Rattled by Prime Minister Modi’s US visit, western media pulls out its template of lies

Abhijit Majumder June 19, 2023

The timing of the latest wave of attacks on India and its twice democratically

elected leader Narendra Modi coincides with his State visit.

When reporting about India and Narendra Modi, the entire western legacy media uses just one, knackered boilerplate.

“India is important but…”

“Modi is autocratic…”

“India’s democracy is on the slide…”

“Muslims and Christians are facing persecution…”

The entire coverage revolves around these key phrases. No proof or data on any of this is submitted and no investigation done to find if these are true. So-called guardians of journalism like The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Economist or the Time magazine have even done away with the journalistic tokenism of taking, however perfunctorily, the other side of the story.

Opinion is the new investigation. Any view that contradicts or challenges that of Left-leaning western establishments, deep states and globalist networks is untouchable.

The timing of the latest wave of attacks on India and its twice democratically elected leader Narendra Modi coincides with his State visit — the highest ranking among a head of the state’s trips — to the US.

The visit seems to have split America’s Democratic Party ecosystem into two. One part, to which president Joe Biden belongs and which sent out the invitation to Prime Minister Modi, is pulling no stops to welcome him and court India. From US secretary of state Anthony Blinken to White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, a string of important officials and senators have stressed on the strategic importance of economic, security and cultural ties between the world’s two most important democracies.

The other part, the far-Left strain among Democrats which wields considerable influence in media, academia, social sector and the deep state, is nervous about India’s rise and the enthralling welcome to PM Modi which the US government and the powerful Indian diaspora has planned.

This network of global Left and anti-nationalists carved out of radical Dems and UK’s Labour and funded by chaos entrepreneurs like George Soros have long been in bed with Islamists. It has relentlessly peddled the narrative that Narendra Modi has stoked anti-Muslim sentiments and violence. It silences every voice that points to an ongoing, centuries-old jihad against India by calling it ‘Islamophobia’.

And this ecosystem has weaponised western media against India.

‘A Shrinking Space For Dissent’, ran The New York Times front-page headline earlier this month with a photo of the wrestlers’ protest. Another matter that the protests were allowed to go on for days till the protesters tried to physically disrupt the opening of India’s new Parliament. India’s powerful home minister Amit Shah personally met with them to assure them justice.

The Economist, in its editorial ‘America’s New Best Friend’, goes to the boilerplate right from the first paragraph.

No country except China has propped up Russia war economy as much as oil-thirsty India. And few big democracies have slid further in the rankings of democratic freedom. But you will not guess it from the rapturous welcome that Narendra Modi will receive in Washington next week.

Those three sentences contain at least two lies and a half-truth. Yes, India buys oil from Russia. But if that makes it prop up the war economy, the West is way more guilty of it. America kept importing pillows to clothing to shoes from Russia even six months into the war.

Germany was the biggest importer of Russian oil two months into the conflict, according to Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

As Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said, “I suspect looking at the figures, probably our total purchases for the month would be less than what Europe does in an afternoon.”

About the oft-repeated, templatised accusation of sliding democratic freedom, The Economist does not mention that the recent Press Freedom rankings laughably put India behind Pakistan and Afghanistan without any data to back it up. Also, the western media has never investigated western agencies which do these rankings, their composition and funding, or their strong biases and agenda. Perhaps because the puppet masters of western media and such agencies and NGOs are the same?

But the piece most illustrative of this boilerplate journalism which captures every trope manufactured about India under Narendra Modi is one titled, ‘What Modi’s Visit to Washington Tells Us About Indian American Voters’, in the Time magazine.

It is written by Yasmeen Serhan and Astha Rajvanshi. Yasmeen, who considers herself a Palestinian-Muslim-American Democrat, is often unleashed by western media to ‘objectively’ write about Islamophobia and the plight of Muslims. She is to Time, the Atlantic and other publications what Rana Ayyub — who has been called out for her Hinduphobic agenda and articles which have been discredited in the court of law — is to The Washington Post. Atlantic, for instance, published her rant, ‘The Hinduization Of India Is Nearly Complete’, which was taken apart on the Indian social media for its lack of honesty and research.

After the usual outbreaks of anti-Semitism during Israel-Palestine clashes, she is one of the footsoldiers of the faith in the media who whitewashes it by articles like, ‘Anti-Semitism Has No Place In Palestine Advocacy’, in which she argues that hurling anti-semitic abuses and molotov cocktails “did not mirror the actions of pro-Palestinian activists elsewhere”.

So, Serhan and Rajvanshi (whose articles defend Delhi riot-accused Safoora Zargar and the likes), set out to write this ‘objective’ piece for Time. They come straight to the boilerplate, first paragraph.

In 2005, the then-chief minister of the Indian state of Gujarat was denied a diplomatic visa amid accusations he tacitly supported Hindu mobs during communal violence three years earlier that left more than a thousand people, most of them Muslim, dead.

After dragging in every single court of law for a dozen years during Congress-led UPA rule, not a single charge against Narendra Modi has been proven. Yet, this innuendo never dies.

As a candidate, the US President made defending human rights and democracy a cornerstone of his foreign policy agenda. Critics argue that his embrace of Modi, who over his two terms as Prime Minister has overseen significant democratic backsliding in India, is doing just the opposite.

What evidence do the two writers provide of “democratic backsliding” in India?

None.

If they are talking about the World Press Freedom Index (WPFI), numerous nations have raised concerns about the criteria, methodology and also its creator agency RSF’s perceived biases and opaqueness of the survey.

“Question-wise or category-wise scores used in computing scores for the six parameters are not made public, nor is the list of respondents provided. Similarly, clearly defined, credible sources are not available for quantitative data on abuse and violence against journalists, nor is any attempt made to clarify such data with government or country-wise sources in any of the countries being ranked,” says a Niti Aayog piece by Saumya Chakraborty. “When a limited sample of approximately 150 respondents and 18 NGOs are asked to analyse and respond to 83 questions for each country, the chances of biases and disconnect with the realities are high. On an average, 1 respondent is asked to provide parameter-wise assessments for 1 country; the implausibility of one respondent being able to accurately assess press freedom in a country renders the WPFI rankings highly subjective at best. Indeed, this might be one of the reasons behind RSF’s reluctance in sharing parameter scores or even anonymised country-wise responses.”

Former Singapore prime minister Goh Chok Tong had dismissed the WPFI as “a subjective measure computed through the prism of western liberals”.

The controversial Indian leader—who is poised to win his third term next year—has been accused of aggressively championing a Hindu-nationalist agenda that critics say reinvents the very idea of India as a pluralist, secular democracy to a religious, nationalist autocracy. Under Modi’s leadership, India has passed discriminatory laws that have alienated nearly 200 million Muslims; squashed dissent by jailing journalists, activists, and civil society organizations; and exercised judicial influence against his political opponents (notably, Rahul Gandhi, the de facto leader and scion of the Gandhi-Nehru family at the helm of the opposition Congress Party).

