entire media and its 'intellectuals' chose to be absolutely mum on Paswan's demand based on alluring the large base of Muslim voters, it was because our media is oh, so 'secular.'

And when Advani's demand is based on the historical, revenue and archaeological records of Ayodhya, he is still 'communal' because our media is oh, so 'secular.' That is the truth and the tragedy of Hindustan's intellectuals, the Election Commission included.

Yes, the cat is out of the bag: 'When it comes to the nitty-gritty what determines whether or not a person is secular is his attitude towards the minority communities, mostly towards Muslims who matter much more than Christians or Sikhs.' That is from the pen of the high priest of liberalism, modernism and smut aka Khushwant Singh, in a recent column.

Judged by that criterion of his, Dr Rafiq Zakaria, the renowned Islamic scholar, must be pronounced as a rabid communalist for the criticism he let loose on Indian Muslims in his book Communal Rage in Secular India, where he lambasts them for their hostility towards Vande Mataram and Hindus, derides them for their ghettoist mindset and mocks them for going to the mullah seeking a fatwa on the length of the beard to be kept, the level to which the kurta must fall over the knees and on whether male urination must be done standing or sitting.

Note, incidentally, Khushwant Singh's observation that Muslims 'matter much more than Christians or Sikhs.' Why? Singh doesn't say. What is conspicuous is that this differentiation in the status of three communities is created by a sardar of 'secularism.' Truly can iconic status be given to such people only in the clueless, spineless and thoughtless pseudo-secular world created by India's English language media and their vernacular cousins and partners.

The Indian Union Muslim League party is a classic case of the 'secular' notions generated by the English media. The IUML was formed on March 10, 1948 with its roots in Jinnah's Muslim League. The IUML is touted as a political party meant for protecting the interests of India Muslims. Yet, despite its name, it is recognised as 'secular' party eligible to contest Indian elections. The Leftists of all hues, the Congress of all hues, the Yadavs and the Paswans, the Mulayams and the Mayawatis, the John Dayal Christians -- all of them don't doubt that the IUML is anything but 'secular' but how many of them all can name a single non-Muslim member of the IUML?

When viewing the BJP, however, all of the above plus the DMK, PMK et al put on their dark glasses. For all its opponents in the political and media world, the BJP is 'communal' because it projects Hindu culture and Hindu aspirations while being the only one to simultaneously promise 'Justice to all with appeasement of none.'

All these adversaries have forgotten -- like all the media -- that, as a mechanism to resolve the Ayodhya dispute, the BJP had even volunteered to shift, with modern technology, brick by brick of the Babri Masjid to a nearby site even though the Babri structure had long ceased to be a site for offering namaaz. Hence, for all these adversaries afflicted with political glaucoma, the BJP is 'communal,' period, and full stop.

It means no whit to BJP's adversaries that its NDA government in New Delhi had two Muslims in its council of ministers who even today, when out of power, the BJP has given positions of high respect and authority. It means no whit to these adversaries that the BJP-led NDA government's defence minister was a Christian, George Fernandes, an important spokesman was a Sikh, S S Ahluwalia, and its attorney general was born a Parsi, Soli Sorabjee.

It means no whit to these adversaries that the BJP has Christians as its members from Goa to far away Mizoram and Nagaland and that one of the most prolific writers in Urdu, Muzaffar Hussein, has long been in the BJP fold. And, finally, it means no whit to this witless lot of adversaries that the RSS, the mother of the BJP, has always welcomed one and all to its arms, without ever asking for their caste or creed or community.

Under the circumstances, all that matters to those arraigned against the BJP is that the BJP must be kept away from power everywhere, and that any 'secular' government can only be without the BJP though it is all right to have in it that caricature called Lalu Yadav. The ad nauseam way these Commies and Congressmen, the Yadavs and the Paswans, the Mulayams and the Mayawatis have been talking of 'secular alliance,' 'secular coalition,' 'secular forces' and 'secular government' in recent months, makes one puke.

Hence, S Gurumurthy is dead right when he writes, 'For 'secular' India, secularism is not divorced between the State and the religion. For them secularism is exclusively for the benefit of the minorities. Extend it, secularism means pampering the minorities. Go further, it includes being allergic to the majority. That, unless one explicitly appeases the minorities and is overtly allergic to Hindus, one is not 'secular' enough. In Indian politics, uniting a minority for votes is 'secular.' Consequently, uniting the majority is anti-'secular.' And organising the majority is fundamentalist. In contrast, protecting organised minority is a 'secular' duty. This is the high point of 'secular' India.' (The New Indian Express, February 12, 2005)

The time has therefore come for the BJP to straighten its spine, hold the microphone and roar, 'Yeh kya lagaya hai, secular, secular?' It must ask that question, loud and clear, to all across the length and breadth of Hindustan. More specifically, it must direct that question to --

The Congress which, in the Rajya Sabha, voted out that clause in the 45th Constitution Amendment Bill, 1978, which defined 'secular' as 'equal respect for all religions.'

A M Ahmadi, a former chief justice of India who recorded that 'the term Secular has advisedly not been defined presumably because it is a very elastic term not capable of a precise definition and perhaps best left undefined.' (S R Bommai v Union of India, AIR SCW 2946 page 2992).

Lalu Yadav who thinks it is 'secular' to protect Bihar's Muslims from communal riots but to let a Hindu magistrate be transferred because he objected to a nearby azaan blaring during working hours despite a court order to the contrary, and to let Hindus be kidnapped a dime a dozen.

The Leftists of all hues who want us to believe it is secularism that 'in the 28th year of the egalitarian Marxist rule in West Bengal, dowry, lynching women as witches, marrying daughters to dogs and hiring sorcerers' service to tackle malaria, and refusal to eat food cooked by Muslims and lower caste Hindus are rampant and thriving in the state.' (Editorial in The Statesman,Calcutta, January 21, 2005).

Achyut Patwardhan and his ilk of pseudo-secularists who are apparently ignorant that, in his Constitution Law of India, 1998, page 4, footnote, the eminent authority, Basu, described the expression 'secular' as vague, and stated that it would be a correct summary of the provisions of Articles 25 to 30 of the Indian Constitution to say that the expression 'Republic' qualified by the expression 'secular' means a republic in which there is equal respect for all religions.

All 'secularists' of the above kind must be told that by far one of the most clear-cut concepts of pure secularism was propounded on August 11, 1947. It was not propounded by Jawaharlal Nehru, the father of today's pseudo-secularism, or by Mahatma Gandhi, who, with his Khilafat Movement was the first to officially bring religion into our politics. Rather, and most ironically, the perspective was propounded by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who fought for and got Pakistan for Muslims. At the first meeting of Pakistan's Constituent Assembly that day in August 1947, following were some of the words he spoke:

'You may belong to any religious caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the State. We are starting the State with no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, between caste and creed… We should keep that in front of us as our ideal, and you will find that in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense -- as citizens of the nation…My guiding principle will be justice and impartiality.'(Jinnah, Speeches as Governor General cited on page 491 of The Proudest Day Pimlico 1998, by Anthony Read and David Fisher).

It's another supreme irony that Jinnah's vision of a perfectly secular Pakistan has turned into a fundamentalist jihadistan on the ground while the ancient, most tolerant of all nations, Hindustan, has today turned anti-Hindu under fundamentalists of a different kind. Patriotic Indians must brook no further delay in roaring, 'Kya lagaya hai, yeh secular, secular?'

WHAT IS INDIAN SECULARISM?

BY KRISHEN KAK
VICHARAMALA no.20
Sunday, October 05, 2003

These are thoughts on issues of current interest [my comments - as an Indian citizen - within square brackets], including instances of some double standards of our public figures, especially in the construction of Indian identity (all those Macaulayan myths, and the hypocrisy that is Nehruvian secularism) - Krishen Kak

[There are different recipes for Indian secularism. However, the proof of a pudding is in its eating, and here is the rasa of that Indian secularism that has been our main course in the last half-century and more. I have adapted it from an anonymous contribution dt.15/9/2003 at http://www.saag.org/BB/view.asp?msgID=1815, and with due thanks to its originator]:

THE NEHRU-GANDHI SECULAR CREED:

1. There is no God but Mahatma Gandhi, and Pandit Nehru is his Prophet.

2. Secularism is the greatest good, to which all other goods are subordinate.

3. Marxists, mullahs, and missionaries are the clergy of Secularism.

4. Those who are not secular are communal. To question Secularism is to be a Hindu fundamentalist.

5. Hinduism is the opiate of the Indian masses.

6. Jihads and crusades against Hindus are secular. To convert Hindus is a secular right. Winning converts back into Hinduism is communalism.

7. Falsification of history and negationism are necessary for the sake of Secularism. Children should be indoctrinated in Secularism from an early age.

8. Hinduism is the construct and preserve of invading Aryan barbarians and their descendants. The autochthons are not Hindus. However, when any of the autochthons assault Christians or Muslims (who, by definition, are Secularists), they are to be termed Hindus.

9. Hindu beliefs are myths. Christian and Muslim beliefs are religion.

10. Only Hindus are communal; others fight for their human, secular and minority rights.

11. Hindus have no human rights; others have both human rights and special privileges.

12. Secularists cannot be Hindu. They can call themselves of "Hindu descent", or "good Muslims", or "good Christians", or "good humans", but never, never "good Hindus".

13. Christian and Muslim acts of assertion are Secularism. Hindu acts of assertion are fanaticism. Hindus who do not say all religions are equal, or are equally good, or who do not subscribe to sarvadharma samabhava are Hindu Nazis.

14. Hindu lives are cheap. According to the Sharia, they are worth 1/16 the life of a Muslim. According to Secularism, they are worth-less.

15. NGOs and other organizations that do not cater to Muslim or Christian relief needs are fascist. To cater to their needs preferentially is Secularism.

16. India will be a fully secular state only when all Hindus are converted to Secularism.

[I use "Hindu" as "being derived from the name of the South-Asian land mass, the term `Hindu' simply happens to connote India and all religions native to India" - Koenraad Elst, "Who is a Hindu?" (2002:321), available from Voice of India, 2/18 Ansari Road, New Delhi 110002, tel 2327-8034, fax 2328-2047. Examples for and elaborations of the Nehru-Gandhi Secular Creed are in other numbers of Vicharamala.]

Unscientific science of secularism

Balbir K Punj

What an irony! When the country is paying homage to Mahatma Gandhi on the 75th year of the historic Dandi Salt March, a text prescribed by Campus of Open Learning, Delhi University, holds him an accomplice in 'Hindu communalism' leading to Partition. That the text is authored by Zahoor Siddiqui, a Leftist, is a sufficient indication of the motive. Siddiqui feels that since Gandhi's theories on secularism were not 'scientific', their appeal was lost on the Muslim populace.

It perhaps suggests some great rational spirit and scientific temper amongst Muslims to which Gandhi failed to live up to! He botched up secularism with his political semantics moored in Hindu ethos. Thus, while the RSS was affirmatively 'Hindu communalist', Gandhi was equally so in a negative manner. For a Leftist, what could be a more convenient way of bailing out the Muslim League and the Communist Party of India which shared a symbiotic relationship in the run-up to the Partition?

No doubt, Gandhi remained a devout Hindu in his personal life. He even disowned his eldest son Hiralal Gandhi when he became a Muslim and assumed the name Abdullah. Gandhi was a quintessential and down-to-earth Indian. He often spoke of Ram Rajya though falling short of describing it in concrete terms. He openly criticised the misdeeds of the Christian missionaries.

But he also insisted that Hindus should recite the Quran, even though Muslims couldn't care less to read the Ramayan. He hyphenated Ishwar-Allah tero nam in the bhajan Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram. He frantically espoused the Khilafat cause that surprised even many Muslims.

He condoned the Moplah massacres; rationalised the assassination of Swami Shraddhanand by Abdul Rashid; withdrew Congress support from the Hyderabad Agitation (1938) waged by Hindus and Sikhs against a tyrant Nizam; he practically never opposed cow slaughter even after asserting that cow protection was more important to him than Independence; he undertook fast unto death at the height of Kashmir incursion (1948) to pressurise the Indian Government to release for Pakistan, the outstanding amount of 55 million sterling pounds.

He tried to stop Hindus and Sikhs from migrating to India from the inferno of western Punjab; and admonished the refugees taking shelter in mosques and houses evacuated by Muslims in Delhi. In short, he did everything to undermine the interests and security of Hindu community; demoralised the Hindu spirit; and crushed any attempt of Hindu assertion by emotional blackmailing.

Despite that, Hindus continued to hold him in the highest esteem. He was viewed as a demigod rather than a political leader. Gandhi took his Hindu support base for granted. But despite all his appeasing measures, he could not enlist the support of four per cent of Muslims. They remained aloof from the Congress. But they responded as one body to Jinnah's call of Ladke Lenge Pakistan (We shall wrest Pakistan through force). While nationalists (and rationalists) would view this fiasco as Muslim intransigence, Siddiqui suggests this was due to Gandhi's "unscientific secularism".

If by 'scientific' one means rationality, then the Muslim community in India presents a dismal scenario even today. It is well-known that Muslims, whether in Uttar Pradesh or West Bengal, avoid polio vaccines. To target Muslims in particular, televised appeals had to be phrased in politically correct language like: "Polio doesn't distinguish between caste, creed or religion." Actually it is neither caste nor religion, but one particular religion that is the problem. When Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai and Sachin Tendulkar have failed in their appeals in the television promos, Shahrukh Khan had to be introduced so that Muslims could recognise one of theirs, and heed to his advice of getting vaccinated. It is another issue that the Muslim masses will still obey the ulema rather than Shahrukh, Salman, Javed or Shabana.

Now if by 'scientific' one means Marxism (since Marxists always claim their theory is scientific), one would be disappointed further. Although some eminent comrades have been Muslims, communism could hardly penetrate the Muslim masses. How else could one explain the complete annihilation of communists from Pakistan, when communists had provided Jinnah with all the intellectual arsenal he needed to justify its creation on the flimsy ground of right to self-determination? In the Marxist bastion of West Bengal, grants amounting to hundreds of crores of rupees are extended to madarsas. What a scientific act!

It is true that Gandhi fuelled Muslim intransigence. But it was by emboldening them through his appeasement rather than his Hindu political semantics. Muslims, deeply under the influence of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, kept aloof from the Congress even before Gandhi arrived on the scene. According to Sir Syed, "The Congress (movement) was, in reality, a civil war without arms" and he looked upon the party as a machinery devised by the Hindus to further their own interests at the cost of Muslims

Surendra Nath Banerji wrote, "The Mohammedan community, under the leadership of Sir Syed Ahmed, had held itself aloof from the Congress. They were working under the auspices of the Patriotic Association in direct opposition to the national movement. Our critics regarded the National Congress as a Hindu Congress, and the opposition papers described it as such. We were straining every nerve to secure the cooperation of our Mohammedan fellow-countrymen in this great national work. We sometimes paid the fares of Mohammedan delegates and offered them other facilities. Even Gokhale remarked in one of his letters, "Seventy million Mohammedans were more or less hostile to national aspirations" (The History and Culture of Indian People, RC Mazumdar, pp 315-316, Vol 10 [2]).

All leading Muslim institutions and personalities joined hands in their indignation against Indian National Congress. Resolutions condemning the Congress were passed by Muslims of Allahabad, Lucknow, Meerut, Lahore, Madras and other places. The Mohammedan Observer, The Victoria Paper, The Muslim Herald, The Rafiq-i-Hind and The Imperial Paper all spoke in one voice against the Indian National Congress. The Central National Mohammedan Association of Bengal, the Mohammedan Literary Society of Calcutta, the Anjuman-i-Islamia of Madras, the Dindigal Anjuman and the Mohammedan Central Association, Punjab denounced in the strongest possible terms the Congress aims and activities. Sir Syed himself set up United India Patriotic Association and Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental Defence Association to checkmate the success of the Congress (ibid, p 317).

The earlier leaders of the Congress (most of them barristers) were Anglophiles. Though sincerely patriotic, they were European in their outlook. They could understand each other only through the medium of English even when someone said, "I am an Indian!" Sir Syed was also an avowed Anglophile who wanted to extricate the Muslim community out of its medievalist orthodoxy. He was the first Indian Muslim to visit Europe. He urged the Muslims to follow the same line of development which was chalked out by Raja Rammohan Roy almost half a century before. In 1865, he founded the "Scientific Society" for translating useful English books on various subjects into Urdu and circulating them among the Muslims.

Yet we see an Anglophile Sir Syed opposing the Indian National Congress lorded over by 'Europeanised' Indians. Though Sir Syed was loosening the grip of orthodoxy from over the Muslim community, he was bolstering its alienation like never before. Was this an example of "scientific secularism"? He was the first to refer to two nationalities, Hindus and Muslims, in India. His policies materialised in the form of the birth of the Muslim League in 1906 in Dacca (Dhaka). That was almost a decade before Gandhi set foot on Indian soil in 1915. Muslims abhorred the Congress because they were not interested in living as equals in an independent country. They wanted not equality, but superiority, as prevailed during the Islamic ages in India.

(The writer, a Rajya Sabha MP, and the Convenor of BJP's Think Tank can be contacted at bpunj@email.com)

Muslim-Americans Sue Govt for Racial Profiling

Reuters
By Larry Fine

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Five Muslim-Americans sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday alleging racial profiling when they were detained and fingerprinted by border agents after returning from a religious conference.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court, named Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff among four defendants in what the New York Civil Liberties Union called a case of profiling.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman declined comment since the case -- involving the reentry of the five U.S. citizens by car from Canada -- is in litigation.

Court papers said that on their way back from the Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS) conference in Toronto in December 2004, the plaintiffs were detained for up to six hours with other Muslim-Americans and searched, photographed and fingerprinted, the lawsuit said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Kristi Clemens defended the government's actions and said, "Our priority mission is to prevent terrorists and their weapons from entering this country."

In the past the agency has denied the use of profiling on the borders but said intelligence has shown that conferences similar to the one in Toronto have been used by terrorist organizations.