Amusingly, that champion of “Hindu nationalist agenda” has overseen the rollout of the most extensive welfare schemes from homes for the poor to cooking gas, from toilets to tap water, and from electricity in the last home to building roads where there were none. And Muslims have been one of the biggest beneficiaries of these schemes.

The foremost of the “discriminatory laws” which have allegedly alienated 200 million Indian Muslims is the Citizenship Amendment Act, a narrow-window legislation which hastens the process of citizenship for the persecuted minorities from India’s three Islamic neighbours: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The agenda paddlers won’t tell you about the historic backdrop of the Nehru-Liaquat Pact that this move is tied to, or that Muslims from these countries can still apply for Indian citizenship under the normal Citizenship Act of 1955.

Nor do the writers of the article substantiate on how the Narendra Modi government exercised influence on the judiciary to get Rahul Gandhi disqualified from Parliament. Just as they do not elaborate on the grave charges against the jailed ‘activists’ and how many were killed or maimed in Bhima-Koregaon or Delhi riots as a consequence of their ‘activism’.

The State Department’s annual Religious Freedom Report, a survey of religious freedoms around the world, has expressed a number of concerns over India in recent years.

The report by USCIRF is the State Department’s annual farce. It has been criticised for its biases against non-Christians and called a front for American missionaries. It has been silent on forceful or dubious missionary conversions and jihad against India, trying to pressure India into accommodating such groups. Its current head Tony Perkins has been widely criticised for his views against non-Christians and LGBTQ+ individuals.

So biased is its stance that in 2020, three members dissented against its recommendation of sanctions against India.

But according to Audrey Truschke, an associate professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University and a vocal critic of Modi’s Hindu nationalist base, the decision to host Modi shows that the “Biden administration does not care about human rights in India.

Audrey Truschke is an apologist for one of the worst perpetrators of genocide against Hindus, the Mughal ruler Aurangzeb. She has not just tried to distort history to whitewash the emperor’s well-recorded mass murders, rapes, conversions and plunder of Indian cities and temples, she has been repeatedly reported for spreading Hinduphobia on western campuses. To quote her on human rights is akin to allowing Pakistan to lecture on counterterrorism.

In an open letter drafted by Hindus for Human Rights, a Washington DC-based advocacy group, several Indian Americans, human rights advocates, and concerned allies have also urged Biden to “push back” against the Indian government’s “escalating attacks on human rights and democracy.”

Hindus for Human Rights is a front created to do exactly the opposite. It is headed by Sunita Viswanath who is backed by George Soros’s Open Society. It is closely linked to Marxist and Islamist outfits and it tirelessly engages in attacking Narendra Modi, India and Hindus.

These are the shadowy outfits and causes whose shoulders the western media uses to fire at India. In turn, deep states and elitist networks which do not want a strong Indian government buoyed by rising nationalism fire from the legacy media’s shoulder for credibility.

It is to be seen which Democratic Party wins when Biden hosts Modi and what happens thereafter. The odds are the strategic relationship will win. There is too much for both democracies to lose — especially to adversaries like China — if the narrow self-interest of clandestine Marxist-jihadist-globalist groups trump much larger, pragmatic national interest.

Source: https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/rattled-by-prime-minister-modis-us-visit-western-media-pulls-out-its-template-of-lies-12755712.html?fbclid=IwAR2cw6iUkyahAPxv0sFWiU3AbPwXhSztG9vWxJj-lrfuU1Ash0OX1mO26tI

** Islamists use Secularism

How Islamists Use Secularism against Democracy

Ishaan Mohan Bagga

IndianExponent

Criticizing Islam is not politically correct – The term is ‘Islamophobia’. You better keep your doubts about Islam to yourself else you’ll be quickly tagged as one with an anti-Islamic agenda. A Hindu right winger. An RSS agent. A Kafir. A Non-Believer.

Freedom of religion is one of the basic principle of democracy. It tells you to not discriminate on the basis of religious beliefs. This is the basic premise of religious liberalism – and believe it or not – it’s a noble sentiment. This sentiment of religious equality has brought much needed peace to our world. It just not smart to bleed each other dry over religious differences – our forefathers have done enough of it.

Islam’s Natural Immunity To Change

Religion, by nature, is flawed – the new western educated breed gets that. Now it’s considered alright not to take religion too seriously. As the idea of ‘optional religion’ grows in society, the stronghold of organised religion is gradually becoming weak. Most religions of the world are ok with it. The idea of letting individuals control the involvement of religion in their lives is acceptable now. Those times are gone when millions were collected by governments to wage war in the name of God. This is the natural evolution of religion.

Though, Islam has managed to stay completely immune to these changes. The rules of Islam make it impervious to any modern ideas. As a result, the present version of Islam has lasted way past it’s expiration date. While more tame versions like Sufism and Ahmadism have largely been discarded as pseudo-Islam.

This is the result of the extreme emphasis in Koran to preserve Islam in it’s original form. The original form of Islam – is a dogma with a single goal of world domination. If it’s goal was limited to spread the message of Allah then it would have been similar to the other organised religions of the world. Other religions don’t hard-sell their God, not at least at the gun-point like Islamic fundamentalists. At worst they lure you with freebies – but Islamic fundamentalism fully sponsors the killing of non-believers. This is similar to ‘the lord’ of the Old Testament of Bible, except that ancient barbarism is thriving under Islam today, in 21st century. The Kingdom of Allah, in a fundamentalist view, is a barbaric place and it hates change, progression or evolution – of any kind.

Based on your religious affiliation you must have already formed an opinion about my religious agenda in writing this. You could be a Muslim who has already formed a wall of denial – I understand, nobody likes to hear negative things about ideas which you’ve been taught to pay utmost respect, right from your childhood. I have no wish to corner one religion when the corruption in religion is a universal phenomena. But Islam is different – and not always in a good way – which I’m just going to explain how. Before that …

Full Disclosure: I’m not an atheist. But I do have my doubts about the existence of God. Am I a spiritualist? Sure, may be. My father is a Hindu. I don’t care about religion that much. I bow my head when I pass a temple, mosque or a church because my father taught me to, when I was a child. I have watched my share of mythological TV shows – because everybody watched them in the family. They were comically entertaining. I have had close friends from all religions – thanks to India’s diversity.

Though, I rarely visit places of worship – I find them boring. I find Hindu temples unnecessary wet (just my opinion)! I have visited Gurudwaras and  I find the musical prayers very comfortable and soothing. Haridwar’s evening prayers and the sound of morning-namaz are my second favorite on this list, peacefulness-wise. I find Zen-Buddhism‘s teaching most close to taking you anywhere near a spiritual-awakening. I also find the principles of Jainism’s universal ahimsa highly commendable, if not follow-able.

I’m your everyday liberal and I do not have extreme thoughts (good or bad) about any religion, including the one I was born into. Religion doesn’t figure into my list of everyday priorities at all. If you’re nodding your head by now, I’m You.