RELIGIOUS CONFERENCE

The suit charged the Muslim-Americans were taken aside after being asked if they attended the religious conference and were then subjected to unlawful treatment at a border crossing near Buffalo, New York, under a new Homeland Security policy.

"They are engaging in profiling," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU said. "The government detained people because they attended a conference that was perfectly legal, exercising their basic rights."

"We were told that we were being pulled aside because of a random selection," said plaintiff Sawsaan Tabbaa, an orthodontist from Amherst, New York, who was traveling with her four children. "Then we saw the whole Muslim community there that had attended the Islamic conference.

"It was unbelievable. I am proud of being American but I couldn't believe my eyes something like this could happen."

Tabbaa said she refused to be fingerprinted, but finally relented after breaking down in tears after more than four hours of detention.

The suit does not seek monetary damages, but asks for a declaration that the government action was unlawful, an injunction against further enforcement of such policies and practices and erasing from all federal databases of information obtained from the plaintiffs.

Lieberman, whose organization filed the suit along with the American Civil Liberties Union and Council on American-Islamic Relations, said there was nothing about the RIS conference to raise suspicions.

"If the government has suspicions about criminal activities they have every right and indeed the obligation to go after those suspicions," Lieberman said. "This is a case of rounding up the usual suspects in derogation of their rights and in derogation of all of our liberties."

HC fines two protesting Pope mourning

Reuters
Posted online: Thursday, April 21, 2005 at 0929 hours IST

New Delhi, April 21: The High Court has fined two men Rs 10,000 for legally challenging the mainly Hindu country's official three days of mourning for the death of Pope John Paul II, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The High Court in New Delhi said the petition urging the government not to declare official mourning for people "less significant for our country" and complaining of lost working days was a publicity-seeking "abuse of process".

It was not clear if the two men, one of them a college lecturer, must pay Rs 10,000 each or the combined amount together.

India court rejects Hindu protest on mourning for John Paul II

2005-04-21 Published by Indian Express Gathered by Press Trust of India

NEWDELHI,APRIL 21: A court in India has rebuked Hindu activists who brought a lawsuit to protest the federal government's proclamation of a 3-day period of mourning after the death of Pope John Paul II. The Delhi high court dismissed a "public-interest petition" brought by two Hindus, who had demanded an official explanation for a mourning period in the case of a "less significant person" like the Pope. During the 3-day period, flags were flown as half-mast and government ceremonies were postponed. The court not only rejected the activists' petition, but fined them 0 apiece for abusing the judicial process in what the court find to be a publicity stunt.

Marxists blessed with right to manage temples

OUR BUREAU

April 21: Religion is the opium of the masses — and Marxists.

The Left has won legal sanctity to stretch Karl Marx’s signature maxim today with the Supreme Court ruling that managing temples “primarily is a secular act”.

The ruling came on a petition seeking to debar “Hindu” ministers of the erstwhile Left Front government in Kerala from the managing committee of the Guruvayoor temple, one of the richest shrines in the state.

Kerala’s temples, some of which are treasure troves, often become the playground for politics with successive governments, including those led by the so-called atheist CPM, packing the committees with their sympathisers.

The court today said a state government has the power to supervise the administration of a temple by nominating members to the managing committee.

The petition said the ministers could not be described as “Hindus” within the meaning of the Guruvayoor Devaswom Act as they have disowned their religion when they became party members.

However, a division bench of Justices H.K. Sema and S.B. Sinha said that “to debar all ‘Hindu’ ministers of (a) Leftist government from nominating members to the managing committee of the Guruvayoor Devaswom will lead to a stalemate in the management of the temple”.

The bench clarified that “management of a temple primarily is a secular act” and, hence, “undisputedly, the state has the requisite jurisdiction to oversee administration of a temple”.

The petitioners — the president of the temple protection committee and a VHP leader — had challenged a Kerala High Court judgment on the ground that the ministers owed allegiance to the Marxist ideology and were against any religious practice.

Justice Sinha, writing the judgment for the bench, said: “A Hindu admittedly may or may not be a person professing Hindu religion or a believer in temple worship. A Hindu has a right to choose his own method of worship. Idol worship, rituals and/or ceremonies may not be practised by a person although he may profess Hindu religion.”

“To insist on such a qualification in the electorate will be as bad as saying that when the law relating to a temple is under consideration in the legislature, only Hindu legislators can vote and they must further be qualified as believers in temple worship,” Justice Sinha said.

CPM central committee member M.A. Baby later told The Telegraph that the Marxists are not enamoured of their seats on temple committees but they are discharging their responsibilities when they are part of the government.

“It’s the elected representatives of the people who delegate this authority to the ministers who in turn make their nominations to the temple committees.

“Temple assets are often mismanaged and temples are hotbeds of maladministration. A government, whether of the Left or not-so Left parties, has the responsibility to straighten out matters. Therefore, it’s immaterial whether one is an atheist or a believer when it comes to the question of the proper administration of temples,” Baby added.

The CPM leader said rituals and ceremonies are the “forte of priests” and there would be no interference from any Left government.

In neighbouring Tamil Nadu, too, ministers are involved in temple administration and the state government, through legislation, has taken over the administration of almost all the temples.

Jains in TN want to be declared as 'religious minorities'

Chennai, April 20 (PTI): Jains in Tamil Nadu today demanded that they be declared as 'religious minorities' in the state.

Harish L Mehta, Member of the State Minorities Commission, told reporters that though the Jains were allowed to run educational institutions as minority institutions, they were compelled to go to the Government every year for renewal of their status.

When institutions run by other minority communities were given a permanent status as religious minority-run-educational institutions, as they had been declared religious minorities in the state, Jain institutions had to go after the government for getting their status renewed every year, he said.

Even the State Minorities Commission had recently passed a resolution asking the state government to declare Jains as a religious minority group, he said.

Bharwarial Gothi, president, Shree Jain Maha Sangh, said the birth anniversary of Bhagwan Mahaveer should be declared a holiday under the Negotiable Instruments Act in the state.

It should also be declared as 'Ahimsa day,' he said.

He claimed that officials were not following a government order on closing down all meat shops on Mahaveer Jayanti and asked the government to give clear instructions.

Mahaveer Jayanthi would be celebrated in a grand manner by the Jain community here on April 22, he said.

BJP to launch agitation over five per cent resv to Muslims

Press Trust of India
Vijayawada, April 19, 2005|15:30 IST

The Andhra Pradesh unit of BJP would soon launch an agitation, protesting reservation to Muslims in the state, state general secretary K Lakashman said.

"The BJP will protest the state government decision to implement five per cent reservation to Muslims on religion basis," Lakashman said.

"Even the High Court in its verdict said that reservation should not be extended on religion basis", Lakashman said adding, despite the court orders the state government was "trying to implement the same".

Before coming to power Congress promised to include number of other backward classes in the backward class list "but so far no decision has been taken on these promises."

We are still under siege in our own country

By: Narain Kataria
April 19, 2005

(Author is Founder/Secretary of the Indian American Intellectuals Forum, NY)

The Indian American Intellectual Forum, a New York based group, organized a seminar titled “India Under Siege” on March 5, 2005 in which more than 100 intellectuals from tri-state area participated and discussed various problems with which Indian society has been confronted.

Dr. Narinder Kukar, who has served Association of Indians in America as its National Chairman and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, in a hard-hitting speech said that the educated intelligentsia and affluent Hindus have failed India. He suggested that theocratic countries should be debarred from the membership of United Nations because they freely, and sometime even openly, indulge in minority persecution.

Dr. Kukkar vehemently opposed the forced conversions of Hindus in India to other religions. He further recommended that Hindus should devise some ways and means to encourage “homecoming” of our brothers who, during the alien rule in India, were converted to the non-Indian religions.

Dr. Rajesh Shukla, a senior member of Overseas Friends of BJP, said that after the First World War Syria and Lebanon were carved out of the erstwhile Ottoman Empire. Lebanon was especially created by European powers to have a Christian-majority state in the Mid-East. At the time of its creation, Christians were 60% and Moslems were 40% of the total population of Lebanon. By 1970, however, Moslems became the majority due to their high population growth rate and infiltration from neighboring countries.

If the Muslim population rise continues unabated in India too, in a very short period of only another twenty-five years from now, Lebanon-like situation could most likely erupt in our country also, unless some drastic preventive measures are taken right away, Shukla warned.

Mr. Niranjan Shah, a retired engineer, educationist, and a columnist for India Tribune said that in the olden days Veer Savarkar and Subhash Chandra Bose carried on freedom struggle from foreign countries. Now, it becomes the duty of 22 million non-resident Indians, who are resourceful and holding high positions in the countries of their residence, to come to the rescue of our Motherland and protect her from the onslaught of our enemies.

In 1947, the British India was divided on the basis of two-nation theory. What is left of our country is already under siege because 85% of its Muslim population that voted for the creation of Pakistan, did not leave for Pakistan but stayed put in India. Had the ‘transfer of population’ suggestion between India and Pakistan, as advocated by the architect of our Constitution Dr. Ambedkar, been implemented Indian would have been in a better shape from the security point of view.