It is common practice to use religion to manipulate it’s followers for personal gain by it’s controllers. It is happening everywhere to varying degrees. More simple-minded people fall for this farce, while people who’re more spiritual, scientific or wise can see through it. Despite this rampant degeneration of holy-men today, followers take comfort in the fact that at least their prophets (Jesus, Buddha, Mahavir, Nanak etc) were pure souls – their teachings guide them in dealing with the world and after. Good thing is that none of these prophets personally created any of their respective religions. It’s after their demise, their followers compiled their teachings and communions formed, which later took the shape of larger organised religions.

Prophet Mohammad – A Marketing Genius?

Mohammad (may peace be upon him) died at the age of 61, after conquering the whole of Arabia and uniting it under the code of Islam. This ‘conquering’ wasn’t spiritual or peaceful; it was a bloody and barbaric affair – like the imperialist royalty of the medieval world.

Jesus was crucified, Buddha took samadhi, Mahavira took the oath of complete non-violence, but Mohammad lived by the sword. Is it a surprise that he taught his followers that it’s ok to slain the non-believers? Islam starts brain-washing a child from his formative years that how kafir is the enemy. Is this the message of Allah? Jihad involves the spread of Islam through violence – and it is one of the key duties of every Muslim. Most people in our world are born into a religion. Choosing your own religion is still a very radical idea in most parts of the world. According to Islam, every non-Muslim is born into sin. You don’t get a choice – either convert, or die. This is not a religion, this is a battle-plan. 

Imagine if the notoriously sham holy-man of India – Nirmal Baba – with a huge following becomes a religion in 200 years and has millions of followers. Does that mean his message is genuine? Telling people what they want to hear – serves as a good strategy for him to make simpletons believe into his ‘divinity’. This is 21st century. There’re many scam artists like him across the world. If in today’s age of science – such con-men can accumulate large crowds – imagine what a cake-walk it would be for the tricksters of 570 AD.

Mohammad was a very intelligent man. He didn’t control people by acquiring power through political means – he became their warrior prophet instead. He knew religion will create a much bigger army for him. He told his followers what they wanted to hear. He recognized Moses / Jesus and added his name to the list of prophets. He told them that Allah speaks through him. He was charismatic – people believed him. His audience were barbaric tribal men – so he gave them rules which appealed to them. And what do men want? More wives, more sex, easy divorce. He gave them that. He told them it’s ok to hit your wives to discipline them. He also told them that temporary marriage is ok because Allah allows it. Women were never his audience, which kind of explains the condition of women in Islamic countries.

One man could take as many wives – so powerful rich men acquired as many ladies as they could. They were thankful to Mohammad for providing them with large army of followers, more women than ever, easy pro-men laws, treating women like property, legalizing perversions like incest, pedophilia etc. Now, there were many poor men left who couldn’t get any ladies – so Mohammad very cunningly used this artificially created deficiency of women and gave these sexually-frustrated men the dream of 72 beautiful virgins in heaven. That was the gift of Allah to his soldiers. This marketing strategy is still working for Islam.

Mohammad gave the message of Muslim brotherhood, not human brotherhood. He told them that wherever they’re it is their foremost duty to spread Islam. He told them that their allegiance to other Muslims is far superior to their countrymen. He told them all non-believers are Kafirs – who should be converted or killed.

He created Islam like a franchise – wherever it goes – it remains loyal to the ‘message of Allah’ over Everything Else. Now if this message of Allah was that of harmony, then Islam would have actually been a religion of peace, like it claims. Instead their very teachings are the biggest endorser of violence. You could go in denial about this – but text from Holy Koran is being used every day in Islamic countries to suppress freedom, exploit women and against modernization.  You should notice that wherever Islam is in minority, it is the most ardent supporter of secularism – but the moment it becomes a majority – all principles of secularism and religious freedom are lost. An Islamic state has no place for non-believers – and it’s only goal is the spread of Islam. This is real sneaky stuff. That is why there’s nothing like ‘liberal Islam’ or ‘secular Islam’.

Islamic fundamentalism has no place for logical reasoning or questions. You’re not allowed to question Allah. What do you think – modern Muslims don’t see the very glaring flaws in their beliefs? Off course they do – but there’s no forgiveness in Islam for blasphemy or apostasy. Islam likes to preserve it’s beliefs, no matter how archaic, inside an un-penetrable fort. It resists western modernization to stop new ideas – this is the main bone of contention of Islamic world with the west. Liberal democratic ideas have the potential of creating worst kafirs in Islam.

Like other religions, Islam too could have evolved overtime, if Mohammed hadn’t closed that door forever. He declared himself as the last prophet – and his words were final.He created a religion which is still frozen in time. Islam does everything to resist change. As a matter of fact, it takes pride in being the purest religion in the world. What Muslim world doesn’t realize is that – what doesn’t change, rots. Overtime Islam is proving to be it’s followers’ worst enemy.

Good Muslims / Bad Muslims

I know what you’re thinking – all Muslims are not bad people – or terrorists. I’m happy that this fact occurred to you and I respect you for that. I’m not writing for the people with Hindu or Christian agenda – my goal is to open a discussion which has dead-locked reason below several layers of propriety and political-correctness. The good Muslim people you know – who respect their women and their freedom, who respect other religions, who believe in the ideas of democracy – these people are not ideal Muslims per the standards of fundamental Islam. These are the people who’ve subconsciously realized that goodness lies outside dogma – and their religion shouldn’t be the center of their lives.

Hence, do not judge the Muslims that you know by Islam and do not judge Islam by the Muslims that you know. Muslims and Islam are two completely different entities. Your average Muslim is being played at the hands of fundamentalists for centuries now.

No Muslim should ever be harassed because of his/her religion. Like you and me, they’re too born in their religion – and unlike others it is not easy to leave Islam. Fundamentalists don’t let you go without a fight – and most often you die in that fight. Many free thinkers have lost their lives in that process.

Islam Management

Islamic fundamentalism is a lot like Communism. Communism has it’s appeal in idealism enforced through control. The idea of communism appeared great on paper – but in practice it became an untamable monster – and made a few people extremely powerful. Islam has the same appeal. Those who convert to Islam – are tired of extreme consumerism of west and Islam seems like a completely opposite option, almost ascetic in it’s teachings. But that is just a cover for recruiting you into Allah’s army, with one and only one goal of spreading Islam, far and wide.

Your average pseudo-intellectual liberals see the world in black and white. The cunning nature of Islamic fundamentalism is beyond their grasp. Islam (mostly the large presence and control of fundamentalism) is a bigger problem today than ever. With the advancement of technology in weapons, who knows how long could we can control the nuclear technology or chemical weapons from falling into one of the Islamic terror organisations. And this danger is not from across the borders anymore – it is home grown. It is from the spreading fundamentalism on our own soil. If you go by the principles of Muslim brotherhood Islam is already bigger than any country in the world. According to statistical predictions by 2030, 26% population of the world will be following Islam. Mohammad has won – but Muslims have lost.