Dr. Babu Suseelan, a professor in Clinical Psychology and the Director of Addiction Research Institute, Pennsylvania, said that during the 800 years of foreign rule in India, Hindus were physically attacked, economically exploited, and psychologically deprived. This has inflicted great damage on our spiritual traditions, temples, social fabric, and Hindu psyche. Not only that. Even after 58 years of country’s independence, Hindus are still under siege in their own country.

If Hindus want to live with dignity and peace, they need to establish a political power structure at district, state, regional and national level. In order to achieve that, it is absolutely essential that Hindus establish the ‘Hindu vote-bank’ in order to be able to influence the decision-making process of political parties.

India is being attacked from within and without. China’s stockpiling of nuclear arsenals in Tibet, Pakistan’s ambitious acquisition of nuclear weapons and missiles and support of Islamic terrorism in India, is a great threat to India’s integrity. Peoples’ War Group, including the violent Naxalite movement has endangered India’s security.

Earlier, welcoming the audience, Mr. Narain Kataria, Founder/Secretary of the Forum struck the keynote of the seminar when he observed that the Hindus had been pushed to the wall in India. It was a matter of great regret that Hindus were being persecuted even in India. “Minorities are taking undue advantage of the system.” “Time has come that we should devise strategy to capture political power in India,” Kataria urged.

Others who spoke on the occasion were: Dr. Uma Mysorekar, President of Hindu Society of North America, Anand Ahuja, Esq., Pabitra Chowdhury, Vice-President of the Forum, Prof. Indrajit Singh Saluja, Managing Editor of English Weekly South Asian Insider, Mr. A.V. Raghunath of Kanchi Kamkoti Peetham, Mr. Udayabhanu Panickar, Ashok Vyas, Director Hindi News, ITV, Dr. Sudhakar Reddy, Prof. M.G. Prasad and Ravi Karmarkar. Mr. Venkat Sarma proposed a vote of thanks and Mr. Arish Sahani coordinated the proceedings.

Narain Kataria

US Refusal of Visa to Indian Politician: Irrational Arrogance or Insipid Ignorance?

S K Modi - 3/22/2005

Imagine if those running for their lives out of WTC on September 11, 2001 were prevented from coming out of the burning and collapsing buildings by a group of Muslims. Had that happened, how would the Americans have reacted to local Islamic population? What would have been the magnitude of hate crimes in such a situation? How many would have been killed? How many mosques would have been burnt? It is very difficult to imagine a situation like this. But this is precisely what happened at Godhra in the western state of Gujarat in India on February 27, 2002. A train was forced to stop by pulling the emergency chain. An entire coach section was set on fire. Gasoline was spread inside the coach for igniting the fire. A crowd of about 1,000, all of them Muslim, pelted stones at the traveling Hindu pilgrims. The train burned and the passengers inside were not allowed to come out. In about 20 minutes, 58 were cindered to death. It was a rural, under-developed place. It was a scantily policed area, so neither the police nor fire-fighters reached the tragedy in time.

The Banerjee Inquiry Committee, appointed by the Indian Ministry of Railways, has concluded that the fire was caused accidentally. Though reported extensively in the developed world media, the report doesn't deserve even a rebuttal. Most individuals, including a large majority of members of the Congress party, which accuses the Gujarat administration of complicity in the riots that followed, dismiss the report as pure hogwash in private conversations.

Without deliberate inflammation, a train simply cannot be burnt in such short a time. For those who do not believe this, here is an interesting fact: in the last ten years, I am not aware of any deaths that have been caused by accidental fires in trains in India - except for the Godhra incident.

Burning of the train was barbarism at it's worst. It was a notch above what is generally described as terrorism. Whether one likes it or not, a reaction to the act was inevitable. Despite the sincere efforts of the Bush administration and security services, the number of hate crimes has risen significantly after the attacks on WTC towers. Now had there been a crowd outside the twin towers and the number of casualties would have been two or three times what it was, surely the number of hate crimes would have been much larger and the nature of crimes would have been much more serious.

There was an inferno of a mass reaction. The Hindu community felt enraged. For 18 hours, from 12 in the afternoon of February 28, 2002 until the morning of March 1, 2002, hundreds were killed. Approximately 1,000 people were killed in the aftermath of Godhra and at least three fourth of all killings took place during these 18 hours. All the big incidents of Best Bakery, Naroda Patiya and Gulbarg Society took place during these 18 hours. By the afternoon of March 1, 2002, armed forces had already been deployed and the violence had been largely controlled.

The burning alive of 58 innocent Hindus certainly does not justify retaliatory killing of 1,000 innocent Muslims. Nobody tried to justify the aftermath in any manner. But surely one needs to understand and appreciate the barbarous manner in which the 58 pilgrims were burnt and the passions it inflamed among the Hindus.

The next question is delivering justice to the victims - of the burning of the rail coach, as well as of the violence that followed.

Human Rights Watch of the US and Amnesty International have produced voluminous reports criticizing the Gujarat government for its failure to punish the guilty of the retaliatory killings. Even the official US government reports have been critical of the Gujarat government's handling of the post-Godhra violence. Leading liberal media organizations like the Washington Post and New York Times, of course, continue to slam Gujarat for its failure to deliver justice to the victims of communal riots that followed the burning of the rail coach.

Here again, common sense appears to have gone missing. Almost.

What happens when a crowd of 500 or 1,000 (in some cases, the crowds were as large as 5,000 and more) kills a small group of people? How does one identify who actually killed? Were those who were part of the crowd but were in the background less responsible? How does one go around identifying a thousand persons? Who would give witness against whom and who would identify whom? All those present at the scene were involved and the victims are all dead. How does one deliver justice in such cases?

Credence to this argument comes from the Godhra incident itself. Almost one hundred were arrested for suspected complicity in burning of the train. Nearly half of them have been released because of inadequate evidence. Cases against many of those still under detention have made little progress. Most of those being held behind the bars are still far from criminal conviction. Many of the witnesses have turned hostile. The Gujarat government is feeling virtually helpless in the matter. Few expect justice to be delivered to those who were burnt alive on the train. Incidentally, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have generally ignored the human rights of those 58 people.

Few mention the fact that according to official estimates, about two million people were involved in the post-Godhra riots. Hindu activist groups place the number of people who actively participated in the riots at around five million. Could millions of Germans have been published for the crimes committed during World War II?

The media in the developed world has often asked how could the rioters have known which shops belonged to the minority community, without government assistance? This again suggests refusal to think. Go to any US county. Everybody knows which shop or business is owned by white Americans, which is owned by an African-American and which is owned by an Asian. One may not know about the ownership of a swanky business in Manhattan, but in smaller places, everybody knows about the ownership of every shop and business establishment. The same is true in India.

The developed world has also been oblivious of the fact that riots spread to rural areas of Gujarat for the first time in history and rural Gujarat is among the most sparsely policed regions in the world. Number of police personnel per 100,000 population in Gujarat is around 100, which is less than one half that of most developed nations. In addition, police personnel in Gujarat have hardly any equipment. Their vehicles are poorly maintained, they have few fire arms and many police officers are physically "rusted" too - the number of serious crimes is so low that many of them have never had to fire a single shot in their entire careers.

Thousands of villages do not have any police posts at all! To put the whole thing in perspective, Gujarat witnesses about two rapes a year per 100,000 population. The US witnesses over thirty rapes per 100,000 population. Obviously, the US police is generally more 'active' and 'trained' for handling emergencies.

The mass reaction to the ghastly burning of the train was simply too gigantic for the Gujarat law enforcement agencies to control.

The charge that the police personnel did not do enough to prevent the rioters from killing needs to be viewed in conjunction with these facts. It is entirely possible that in some cases, some policemen might have watched the riots passively, ignoring their duty. It is even possible that a small number of policemen actually participated in the riots. Some of them have, in fact, been brought to justice. Action has been initiated in some such cases. But to accuse the entire law enforcement machinery of Gujarat of complicity in riots is outrageous, to say the least. It will be like calling the NYPD racist because a couple of policemen are caught abusing the rights of some African-Americans. The Gujarat police did fire thousands of rounds and nearly 100 people, mostly Hindus, were killed by police fire.

Clearly, there is need for understanding the sequence and the magnitude of the events and for taking a realistic approach, rather than making Gujarat a favorite whipping boy.

Exemplary punishment has been awarded to US soldiers who violated the human rights of their Iraqi prisoners. But has the US law covered all the incidents? Would the hunt for human rights violations in prison camps in Iraq continue indefinitely? What about the human rights of those US soldiers who have been killed by terrorists in Iraq?

It may be interesting for some global analysts to note that an eighteen year old girl, who survived the well known Best Bakery case, in which 14 persons were burnt alive by a crowd of over 500, had allegedly identified 21 accused persons. Could anybody dig out the maximum number of accused identified by a single witness in a single incident in the history of criminal justice? The girl was only 18 year old in February 2002. The incident took place after dusk. She managed to save herself by running to the roof of the building. Yet, on the basis of a statement by this girl, the Supreme Court of India ordered that the case be tried outside the state of Gujarat. So how far Gujarat and India should, or can, pursue justice?

This is the background, the set of events, that has led the US administration to conclude that the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Mr. Narendra Modi, has displayed religious intolerance and should, therefore, not be allowed to set foot on US soil. On March 18, 2005, the US embassy in New Delhi issued a statement, informing that Mr. Narendra Modi had been denied the diplomatic visa he had applied for and his multiple-entry tourist-cum-business visa that he had been holding since 1998 had also been cancelled.

Denial of visa to Mr. Modi has angered and disappointed a very large number of Indians, including those living and working in the US because the decision is based on incorrect facts and figures.

It is most unfortunate that US Congressman Joseph Pitts, who had asked the US administration to refuse visa to Gujarat Chief Minister Mr. Narendra Modi for visiting US (from March 20, 2005 onwards), did not bother to confirm even the basic facts. On March 18, 2005, after the US administration had officially announced its decision to deny visa to Mr. Modi, Congressman Pitts gave an interview to an Indian television channel, in which he said 2,000 persons were killed in the post-Godhra violence in Gujarat. Mr. Pitts did not know that the actual number of casualties was less than 1,000.

It is possible for Mr. Pitts to argue that the figure has been deflated deliberately by the Gujarat government. But what about compensation figures? The Gujarat government has provided financial help to all riots-affected persons or the relatives of the dead. Why have HRW and Amnesty not taken the trouble of verifying these figures? Incidentally, the BBC has been using the figure of 1,000 for over a year now. So why did Congressman Pitts choose to state the figure of 2,000? Ignorance, or a casual attitude, is the only possible answer. This writer is not willing to ascribe motives to a democratically elected Congressman from Pennsylvania.

This writer has stated in one of the earlier articles in this journal that Indians aren't terribly fond of America-bashing. They generally take things in their stride, despite America's obsession with Pakistan, which is widely believed to be one of the largest harbourers of terrorists in the world. Recently, Pakistan has virtually admitted that it has sold nuclear technology to irresponsible rogue regimes. But denial of visa to Mr. Narendra Modi is likely to result in significant anti-American feelings in India. In fact, even the ruling Congress party, which perhaps hates Mr. Narendra Modi more than any other leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, has been forced to take a defensive posture and to defend Mr. Modi's legitimate rights as the democratically elected Chief Minister of one of India's most progressive states.

Mr. Narendra Modi himself has, understandably, taken a tough posture. He has demanded to know whether the US army officials should be denied visa by other countries of the world because of the incidents of ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners. He has demanded in unequivocal terms that the US mind it's own business. He has pointed out how Hindus are not even allowed to cremate their dead in Egypt and yet the US warmly welcomes Egyptian leaders. He has pointed out that minorities have been persecuted in Bangladesh for decades and the US has maintained a stoic silence.

Notwithstanding Mr. Modi's understandable (or otherwise) ire at the denial of visa, the US administration needs to do some introspection. It was an unforgivable gaffe. The US President had some support in India for his Iraq policy and that has plunged at least fifty percent because of this unnecessary and unwarranted imbroglio.

Chances are that somebody in India managed to convince the US Secretary of State Ms. Condoleeza Rice during her trip to India - it is doubtful whether the lady could have been "finally convinced" by boisterous five-star activists who have converted human rights protection into a full fledged business, or a few Congressmen who might have been conned into signing a letter because of their ignorance.

However, a lot of charity money floats around in the US economy and there is a huge competition to grab it. There are websites which teach these "professional do-gooders" ways of getting a higher share in available charity money. Intense competition for tapping those billionaires who are keen to fund human rights activism in particular is perhaps one factor that is likely to have contributed to this huge diplomatic gaffe on part of the US Secretary of State.

Exactly ho was the principal architect of the ridiculous suggestion of visa refusal to Mr. Modi is immaterial. The loser in this affair is the United States, as well as the people of America and India. Just at a time when relations between the largest and the most powerful democracies were beginning to look up, a diplomatic impasse has been created by some vested interests. The issue is far larger than what many would like to believe. Indians do not come out on the streets in such cases, but they do not ignore such events. If it is possible to measure the overall affection that Indians have for Americans, chances are that the quantum of this affection has plunged quite steeply because of the US administration's refusal to issue visa to Mr. Narendra Modi.

Immediately after the Iraq war, only some radical Islamists had demonstrated against the US and had called for boycott of American goods and companies. However, denial of visa to Mr. Modi has rattled a large number of Indians - Hindus and Muslims alike. Correspondents of CNN, BBC, Reuters and AFP, who followed Mr. Modi during his mass contact program in the last quarter of 2002 know the kind of following he enjoys. Before condemning the Gujarati clan as blood-thirsty or trigger-happy, any thinking US citizen or government official or activist needs to ask himself or herself a simple question - how many of Gujaratis living in the US have been implicated in violent crimes? Can the Gujaratis be described as generally militant by any standards? And if the US Gujaratis (they are the more aggressive ones, who left their country in search of greener pastures) are peace-loving, how can Gujarati Gujaratis be violent? An unfortunate incident (burning of the train) happened because of some skillful planning by some ruthless elements and the people of Gujarat felt enraged. It happened. It is over. The only option is to move on.
S K Modi is a freelance writer and has contributed articles to a large number of leading Indian dailies and magazines, besides having published specialized business newsletters for over a decade. He has also authored a book on the 2002 violence in Gujarat. A professional biographer, he lives in the city of Ahmedabad, in western India. He may be contacted at sukumo@vsnl.com

Who mourned the Pope?

Author: Balbir K. Punj
Publication: Asian Age
Date: April 12, 2005

There was something puzzling about the Indian government's decision to declare a three-day state mourning for Pope John Paul II, Karol Jozef Wojtyla. Did it try to appear more Christian than Christians, or more "secular" than the rest? I am all for showing respect to the dead, irrespective of their creed, faith or colour. However, the Indian government's decision raises some interesting questions. Did it declare a state mourning because the Pope was a head of state?

Does the death of a sovereign of an artificial state of less than 1,000 people deserve it? Vatican is a "state" whose head, the Pope, is elected by an electoral college consisting of 117 voting cardinals - all foreigners! Prince Rainier III, the monarch of Monaco, a stamp size principality but substantially bigger than the Vatican and commercially more important, died within a week of the Pope's death. He was Europe's longest ruling monarch, but was there any mourning in India?

And if the gesture was to the head of a billion strong Christian sect, with global presence, then can a "secular state" differentiate between one religion and another? Should it not show similar gestures on the demise of heads of other persuasions in India and abroad? A few years ago, when the paramacharya of Kanchi, in whom many saw a "living God," died, no such gesture was shown. Isn't our "secularism" skewed?

In fact, an embarrassing situation was created when the South Block realised that the Prime Minister of Uzbekistan was due to start his visit to India from April 6, the third day of the mourning. South Block frantically sought a two-day postponement of the visit, but in vain. The Uzbek Prime Minister's diplomatic schedules could hardly be reorganised. This forced New Delhi to reorganise its diplomatic schedule by splitting the mourning into two segments - April 4, 5 and April 8, the actual funeral day - to accommodate Mr Islam Karimov.

How did the rest of the world react to the event? Ireland, a country with 92 per cent Catholic population, did not declare any state mourning and Catholics were not upset over it at all. The same was true for Spain, a deeply believing Catholic country. Leading French left-wingers criticised the government of President Jacques Chirac for lowering flags on public buildings in tribute to the Pope for a day, arguing that it was a breach of the country's secular principles.

Protestant countries like the US, Britain, Sweden, Denmark etc., declared no national mourning. The same was true for countries like Russia, Greece, Ukraine under the Eastern Orthodox Church. Of about 100 Christian countries, just a dozen, all insignificant ones apart from Italy and Canada, declared a mourning. Only Egypt, a predominantly Muslim country with hardly any Catholics amongst its Coptic Christian minority, declared a mourning.

All the same, the Pope had left an indelible mark. History will record him as the first Pope to visit a Jewish synagogue (Great Synagogue of Rome in 1986) and to pray at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem (March 2000). He also became the first Pope to step inside a mosque when he visited the famous Umayyad mosque in Damascus (May 2001). He tendered an apology to the Jews for the Holocaust and to the Muslims for the medieval era crusades.

But alas, he was the same Pope who during his visit to New Delhi between November 5 and 8, 1999, declared that Asia should be evangelised in the third millennium like Europe and the two Americas in the first and second millennium respectively. This certainly was not God's protocol. It was surely an affront to India's pluralistic traditions. The then archbishop of Delhi, Alan de Lastic, dismissed a VHP demand for an apology by the Church for its monstrous Court of Inquisition in Goa in the 15th century under St. Xavier.

The VHP's demand for an apology was not unreasonable. Christianity came to India with Apostle Thomas within decades of the crucifixion and co-existed with other faiths peacefully in the pluralistic Indian ethos. However, this changed with the arrival of Francis Xavier, the first missionary of the new Society of Jesus formed to support the authority of the Pope, in Goa in 1542. In Ambedkar's words (Writings and Speeches Vol. 5), "The inquisitors of Goa discovered that they were heretics and like a wolf in the fold, down came the delegates of the Pope upon the Syrian Churches." Describing the role of Don Alexis de Menezes the Archbishop of Goa, Dr Ambedkar says, "It was his mission less to make new converts than to reduce old ones to subjection; and he flung himself into the work of persecution with an amount of zeal and heroism that must have greatly endeared him to Rome."