The solution is smarter Islam management. This is the only peacefully enforceable solution to keep this monster of a religion from further engulfing the world. Japan is already pioneering this. We need to start seeing how Islam has been playing secularism against democracy. Democratic countries need to put constraints on the further spread of Islam:

1. Democratic countries need to communicate to the Islamic nations that they should expect secular treatment for Islam when they open their own countries to secularism.
2. Muslim law (Sharia) bodies shouldn’t be allowed to run parallel constitution for Muslims.
3. Women in Islam need immediate emancipation – they’ve suffered long enough – more opportunities need to be created for them.
4. Madrassas which have been the source of drilling flawed ideas need to be closely watched for their content – no need to stop their traditional education – but Muslim youth needs to be brought under the purview of mainstream open education.
5. Laws related to monogamy and the number of children need to strongly enforced – this is high priority for local Muslim economy. 
6. Civil Liberties of followers shall not be allowed to be suppressed in the name of religion. When constitution of a country ensure certain freedoms – no muslim law board should have a right to veto them in the name of sharia.

Conclusively, it needs to be communicated to Islamic fundamentalists in our respective countries that it’s followers can enjoy the fruits of democracy – but on only condition – that any anti-democratic, anti-freedom, anti-equality dogma will not be tolerated in the name of Islam.

Islam is a sensitive subject – and needs to be managed carefully. It is important to make secularism more competent in dealing with rogue religions than leaving the job to other religion’s fundamentalists – who’ve their own respective anti-muslim agenda.

I’d like to emphasize again that I have no intention to hurt anybody’s religious sentiments. Neither do I speak from an arrogant place of an atheist who take pride in putting down people’s faith. There’s no way to have a solution-oriented discussion  about Islamic terrorism – without bringing Islamic fundamentalism in the picture. I believe the onus falls on the new generation Muslims to take over the charge of their respective communities and protect them from getting hijacked by fundamentalists.

But every religion is flawed?

True, some more, some less – not equally. You can’t make a fair judgment by saying that every religion is EQUALLY flawed. In present era, the reality that needs to be acknowledged is that something has gone really wrong with Islam, without falling into the traps of political correctness. One needs to frankly introspect that why Islam is more prone to misuse, so much that it’s own identity is in danger. The meaning of Islam has changed, that is the sign of danger.  Good Muslims need to work towards breaking this self-hypnosis that Islam has fallen into. An open attitude towards self-inquiry and introspection is the only way. Men and women have suffered through a most horrendous history to achieve democracy as a politically stable system. Everybody owes it to our ancestors to not go back into the medieval age – besides blood, there’s nothing there for anybody. Courtesy of (IndianExponent)

Jews of Two Worlds @ http://www.khabar.com/magazine/cover-story/jews_of_two_worlds_indians_in_israel

** Verdict 2014

Verdict 2014: Sonia-Manmohan punished for  decade-long contempt for Hindu majority

by A. Surya Prakash

Although three weeks have gone by since the Congress Party suffered Its biggest drubbing in parliamentary elections, not a single Congress leader is willing to come face to face with the reasons that made the electorate across the country to vote out the party with such decisiveness. The voters’ anger against India’s oldest party in best gauged by the following facts: The Party did not win a single seat in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Delhi, Seemandhra, Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Goa and its vote share in percentage terms crashed to abysmally low levels in states like Uttar Pradesh (7.5), Andhra Pradesh (11.5), West Bengal (9.6), Bihar (8.4), Jharkhand (13.3) and Tamil Nadu (4.3).

Going by the extent of damage inflicted by voters, it can be said that the electorate wanted to severely punish this party for a variety of reasons. But, among all those reasons, this column will focus on the Congress Party’s insolent behavior towards the Hindu majority which, this writer believes, did maximum damage to its prospects in this election.

Mr.Manmohan Singh, a Sikh and the country’s first non-Hindu Prime Minister headed the Union Government from 2004-2014. The remote control however lay with the de facto prime minister – Ms.Sonia Gandhi, of Italian Roman Catholic origin. Many key positions in this government and in the Congress Party were held by persons belonging to religious minorities. With the passage of time, the party began to believe that it can run the country with just the support of the religious minorities. Therefore, one of the first acts of the Sonia-Manmohan Combine was to distort the facts vis-à-vis the Godhra incident that led to the communal conflagration in Gujarat in 2002. The reports that came in on the day of the incident was that a Muslim mob surrounded a train at that station and set fire to a coach which was full of Hindu karsevaks returning from Ayodhya and 59 of these karsevaks were burnt alive. This led to large scale communal violence across Gujarat in which many Muslims and Hindus died. Egged on by pseudo-secularists, the Sonia-Manmohan combine instituted a probe that produced a spurious report saying that the karsevaks had themselves set fire to the train compartment. This piece of fiction was in line with the falsification of history resorted to by leftist and pseudo-secular historians owing allegiance to the Nehru-Gandhis. Another piece of fiction purveyed by the Congress Party and the government was that the post-Godhra riots were not a communal conflagration but a pogrom against Muslims. That is why spokespersons of the Congress Party never acknowledge that hundreds of Hindus died in these riots. This is another, more recent example of the anti-Hindu bias in history writing which has been consistently encouraged by the Nehru-Gandhis in the belief that these distortions will please the Muslims and ensure their perpetual support for the Congress Party.

The Congress Party overplayed this card for 12 years, demonized Narendra Modi and called him a ‘Maut ka Saudaghar” (Merchant of Death). It never had a harsh word for the mob that burnt alive the Hindus in Godhra. This was just one of many initiatives taken by the UPA government to mock at the Hindu majority or to appease the Muslims. It set up the Sachar Committee that went so far as to demand a communal census of the armed forces. This was a shameful attempt to communalise the country’s secular army but many members of the Congress Party, who claimed to be votaries of secularism, argued that there was nothing wrong with the committee’s proposal! Then came the Ranganatha Misra Commission. Thereafter, the party and the government took minority appeasement to crass levels and sympathized with terrorists who happened to be Muslims and raised questions about police impartiality. The UPA’s Home Minister, Mr.Sushil Kumar Shinde declared that police must be careful while arresting members of the minority community for criminal offences. But the clincher was the statement of Mr.Manmohan Singh that Muslims had “the first right” to national resources.

As the UPA government entered the final year, the Sonia-Manmohan combine made their most ambitious bid to stifle the Hindus. They introduced the communal violence bill in parliament which said that in all cases of communal conflict, the police must treat members of the Hindu community as the accused and the religious minorities as the victims. This was really the tipping point. It appeared as if the Sonia-Mnamohan combine were running a government of the minorities and for the minorities. The 800 million Hindus did not figure in their scheme of things anywhere. Both Ms.Gandhi and the prime minister persisted with this foolhardy approach throughout the ten-years they ran the union government. Neither of them had a good word for the Hindu civilization and way of life which had ensured a secular and democratic polity in India after independence. They had just one mantra – minority, minority, minority. This mantra echoed throughout the recent election campaign as well. Sonia, Manmohan and even Rahul Gandhi just took the name of minorities all the time. Ms.Gandhi went so far as to meet the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid, Delhi and appeal to him that “the secular vote” was not divided, thereby indicating that religious minorities are “secular” and the Hindus are not.

The result of this arrogant and contemptuous behavior of the Sonia-Manmohan combine towards the Hindu majority is now evident in the final outcome of the Lok Sabha election. Although the number of electors rose by over 100 million from 710 million to 814 million between 2009 and 2014, the Congress Party polled 12 million votes less this time. On the other hand the BJP more than doubled its vote share, which jumped from 80 million in 2009 to over 170 million in this election and emerged as a truly national party.

But, is India’s oldest political party in a mood to learn any lessons? There are no signs of it, because not one leader of the party has until now acknowledge the persistent manner in which the Party hurt the Hindu sentiment during its ten-year rule. It is an age-old truth that no political party in any democracy can ever hope to win an election without the support of the majority. But, India’s oldest party appears to be in no mood to acknowledge this fundamental truth. The conduct of its leaders, post-May 16 only indicates that the party still believes that it can mock at the majority and chase the chimera called the Muslim Vote!

1) Nehru Dynasty

2) DEMOCRACY vs. DYNASTY

** Why West opposes Modi?

Why the West finds Modi’s rise inconvenient

By Sankrant Sanu, NitiCentral

April 14, 2014

Newspapers across the Western world are falling over each other with articles condemning Narendra Modi’s likely rise as India’s Prime Minister.  From The Economistto the Guardian, from Germany’s Nürnberger Nachrichten (calling Modi ‘racist’) to theNew York Times, commentators are wringing their hands over the loss of the ‘soul of India’.  The ostensible reason give is the 2002 post-Godhra riots in which approximately a thousand people were killed — both Muslims and  Hindus, which is routinely referred to as a ‘pogrom’ or even as a ‘genocide’.

The West is of course intimately familiar with genocides and pogroms. Western civilisation has wiped out diverse peoples and cultures including an estimated 100 million Native Americans in the American Holocaust and about 6 millions Jews in the European Holocaust. The witch hunts by the Christian Church in Europe’s Middle Ages killed thousands of medicine women and the two European-initiated World Wars of the 20th century killed another hundred million people between them. Communist ideology imported from Europe into Russia resulted in the deaths of several million more under the hands of Joseph Stalin.

Western concern for India’s Muslims is cited as the main reason for opposition to Modi. It is worth remembering that, more recently than the Gujarat riots, the America-led invasion of Iraq resulted in an estimated hundred thousand to nearly half a millionMuslims being killed. This Bush-Blair war had bipartisan support in US Congress, including 58 per cent of Senate Democrats who supported the Iraq Resolution. The Western Left and Right collaborated in this project. The liberal New York Times helpedmanufacture consent for the Iraq war. These hundreds of thousands of deaths, are not labeled as “the Iraq genocide”, but are merely “collateral damage” from the war. Despite the false pretext for this war, neither Bush nor Blair were tried in their countries for war crimes, unlike Modi who went through multiple rounds of judicial scrutiny in India.

Given this history, the West’s apparent concern for Muslims is too facile a reason for the trenchant opposition to Modi. Riots have happened in independent India under many different governments. The British policy of divide and rule had instigated the division of India on religious lines, leading to large-scale displacement and killing.  After independence, simmering conflict fanned by politicians broke into riots, most often during the rule of the Congress. In Gujarat in 1969, nearly 5000 Muslims were killed under Congress rule, yet the Chief Minister was not ruled satanic. Unlike in Gujarat 2002, where scores of Hindu rioters were killed in police firing to stop rioters, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots under Rajiv Gandhi hardly saw any such preventative action. However, Rajiv Gandhi was never demonised in Western academia and media. What is special about Modi?

In his book ‘Clash of Civilizations’, Harvard professor Samuel P Huntington laid out his thesis that basic differences in civilisations will result in a clash. In his book he identified ‘Western’ and ‘Hindu’ civilisations among the major distinct civilisations of the world. While Huntington’s thesis has been criticised, we must accept Huntington’s view as an important way the West looks at the world. Huntington was deeply embedded in the institutions of American power. He was the White House Coordinator of Security Planning under President Jimmy Carter, a consultant to the US Department of State, founder and editor of Foreign Policy magazine and a professor at Columbia and Harvard.

The rise of Modi bothers the West because the BJP and Modi, unlike the Congress, appear to stand for the Hindu civilisation. This view may not be far off. Unlike the other parties, the BJP’s manifesto, explicitly invokes continuity with Hindu kingdoms of the past. It sees modern India, as not just born today, but as a continuity of an ancient civilisation. This threatens both the Christian Right and the Secular Left of the West, the two prongs of Western civilisational imperialism. The Christian Right sees the rise of a Hindu civilisation as threatening its conversion agenda, the Left sees it as a “religious” threat to the expansion of Western secular universalism.

Fed on Doniger-esque caricatures of Hinduism and partisan account of the Gujarat riots, they are inclined to view the rise of a Hindu party as an extremely distasteful and incomprehensible existential threat. Just as the a handful of British people ruled India with the help of a large number of Indian sepoys, the intellectual Indian sepoy army that has internalised the Western worldview, view this rise with the same distaste and actively write against it in India and abroad.

The Hindu civilisation doesn’t have the proclivity towards genocide that shows up in the history of the West. Nor does it fit into the categories of “Religious Right” and “Secular Left.” Monotheism has an issue with diversity and a record of persecuting religious minorities since it is based on exclusive theologies that view the other as Satanic. The Hindu civilisation naturally respects different traditions and has a record of diversity and pluralism, including providing refuge to small minorities such as the Parsis and the Jews without any persecution. It aims to raise human consciousness through harnessing the tendencies of the mind. It has had no concept of the “heathen” or the “kaffir.” Neither does it subscribe to the clash of civilisation but to “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” or ‘one world one family’.

An India based on Hindu civilisational values is not a threat to its diverse religious groups nor to the West. Indeed it may help civilise, or rather Sankritise it, to make it more refined. This has already been discovered by millions of Westerners practicing mindfulness meditation, Yoga, Vipassana, Sanskrit chanting and other Indian spiritual practices as a way to refine the mind and senses. We can only hope that the mainstream of Western Civilisation will also move away from its tendency towards genocide and towards becoming more Sanskrit. India under Modi is less likely to experience religious violence than it has in the years under Congress regimes since independence because of the humanising effect of Hindu culture. India is finding its soul, not losing it.