One of the highly appealing aspects of Pope John Paul II was his political role. He furtively built up, with Western support, the Solidarity movement in Poland which caused a domino effect in the collapse of the Communist bloc. He established, in 1993, Vatican's diplomatic relations with Israel that were long overdue.

"Although a Pope," says the Newsweek "is by definition the chief teacher, pastor, and administrator of the Roman Catholic Church, John Paul II saw himself primarily as an evangelist. From his first appearance on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, he proclaimed to a worldwide audience that 'Christ, Christ is the answer' " (Newsweek April 11-18, 2005 p. 23).

Behind the veneer of his pop-savvy liberalism (the Pope had actually featured in a pop album), who led Vatican into the Internet era, he was essentially a revivalist.

He "was a stern disciplinarian bent on curbing what he saw as a dangerous leftward drift in Catholic theology and practice" (Newsweek). He reversed many of the objectives of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the most ambitious reform programme in the Catholic Church convened by the most significant Pope of the 20th century, John XXIII (1958-1963). John Paul II's immediate predecessor, John Paul I, who died (or was he killed?) within 33 days of being in office, had espoused those reforms.

It remains a mystery how his immediate predecessor Pope John Paul I, a promisingly progressive ecclesiastic, died within 33 days of being in office. He is said to have died due to a cardiac arrest resulting from an overdose of tranquillisers. No autopsy was ever done. It has been long suspected that he had been assassinated for his liberal agenda. David Yallop in his book In God's Name (1984) claimed that the precise circumstances attending the discovery of the body of John Paul I "eloquently demonstrate that the Vatican practised a disinformation campaign." The Vatican told one lie after another: "Lies about little things, lies about big things. All these lies had but one purpose: to disguise the fact that Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I, had been assassinated." Pope Luciani "received the palm of martyrdom because of his convictions."

During Pope John Paul II's tenure, the religo-fascist Mafia, Opus Dei got its grip on the Vatican. Opus Dei, in Spanish meaning "God's Work," is a highly controversial organisation that holds extremely bigoted views and is dedicated to expanding the Catholic grip on international media. Josemaria Escriva de Belaguer ý Albes, the founder of Opus Dei was elevated to sainthood by John Paul II.

John Paul II's views on divorce, artificial birth control, abortion were regressive and out of sync with the AIDS-era. Had a Hindu dharmaguru been professing such views, he would have been dubbed a saffron lunatic. His successor will have to grapple with many issues this Pope was not even ready to discuss. Islamic fundamentalism, emergence of China and India as major players, paedophilia in the Church are a few of these issues.

Balbir K. Punj is a Rajya Sabha MP and convener of the BJP's Think Tank.

Misguided Hindu Secularism

By: Venkat Lakshminarayan
April 01, 2005

We Hindus are very objective people. We do not like any irregularities in our dealings. We want everything to be "clean", legal and correct. Gandhi and Nehru are our mentors. But we always go to some one else to settle our disputes ignoring the fact that the "some one else" will have different value beliefs than our own. Naturally when the settlement comes out it is never to our satisfaction and we quarrel about it. How can we ever be content?

I remember the story that I heard as a child. Two crows find a cake. Being good Hindu crows, they agree to divide it equally between them. Of course, they wanted the shares to be precisely equal. Unsure of their ability to do this by themselves, they go to a monkey with a balance. After hearing out the crows the monkey casually splits the cake into two pieces and places them in the balance. The balance tips as one piece is slightly heavier than the other. The monkey takes a bite out of the heavier piece and places it back in the balance. Now the other piece is heavier, the balance tips the other way, and therefore, the monkey takes a bite out of that piece. You guessed the rest of the story. The crows went home hungry and became bitter enemies.

Is this a familiar theme?

Being a good and fair minded Hindu, Gandhi let Mountbatten and British to divide the country into two pieces. Jinnah could not care less about the fairness as long as he got his fiefdom. The other Hindu, Nehru (though he took pride in claiming that he was not) went to United Nations to solve the Kashmir cake. We all know how they turned out. Those mistakes have cost us enormously and continue to bleed our economy and security to this day.

Every society, whether it is Christian, Muslim, European, American, Chinese or Arab, has internal quarrels but they close ranks in the event of an external attack. Hindus not only continue their quarreling under external attack but they also ask the enemy to settle the quarrels for them. Our secularist intellectual elite had to approach the US Government to declare the Gujarat Chief Minister Modi to be a "persona non grata" How unfortunate! We are a democratic country and we can exercise our opinions in our elections and have our own intellectual discourse. Instead our secularists approached US Government to settle our quarrels. If anyone suggesting the settlement of the dispute within our system is branded as a fascist.

Notably the Indian academic elite living in the US who went on a battle to prevent Modi from speaking are the same people who will defend the right of David Duke to carry on with his hateful speeches. These people never once lobbied the US Government in the matters related to the security or economic well being of India. On issues like Kashmir, Indo-Pakistani relationship and the role of India at the United Nations they never lifted a finger to promote the Indian cause even when it was the right cause.

Suddenly they were all coming out of the woodwork like pests to lobby against Modi`s visa. Christians and Muslims have their own agenda. The Christians, regardless of their political leanings, are out to destroy anyone who they see as an impediment to their proselytizing. The Islamists are out to get as much political mileage. Our Hindu brethren among these so called intellectual elite are seemingly ashamed of their own culture and heritage. They are trying to hide their own Brownness by disenfranchising any other Brown man with different view point speaking his mind. In their view the freedom of expression is to be denied to anyone who disagrees with their point of view.

Old man Mcaulay is chuckling in his grave as he is beyond his belief that the Indians could be so fooled.

Venkat Lakshminarayan

Modi, Godhra, Jihad & Reverend Bush

Mar 20, 2005

USA embassy has revoked Narendra Modi’s visa for so-called “violating religious freedom.”

There is not much point in discussing USAs actions because “America” is just the other name for “Fraud of Double Standards.” This is a country that has proved its credentials by tolerating and supporting Jihadi terrorism by Pakistan for several decades. It is a nation that has killed thousands of Iraqis just because Bush dreamt of WMDs in Iraq, while it continued to ignore WMD Wal-Mart – Pakistan.

Modi’s denial is just the result of the “unholy nexus” between “the holy Christian missionaries and the holy Jihadi sympathizers”. There is no doubt that American administration is hand in glove with the Christian Missionaries, that hold the exclusive rights to “violate others religious freedom” (by conversion). Let us understand well: the Jihadis and the Missionaries are always together while targeting the Hinduism.

.……….but the returns are good in this case. This action is sure to benefit India in the long run. Even the hard core supporters of Jihadis in our government were forced to protest the USA’s action. The UPA gang seems to have learnt some lessons from the Jharkhand democracy murder…that actions like this help Indians to open their eyes further more!!!

Actually, this is the best opportunity to bring some facts before the people, know more about the rights and religious freedom enjoyed by the minorities in India and the question about future of India.

---------------

What was the Post-Godhra riots about and how many people were killed in these riots?

The Gujarat riots was a reaction to the Godhra train burning. An entire coach was burnt down by a mob of 2,000 local Muslims in which 58 Hindus were killed. The victims included 25 women, 14 children and infants that were returning from Ayodhya. Hindu mobs rioted after this incident.
Gujarat administration completely failed to control the riots effectively in time. Over 700 people from both the communities were killed in the Post-Godhra riots. (Though the sympathizers of Jihadis, Communals, Criminals and the Anti-nationals claim it between 3000 to 10,000.)

---------------

About religious freedom in Pakistan, Bangladesh and USA

In view of this denial, How would USA embassy answer the Hate crimes against Indians in US?
http://samachar.com/features/090703-features.html

Pakistan is a Sponsor of Terrorism, nuke Proliferator and the WMD Wal-Mart.

Hindu minority in Pakistan has reduced to 1% from 30% in 50 years. Hindu minority in Bangladesh has reduced to 7% from 35% today. Has USA ever refused visa to any Pakistani or Bangladeshi politician for violating religious freedom? Or is it right for the Pakistan and Bangladesh to violate the religious freedom of minorities? Is that why Mushrraf is welcomed at Bush’s Texas Ranch? More about “US policy toward India is war by other means”.

USA is certainly aware of the massacre and ethnic cleansing of J&K Pundits going for over 15 years for now, which is far worse than Gujrat and was stated because of Jihadi ideals without any Godhra kind of incident/reason? Thousands of Kashmiri Pundits have been killed and 700,000 Pandits are refugees in their own country.

Worst riots had erupted ten years back in USA (Los Angelis) that killed 54 people? 54 people were killed and billion of $ of property was destroyed in LA riots just because of a simple court verdict. Can Mister Bush answer what would have been the toll in LA if 58 were roasted alive in a train couch by the local terrorists?