1)  In God They Trust

2) Wikileaks on Sonia  

3) Children Jihadis

** Western Interventions

Western Interventions in Dravidian & Dalit Faultlines

http://www.breakingindia.com/six-provocations/

Rajiv Malhotra & Aravindan Neelakandan

1. DRAVIDIAN IDENTITY CONSTRUCTED, EXPLOITED & POLITICIZED:

The fabrication of South Indian history is being carried out on an immense scale with the explicit goal of constructing a Dravidian identity that is distinct from that of the rest of India. From the 1830s onwards, this endeavor’s key milestones have claimed that south India: is linguistically separate from the rest of India; has an un-Indian culture, aesthetics and literature; has a history disconnected from India’s; is racially distinct; is religiously distinct; and, consequently, is a separate nation. Tamil classical literature that predates the 19th century reveals no such identity conflicts especially with “alien” peoples of the north, nor does it reveal any sense of victimhood or any view of Westerners or Christians as “liberators.” This identity engineering was begun by British colonial and missionary scholars, picked up by politically ambitious south Indians with British backing, and subsequently assumed a life of its own. Even then it was largely a secular movement for political power (albeit with a substratum of racist rhetoric). In recent decades, however, a vast network of groups based in the West has co-opted this movement and is attempting to transform Tamil identity into the Dravidian Christianity movement premised on a fabricated racial-religious history. This rewriting of history has necessitated a range of archeological falsities and even epigraphic hoaxes, blatantly contradicting scientific evidence. Similar interventions by some of the same global forces have resulted in genocides and civil wars in Sri Lanka, Rwanda and other places. If unchallenged these movements could produce horrific outcomes in South India.

2. LINKING OF DRAVIDIAN & DALIT IDENTITIES:

India has its own share of social injustices that need to be continually addressed and resolved. Caste identities have been used to discriminate against others, but these identities were not always crystallized and ossified as they are today, nor were they against a specific religion per se. Caste identity faultlines became invigorated and politicized through the British Censuses of India, and later intensified in independent India by vote bank politics. A dangerous anti-national grand narrative emerged based on claims of a racial Dalit identity and victimhood. But Dalit communities are not monolithic and have diverse local histories and social dynamics. There are several inconsistencies and errors in these caste classifications: not all Dalit communities are equivalent socially and economically, nor are they static or always subordinate to others. While Dravidian and Dalit identities were constructed separately, there is a strategy at work to link them in order to denigrate and demonize Indian classical traditions (including spiritual texts and the identities based on these) as a common enemy. This in turn, has been mapped on to an Afro-Dalit narrative which claims that Dalits are racially related to Africans and all other Indians are “whites.” Thus, Indian civilization itself is demonized as anti-humanistic and oppressive. This has become the playground of major foreign players, both from the evangelical right and from the academic left. It has opened huge career opportunities for an assortment of middlemen including NGOs, intellectuals and “champions of the oppressed.” While the need for relief and structural change is immense, the shortsighted selfish politics is often empowering the movements’ leaders more than the people in whose name the power is being accumulated. The “solutions” could exacerbate the problems.

3. FOREIGN NEXUS EXPLOITS INDIA’S FAULTLINES:

An entity remains intact as long as the centripetal forces (those bringing its parts together) are stronger than its centrifugal forces (those pulling it apart). This study of a variety of organizations in USA and Europe demonstrates certain dangerous initiatives that could contribute to the breaking up of Indian civilization’s cohesiveness and unity using various pretexts and programs. The institutions involved include certain Western government agencies, churches, think tanks, academics, and private foundations across the political spectrum. Even the fierce fight between Christians and Leftists within the West, and the clash between Islam and Christianity in various places, have been set aside in order to attack India’s unity. Numerous intellectual paradigms, such as postmodernist critiques of “nation,” originating from the West’s own cultural and historical experiences are universalized, imported and superimposed onto India. These ill-fitting paradigms take center stage in Indian intellectual circles and many guilt-ridden Indian elites have joined this enterprise, seeing it as “progressive” and a respectable path for career opportunities. The book does not predict the outcomes but simply shows that such trends are accelerating and do take considerable national resources to counteract. If ignored, these identity divisions can evolve into violent secessionism.

4. RELIGION’s ROLE IN THE COMPETITION FOR SOFT POWER:

Global competition among collective identities is intensifying, even as the “flat world” of meritocracy seems to enhance individual mobility based on personal competence. But the opportunities and clout of individuals in a global world relies enormously on the cultural capital and standing of the groups from which they emerge and are anchored to. As goes India and Indian culture (of which Hinduism is a major component), so will go the fate of Indians everywhere. Hence, the role of soft power becomes even more important than ever before. Religions and cultures are a key component of such soft power. Christian and Islamic civilizations are investing heavily in boosting their respective soft power, for both internal cohesiveness and external influence. Moreover, undermining the soft power of rivals is clearly seen as a strategic weapon in the modern kurukshetra.

5. INTERROGATING THE TERM “MINORITY”:

The book raises the question: Who is a “minority” in the present global context? A community may be numerically small relative to the local population, but globally it may in fact be part of the majority that is powerful, assertive and well-funded. Given that India is experiencing a growing influx of global funding, political lobbying, legal action and flow of ideologies, what criteria should we use to classify a group as a “minority”? Should certain groups, now counted as minorities, be reclassified given their enormous worldwide clout, power and resources? If the “minority” concerned has actually merged into an extra-territorial power through ideology (like Maoists) or theology (like many churches and madrassas), through infrastructure investment (like buying large amounts of land, buildings, setting up training centers, etc.), through digital integration and internal governance, then do they not become a powerful tool of intervention representing a larger global force rather than being simply a “minority” in India. Certainly, one would not consider a local franchise of McDonalds in India to be a minor enterprise just because it may employ only a handful of employees with modest revenues locally. It is its global size, presence and clout that are counted and that determine the rules, restrictions and disclosure requirements to which it must adhere. Similarly, nation-states’ presence in the form of consulates is also regulated. But why are foreign religious MNCs exempted from similar requirements of transparency and supervision? (For example: Bishops are appointed by the Vatican, funded by it, and given management doctrine to implement by the Vatican, and yet are not regulated on par with diplomats in consulates representing foreign sovereign states.) Indian security agencies do monitor Chinese influences and interventions into Buddhist monasteries in the northern mountain belt, because such interventions can compromise Indian sovereignty and soft power while boosting China’s clout. Should the same supervision also apply to Christian groups operating under the direction and control of their western headquarters and Islamic organizations funded and/or ideologically influenced by their respective foreign headquarters? Ultimately, the book raises the most pertinent challenge: What should India do to improve and deliver social justice in order to secure its minorities and wean them away from global nexuses that are often anti-Indian?