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How many people know the following about Godhra and Gujarat?

Godhra massacre was conducted by mob about 2000 Muslims wielding different weapons. The attacking mob even prevented the Fire trucks from reaching the spot after burning of the train?

• 157 subsequent riots that happened in Gujarat were started by Muslims.

• Over 40,000 Hindu refugees continued to languish in the Kankaria refugee camp after their homes were burnt down by Muslim mobs

• A Hindu businessman built 90 houses in Ahmedabad, Gujarat for Muslims whose homes had been destroyed. Is this how the Muslims community returns this humanity?

Modi has neither been charged nor proved to be guilty of riots that followed after roasting of 58 people by local terrorists. No Indian court has indicted Mr.Modi in any case. The only thing sympathizers of Jihadis have been successful so far is “spreading the lies” with the help of “Missionaries”. Muslims community in UK screamed a lot when Modi visited UK….but they could not take the challenge of suing Modi.

---------------

Now, let us review the opportunities and rights enjoyed by minorities in India:

Indian minority has steadily grown from 8% to 12% (while it has reduced to near extinction in Pakistan and Bangladesh.) Can there be any other indicator to prove safety and religious freedom enjoyed by the minorities in India? Indian President is a Muslim. One of our billionaires is a proud Indian Muslim. Indian Govt pays crores of Rupees for the Muslim’s Haj pilgrimage every year. This money is paid by 80% of Hindu taxpayers.

Indian congress had changed India’s constitution to accommodate case of Muslims women Shah Banoo which is never done to satisfy any such religious fancies of any other religion in India.

"Most Muslims are much better off in India than even in Pakistan" as per study conducted in 2003.

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India is the only country where –

• Muslims are given subsidy to go to Haj.

• Three Indian Presidents and one Chief Justice of India were Muslims. One of the Presidents was Sikh. India's defense minister (Mr. George Fernandez) has been, a Christian by faith. There have been three Chief Ministers in India from minority community - Antulay in Maharashtra, Gafoor in Bihar and Anwara Tamur in Assam. Mayawati is Chief Minister in U.P. The list is unending.
  

• There are more muslims than all Islamic countries except Indonesia – but it is not an Islamic nation.

• There are more Hindus than any other country in the world – but it is not a Hindu nation.

• There are more Christians than Australia, New Zealand and many western countries – but it is not a Christian nation.

• There are more Sikhs, Jains, Zorastrians, - but India is neither that.

• Worlds most religions are born here – Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism to name the main ones.

• It can proudly claim the title of World’s largest functional SECULAR DEMOCRACY.

• In its ENTIRE HISTORY of over 5000 years India has never attacked or invaded a country or forced its religions or views on others

• India has lost 50% of its land in last few centuries to the invaders.

Which other country in the world has given so much of freedom and equal rights to their minorities, even to occupy our mother land?

AND…all this is despite 1000 years of Islamic invasion and genocide of Hindus that has killed millions of Hindus so far!!!

---------------

So, Who is responsible for the national insult today (USA revoking Modi visa)?

Is it USA?
Or those Indian Muslims that continue their Jihad from the foreign land?
Or is it the Hindus that do not care for their land, nation and the future?

The Jurassic Park is already in India!
If the history is ignored, extinction of the sheep is not too far away!!!

Gujarat Riots - Genesis, Analysis, Facts & Figures

Hindu-Muslim riots in India: A History

A Satire on Indian Pseudo-secularism

By Vishal Agarwal

(with Secularism Ji ki Arati)
http://www.voi.org/vishal_agarwal/psec.html

SIGNED: Teesta Seetalvad, Father Cedric Prakash, John Dayal, Maulana Wahiuddin, Comrade Romila Thapar, Comrade D. N. Jha, Comrade R. S. Sharma, Jawed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Darryl D’Monte, Dilip D’Souza, Dileep Simeon, Comrade AnandPatwardhan, Father Valson Thampu, Seema Mustafa, Justice Tarkunde, Ram Puniyani, Comrade K. N. Pannikar, Harbans Mukhia, Shahi Imam Bukhari, Syed Shahabuddin, Comrade N. Ram, Comrade Praful Bidwai, Comrade Amulya Ganguli, Ashghar Ali Engineer, Rafique Zakaria, M. J. Akbar, Maulana ABC, Father XYZ, Comrade MNO and 108 other secularists.

We, the concerned Indian Secular Intellectuals (ISI) of the Secular People's Republic of India believe that the destruction of the Babri Masjid was truly a cataclysmic event that has now robbed Hinduism of innocence for all times to come. It has now demolished, more resoundingly than that structure, the false notion that Hinduism is or ever was tolerant. The event has only vindicated the great Secular Eminent Historian (E. H.) Romila Thapar's thesis that the notion of 'tolerant Hinduism' is only a myth. After all, the fascist Hindus have earlier destroyed thousands of Buddhist and Jaina and Animist shrines, setting a strong precedent for later, similar acts of egalitarian Muslim rulers of India. When the Muslim rulers were destroying temples, they were only following a precedent set up by Hindus. They were also replacing the fascist, totalitarian Smriti with the egalitarian Sharia, as proved by the secular historian Mohammad Habib.

In fact, so thorough were the actions of fascist Hindus in the past that they have not left any literary and archaeological trace of the destruction of these Stupas, Jaina temples and Animist Shrines. But we are sure that the Hindus did all this in ancient times, several centuries ago. However we also concur with Western Indologists that Hinduism and Hindus are themselves a modern construct of the 19th century and therefore did not exist before then. In contrast to fascist Hindus, the secular Muslim rulers practiced sound environmentalism by recycling the temple parts into their secular mosques. By incorporating temple parts into mosques, they have demonstrated their commitment to a pluralist society and respect for diversity.

Secularist Mani Shankar Aiyer had stated in the Indian Parliament that the remnants of the displaced Hindu Vishvanath temple embedded in the walls of the Gyanavapi Aurangzebi mosque at Varanasi are a symbol of our beautiful composite culture and represent Islam and Hinduism in embrace.

The great secular Eminent Historian D. N. Jha had declared that when Hindus started worshipping cows around 300 AD, they sowed the seeds of modern day communalism. We argue that Valmiki sowed the seeds of Hindu fascism much earlier. The incident of Babri demolition should clinch any dithering on this matter. Therefore, in the interests of our secular polity, Ramayana should be banned. T V serials like Ramayana and Mahabharata not only promote puerile superstitions and undermine the scientific temper of secular India, they also promote Hindu chauvinism. Therefore, all such serials should be banned, particularly because Doordarshan cannot show serials on Prophet Muhammad.

Many of us had vowed that if the fascist, Hindu Nationalist Party BJP comes to power, we would leave India. But now we have changed our minds and want to stay back. This change is not because we continue to enjoy government largesse and have compromised with the fascist forces, but because we want to spend time in educating Indians by organizing morchas, bandhs, dharnas, by writing apologias for Hurriyat conference and Taliban leaders, attending Urdu Mushairas with Pakistanis at 5 Star Hotels and gobbling shahi paneer and murga massallams, making free govt. paid trips to Lahore, and holding the Indian parliament to ransom over the rise of Hindu fascism. In fact, many of us like N. Ram, K N Pannikar and Romila Thapar do spend a lot of time abroad alerting people about rising fascism in India.

The destruction of the great Babri Masjid might not have split India, as predicted earlier by our Theory, but it has certainly vivisected Hindus and Muslim minds, which co-existed in perfect secular bliss and harmony before that. After the Day of Judgment (6 December 1992), there were fortunately great secular upsurges. Secular Muslim intellectuals erased 450 communal Hindu structures in India, 200 in Bangladesh, 100 in Pakistan, 22 in Great Britain and 1 at Toronto (Canada).

Our secular predictions that Hindu fascists will take revenge on hapless minorities, and thus repeat history have come true. The Hindu fanatics indeed repeated history and enslaved millions of minority members and exported them to Central Asia and the Middle East. They imposed Jaziyah tax on 'Mlecchas', raped their women, destroyed thousands of mosques, burnt thousands of 'mleccha' scriptures, destroyed secular Madrassaas and seminaries, forcibly converted several thousand/nay millions of minority community members whom they called now 'mlecchas' (because the 'mlecchas' had called them 'kafirs'). To 'defend' their agglomeration of gutter and animist cults called 'Hinduism', the xenophobic, fanatical, revisionist, revanchist, majoritarian, totalitarian, autocratic, crass, crude, parochial, feudal, racist, misogynist, anti-Dalit, anti-minority, chauvinist, Nazi (phew! Saying all these words gives so much instant relief to our secular minds) Hindu fascists invaded all lands from Spain to India - just like the secular Arabs did immediately after the death of the great Prophet to defend egalitarian Islam.

In fact, it is because of the destruction of the Babri Masjid that the oppressed Talibans were forced to destroy the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. Have they not said so already? We agree with them. Imam Bukhari of Jama Masjid also stated that he will intervene on this matter provided the fascist BJP government returns the Babri Masjid to Muslims. Again, we agree with him, just as we have always. In fact, it is because of the destruction of Babri Masjid in 1992, that the Muslim secularists drove out the Hindus of Kashmir in 1989, destroyed 50 Hindu temples in 1980's and created Pakistan in 1947. Therefore, although we cannot guarantee that the Masjid will be rebuilt at the very spot, we will nevertheless disrupt the proceedings of the Parliament every year in December to prove that we are 'More Secular than Thou'.