6. CONTROLLING THE DISCOURSE ON INDIA:

The book shows how the discourse on India at various levels is being increasingly controlled by the institutions in the West which in turn serve its geo-political ambitions. So, why has India failed to create its own institutions that are the equivalent of the Ford Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, etc.? Why are there no Indian university based International Relations programs with deep-rooted links to the External Affairs Ministry, RAW, and various cultural, historical and ideological think tanks? Why are the most prestigious journals, university degrees and conferences on India Studies, in sharp contrast to the way China Studies worldwide is under the control of Chinese dominated discourse, based in the West and mostly under the control of western institutions?

Related Articles:

Recent Situation

Pakistan wants US Intervention

India Rebuffs US Intervention

** Equality vs. Appeasement

Secularism degrades from equal treatment to appeasement

S. Gurumurthy – Organiser

WHILE people whose religions differed from that of the mainstream society were mostly eliminated in other civilisations, the record of ancient and medieval Hindu India was the other way round. It welcomed and protected the racially different Jews, Parsis and early Muslims, who came here as refugees fleeing from violent faiths [1].

Take the case of Jews who were butchered all over Christendom [2] and in Islamic nations [3]. In a book titled Indian Jews in Israel brought out by the Consulate of Israel in India in late 1960s, the Editor of the book says that on the formation of Israel, “while most of the others came to Israel driven by persecution, discrimination, murder and other attempts at total genocide, the Jews of India came because of their desire to participate in the building of the Third Jewish Commonwealth…….. Throughout their long sojourn in India, nowhere at no time were they subjected to intolerance, discrimination or persecution”.[4] This could happen in Hindu India only because, in the Hindu world view, all religions enjoyed nearly absolute freedom so considerable as to find no parallels in the West before recent times, according to Western scholars themselves. [5]

The change for the worse – exclusive Muslim politics and nationalists’ failure. But, in the early part of the 20th century, the situation in India changed dramatically. It ceased to be an issue of Hindu philosophical or social treatment of the ‘minority’ Muslim community. There was no change in the Hindu world view about Muslims or Islam. But with the rise in Islamic population and the Partition of Bengal, the Muslim psyche changed and the community turned combative and challenged the Hindus. This aggressive psyche transformed into Muslim political action unmatched by political response from Hindus as Hindus. This mismatch not only led to the Partition of India, but divided the Partitioned India also on communal lines. Here is that instructive story.

The Muslim League led by MA Jinnah was clear that it was a Muslim outfit and had no pretensions about what it wanted. It wanted a Muslim nation-state despite the fact that after Partition Jinnah spoke of secular Pakistan. The League’s campaign was for a theocratic Pakistan which it eventually became. All talk that Jinnah wanted a secular Pakistan is founded on Jinnah’s post-Partition bogus drama. “Had Jinnah campaigned for a liberal, secular Pakistan – and that too in competition with the secular Indian National Congress under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru – he would have certainly lost the leadership of the Pakistan Movement.” [6] This truthful testimony is from Muslim side. While the goal of the Muslim political action was clear and self-evident, the political response of the Congress failed to emphasise the common cultural ancestry that included Muslims. Instead it emphasised the need for Hindu-Muslim unity without countering the League’s ideology that Hindus and Muslims belonged to different cultures. While the League owned the exclusive invaders’ culture and rejected the inclusive and common ancestral culture, the Congress too owned the invaders in a bid to appease the Muslims. In the bargain Congress lost the nationalist ideology and yet could not get Muslims following. The ill-advised strategy of the Khilafat movement against the British by the Congress enabled the League to emphasise on the invaders’ identity as Muslim identity and destroy the sense of common culural ancestry.

Muslim [minority] appeasement – continuation of the pre-Partition psyche
The messy Hindu-Muslim unity discourse as a substitute for the ancestral cultural commonalty put the Congress, repeatedly accused by the League as a Hindu Party, continually on the defensive. It got obsessed with only how to undermine its Hindu character to demonstrate its trans-Hindu character. In the competition with the League to wean away and win the Muslim mind, the Congress ideology implicitly became the mirror reflection of the League’s itself, namely that the Hindus and Muslims were two distinct peoples and cultures, with its only addition of Hindu-Muslim unity. The Congress thus sacrificed the ideology inclusive nationalism and implicitly accepted the League exclusivism. So, repeatedly giving in to the political demands of the Muslim leadership became its only way of convincing the Muslims that the Congress was more interested in Muslims than the Muslim League itself. So it began, and once it began, it had to keep on, appeasing the Muslims ideologically just to demonstrate it was not Hindu in character. The idea was to secure their support to prevent the Partition of India, which, of course, it was destined to fail to and did. Had the Congress not sacrificed the nationalist plank to co-opt the Muslims in pre-Partition time, in the post Partition India at least, it would have instituted nationalist politics. But, the single point agenda of the Congress before freedom being to prove to the Muslims that it stood for Muslims, habit of conceding to the demands of Muslims show that the Congress stand for Muslim interest became integral part of the secular political culture and discourse of all parties even after the Partition. In the process, the historic fact that the Muslims and Hindus belong to common ancestry and culture was lost in the national discourse and even after Partition, the pre-Partition psyche began dominating national politics as secularism.

Pre-Partition psyche constitutionalised as post Partition minority rights
The continuation of pre-Partition mindset eventually got constitutionalised in shaping the exclusive minority rights as integral to secularism and became institutionalised as secular politics in free India. The Supreme Court of India itself admitted this fact in its famous judgement on minority rights in St Xavier’s case. The Supreme Court [ through Justice H.R. Khanna] traced the conceptual origin of the minority rights under Article 30 in the Constitution thus:
“75. Before we deal with the contentions advanced before us and the scope and ambit of Article 30 of the Constitution, it may be pertinent to refer to the historical background. ……… The closing years of British rule were marked by communal riots and dissensions. There was also a feeling of distrust and the demand was made by a section of the Muslims for separate homeland. This ultimately resulted in the Partition of the country. Those who led the fight for Independence of India always laid great stress on communal amity and accord. They wanted the establishment of a secular State wherein people belonging to different religions should have a feeling of equality and non-discrimination. Demand had also been made by a section of people belonging to various minority groups for reservation of seats and separate electorates. In order to bring about integration and fusion among different sections of population, the framers of the Constitution did away with separate electorates and introduced the system of joint electorates, so that every candidate in an election should have to look for the support of all sections of the citizens. Special safeguards were guaranteed for minorities and were made part of the Fundamental Rights with a view to instil a sense of confidence and security in the minorities. Those provisions were a kind of a Charter of rights for the minorities so that none might have the feeling that any section of the population consisted of first class citizens and others of second class citizens. The result was that the minorities gave up their claims for reservation of seats. Sardar Patel, who was the Chairman of the Advisory Committee dealing with the question of minorities, said in the course of his speech delivered on February 27, 1947:
“This Committee forms one of the most vital parts of the Constituent Assembly and one of the most difficult tasks that has to be done by it is the work of this Committee. Often you must have heard in various debates in British Parliament that have been held on this question recently and before when it has been claimed on behalf of the British Government that they have a special responsibility – a special obligation – for protection of the minorities. They claim to have more special interest than we have. It is for us to prove that it is a bogus claim, and that nobody can be more interested than us in India in the protection of our minorities. Our mission is to satisfy every interest and safeguard the interests of all minorities to their satisfaction” (The Framing of the India’s Constitution, B. Shiva Rao, Select Documents, Vol II p.66). It is in this context of that background that we should view the provisions of the Constitution contained in Articles 25 to 30. The object of Articles 25 to 30 was to preserve the rights or religious and linguistic minorities, to place them on a secure pedestal, and withdraw from the vicissitudes of political controversy. ……” [7]