It is because of the Babri demolition and the Nuclear blasts by the fascist Hindu nationalists, that Pakistan invaded Kargil. The Hindu fascist storm troopers and jingoists then actually had the cunning to launch their blitzkrieg at Kargil to push these egalitarian forces into Pakistan! It is because of the Babri Masjid demolition that the Mumbai riots took place. It is because of the Babri Masjid demolition that the secular Muslim underworld leaders blasted bomb at Mumbai. It is all the fault of Hindus.

Hindus should not now take revenge because Hinduism teaches forgiveness and the equality of all religions. Hinduism teaches that this world is an illusion. So why crib over the destruction of a few temples here and there. But most important, Hinduism teaches non-violence. As Mahatma Gandhi had told Hindus in Pakistan: “It is better to stay there and die to the last man, than to evenresist your Muslim attackers. By sacrificing your lives meekly for the sake of non-violence, Hindus will add great prestige to their religion”. We might beSecular Hindus ourselves, or might not be Hindus at all, but we consider it out duty to remind you of your traditions. Therefore, by raising your voices against imaginary atrocities on Hindus, do not re-invent Hinduism and destroy your religion.

We should learn from the secular example of Maulana Wahiuddin. When asked to pray for the Indian soldiers fighting at Kargil, he refused; under the pretext that he cannot pray for people who are fighting the Muslims. In reality, he did not want to side with the Hindu nationalist government who was fighting with our neighbors, instead of striking peace with them. This is why secular leaders Soniaji and Priyankaji went for the Maulana’s funeral later, to express theirsupport for the cause of secularism in India.

We, as secular, liberal and neutral historians, had earlier warned that all this will happen if our infallible truth (that there was no temple beneath the Babri mosque) is not propagated and forced down the throats of RSS fascists. Even if there were a temple there, it had only probably displaced a pre-existing Buddhist Stupa. So what if there is no proof of the Stupa? You cannot equate our infallible assertions with the 200 artifacts of some temple found beneath the mosque after its demolition, because these artifacts are either fabrications or clearly are pilfered items from museums of Beijing, Havana and Calcutta. We have explained these two points in great detail in our party organ Frontline with the help of Harvard scholar Michael Witzel. So, do not blame us for this mess. If only Narasimha Rao had emulated the secular hero Maulana Mulayam Singh Yadav, and had ordered the police to mow down the thousands of Hindutva fascists at Ayodhya who were chanting fascist slogans like 'Jai Siya Ram', this communal upsurge could have been stopped.

And do not even dare to compare the destruction of Babri Masjid with the demolition of thousands of temples in the world by Muslims. Do not even mention the ethnic cleansing of Hindus from Kabul to Srinagar. All these were caused by Hindu cunning, and none of these events is more heinous than the destruction of the Babri Masjid. The murder of Graham Staines is a close second. All other crimes in India are not even a distant third. Besides, don't you know that you could promote Hindu communalism and fascism by even mentioning the destruction of temples at Kashmir? Knowing this, if you protest against the destruction of temples or killings of Hindus anywhere and anytime, you become a de-facto dirty Hindu fascist and Hindu Talibans, and we can charge you with carrying out with public amputations, of subjugating women, of abetting international terrorism, of sheltering Osama like terrorists and of carrying out airplane hijackings. In any case, all Hindu organizations are Talibans of India. They are all Fascists.

We agree that two wrongs do not make one right. But then, why are you being presumptuous in condemning Taliban’s actions as wrong without considering thatthey have been driven to desperation by the Capitalist West. The West is hypocritical because it never cared to save the dying Afghans caught in the crossfire between Talibans and its misogynist, revanchist, autocratic, fanatical enemies. Neither should you bring in the question of Kashmiri Hindus here. Did not one of the secularists prove earlier that the Pandits are the ones who created a communal crisis in the valley by sucking up to fascist Jagmohan and leaving the secular Kashmir valley en masse? Nor can you compare the destruction of the great Babri with the supposed destruction of countless temples in the world. First, and most important, Babri is Babri. Its destruction cannot be compared to the alleged destruction of any temple. Secondarily, there could be economic or political motives at work in the alleged destruction of temples, as shown by Western academic Richard Eaton on our party organ (‘Frontline’)whereas, the demolition of Babri Masjid was clearly the handiwork of fascists, fanatics, anti-Dalit, anti-Minority, revanchist, totalitarian, majoritarian, khakhi knickerwallas. In any case, we reiterate again that any attempts to brow beat the Talibans without looking at the larger secular picture is only promoting Hindutva fascism and lands the critic into the camp of fascists.

And so what if secular Secular scholar Iravatham Mahadevan had also asserted that there was a temple beneath the mosque? He has so far not equated the animist, primitive, bucolic Vedic culture with the Harappan culture. Therefore he remains a secularist. If he were to change his opinion tomorrow and say that the Vedic culture and Harappan Culture were one, then we will label him a communal saffronist. Do you not remember what we did to B. B. Lal, the doyen of Indian archaeology? He might have 'Lal' (= red) as his surname, but we made him 'saffronist' as soon as he rejected the Aryan Invasion Theory and also said that a temple existed at the site of the mosque. We might have quoted his writings approvingly earlier, but now all of them are rejected, and labeled 'saffronist and communal' retrospectively.

So these are the two litmus tests to decide whether you are a secularist or whether you are a fanatic/reactionary/revisionist/feudal/bigot/narrow minded/ revanchist/communal/cow belter BIMARU/ Upper Caste chauvinist Hindu fascist (especially Brahmin-Bania type)-

1. Your stance on the Aryan Invasion Theory and,

2. Your stance on Babri (pronounced similar to the 'Rabri', the spouse of the secular hero Laloo who stopped fascist Advani’s Japanese Toyota van christenedas 'Ratha').

And this is how we should interpret the results of the Litmus test for deciding if a person is communal or if he is secular-

1. If your color changes from an indifferent, cold blue to a livid, secular LEFTIST red whenever the name Babri masjid is uttered, you are a secularist.

2. And whenever your RIGHT-eous red of indignation changes to a cold, indifferent blue at the mention of the expulsion of Kashmiri Hindus from Kashmir, you are a secularist again.

Last but not the least, we want to warn our innocent and gullible secular countrymen to be wary of these peddlers of hate who come in various guises. These Nazi Hindus can go to any extent to hide their real faces. To refurbish their international image, these fascists have been feed 50,000 homeless victims of the Kutch earthquake since 26 January 2001. These angels of death have rescued 1500 injured from below the debris. These pyromaniac Hindu Nazis have cremated 2000 corpses, probably because they have a lot of practice from incinerating Christian priests and other minority community members every now and then in gas chambers. We could have also done all this work in a secular way. For instance, we organized mass funds collection drives in Kolkata to support Cuba and Comrade Fidel Castro when his country was being besieged by Capitalist, Imperialist United States. This time however, most of us decided not to waste our precious time at Kutch. Instead, we have gone all over the world, and have spoken to the International press on the anti-Dalit, anti-Minority and fascist nature of these pretenders, fascists, Nazi Hindu fanatics.

Down with Hindu Nazis! Down with Fascists!


To promote Secularism, we must sing the following secular Bhajans everyday 5 times a day facing Beijing or Islamabad--

Secularism Ji ki Arati

OM (Only Marxist)

Chhanda:
NRam naam ras lijiye manuva, NRam naam ras lijiye|
Tajiye ku-Sangh, SAHMAT sung baithiye,
Romila bhajan nish-din kijiye||

Chupai:
Hindustan, Pakistan ka cheraa |
Kijiye secular hridaya mein deraa ||

Sunahum NRam, ab kahahun niketaa,
Jahaan basahun, Romila Thapar Sametaa |

Marx hi nivedit, bhojana karahin,
Secular prasaad laal vastra dharahin||

Kar nit karahin, Namboodirpad Puja,
Soniya bharosey hridaya nahin duujaa|
Charan Beijing teerath chali jaahin|
Secularism basahun, tinakey man maahin||

Doha:
Jai Jai Jai Romila Maayi, Dayaa karo Soniya ki Naayi |
West Bengal ik secular samaaju, JNU hi teeratharaaju ||

Shloka:
Sarve santu secularists,
sarve Hindu mrtyumayaaH |
Sarve red pustakani pasyantu,
Maa kaschit saffronist bhavet ||

Doha:
Laal rang, laali lasai, bhagavaa dhvajaa giray koop |
Laloo Mullu Yadav sahit, Hindu dharam par kooch ||

Jai Jai kaar:
Pakistan ki jai ho, Hindustan ka naash ho |
Minorities mein sadbhaavaa ho, secularists ka kalyaan ho ||

Marx suta Jyoti Basu ki jai !
Bolo Romila Thapar ki Jai!
Jai Jai Shabana Samarth