The Supreme Court exposition has made it explicit that the Indian Constitution-making process was under the continued impact of pre-Partition psyche to provide special dispensation for minorities. Sardar Patel’s admission of psychological pressure for grant of special rights in the Constitution is a clear pointer. Result, the Constitution of India itself divided the people of India as majority – read Hindus with ordinary rights, and minorities – read Muslims with special rights which expanded to granting financial largesse also later. This distorted the meaning of secularism from equal and fair treatment to special treatment and appeasement of minorities – read Muslims. This was what Guruji had warned and fought against as we will see in the next part.

References:
[1] Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs: http://www.jcpa.org/cjc/cjc-katz-f05.htm and The Parsis of India: Preservation of identity in Bombay city by Jesse S. Palsetia; Publisher: BRILL [2001]. ISBN:9004121145, 9789004121140 [pages 1-34 introduction]
[2] A calander of Jewish Persecution http://www.hearnow.org/caljp.html
[3] http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Jews_in_Arab_lands_%28gen%29.html
[4] Indian Jews in Israel, edited and published by Reuven Dafai, Consul, on behalf of the Consulate of Israel, 50 Pedder Road, Cumballa Hill, Bombay.
[5] Article by Mehdi Hasan in New Statesman. http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2010/07/india-secularism-state, quoting Max Weber
[6] Jinnah and Secular Pakistan: Setting the Records Straight. By Perves Hoodbhoy. Economic and Political Weekly 11 Aug 2007 p3301 http://www.scribd.com/Jinnah-and-Pakistan-as-an-Islamic-State-by-Pervez-Hoodbhoy/d/7065207
[7] AIR 1974 SC 1389 at 1413
[8] Religious Demography Centre for Policy Studies. Summary available athttp://www.esamskriti.com/essay-chapters/Religious-Demography-of-India-2.aspx

** Is Hinduism Casteist?

http://www.ariseindiaforum.org/varnashram.php?type=36

Is Hinduism Casteist?

Sw. AbhayaNanda

The Vedic society is often criticized by the modern intelligentsia for its apparently discriminating stand against a certain section of the society. The detractors claim that the Vedas directly support racist and feudal dominance by brandishing a certain group of people as ‘shudras’, or low born. India has witnessed social upheavals on this issue, and today caste system has become a sensitive subject with serious ramifications on the national political scene.

However the Vedas present a view contrary to the modern zealots’ interpretation, and is actually egalitarian in outlook, a point totally ignored by the critics.

Birth v/s qualification

Lord Krishna states in the Bhagavad Gita, the most authorized book for the Hindus, that a person’s position in the society is based on his qualifications and work, and not on birth (BG 4.13). Thus a person, although born in an apparently higher caste, has to qualify himself.

Similarly if a person born into a ‘lower’ caste displays qualities of a person of the ‘higher’ order, he shouldn’t be discouraged. We cannot assume that a child of doctor parents automatically qualifies himself/herself to be a doctor on the basis of birth in one such family. Similarly no one can claim to be a brahmana without qualifying himself by the necessary training.

The Chandogya Upanishad illustrates this point with the story of Satyakama, a young boy who approached a spiritual master for enlightenment. The guru enquired about his father and the boy said he was unaware of his father’s identity. He was then told to go and ask his mother. He soon returned and candidly confessed that his mother had known many men, and is herself unsure about his father’s identity. The spiritual master, being pleased with this honesty, declared to the boy, “You are a real brahmana“.

Need for social divisions

However a question arises on the need to have such a system in the first place, because this categorization threatens to alienate certain groups from the mainstream. Moreover a classless society assures freedom from these artificial barriers, and promises equal opportunity to all.

The Vedas declare that this kind of division exists in the society naturally. A balanced and healthy body has the brain, arms, belly and legs working in good condition. Similarly the symptom of a healthy social body is the peaceful coexistence of teachers and intelligentsia, the administrators, the business class and the laborers. The brahmanas in Vedic society refers to the ‘brain’ of society, i.e. they provide the intellectual capital and spiritual and moral direction. The Kshatriyas, or the administrators are compared to the arms and they have a crucial role to protect the citizens. The Vaishyas, or business class are compared to the belly, and the worker class or shudras are the legs which support the other three orders.

This division is natural in any society as different people adopt different occupations based on interest and inclinations.

To say the arms are needed but the legs are unimportant for the body is foolish. Likewise to condemn a certain occupational class within the same society is disastrous. Needless to say all the orders have to work with dignity of labor, mutual respect and in harmony with each other.

Cause of modern problems

The problems in the Vedic society arose primarily due to getting these basics wrong and rampant exploitation taking place on the basis of one’s birth in a particular caste.

In a human body, although all parts are important, the brain is undoubtedly most vital. Without the brain’s working, a physically perfect body is considered unproductive. Similarly for the society to run smoothly, the brahmana class has to be of impeccable character and integrity. With the corruption of this class, influenced by false pride and arrogance, the social order became chaotic.

Sadly today in India there are many smarta- brahmanas, or caste-conscious brahmanas who insist that one cannot be elevated to brahminical status unless he is born in a brahmana family. This brahmana by-birth conception is non-Vedic, and has justifiably agitated the other sections. Little surprise then, that the politicization of this issue and the resultant violence is eroding the social fabric.

The solution- Rising ‘above’ the caste system

Lord Krishna reveals in the Bhagavad Gita, the identity of each person as distinctly different from the body (BG 2.13). Presently the ‘soul’ or the real ‘I’ is covered by this body and identifying with this perishable body, we claim to belong to a particular caste, nationality, race etc.

Although this occupational division helps one to progress gradually by encouraging us to dovetail our propensities, Krishna extols the intelligent to transcend these temporary designations. He declares the highest religion is to render loving devotional service to God, and when we engage in our activities with a desire to serve and please Him, we immediately go beyond these petty classifications. When the society is trained to be God conscious, each member then performs his/her duty in a purified consciousness and considers himself as a servant of all others in the society.

Thus the Srimad Bhagavatam declares:

“O best among the twice-born, it is therefore concluded that the highest perfection one can achieve by discharging the duties prescribed for one’s own occupation according to caste divisions and orders of life is to please the Personality of Godhead.” (SB -1.2.13)

The Vedas thus declare that the perfection of this institutional framework is to cooperate jointly for the satisfaction of the Supreme Lord. Srila Prabhupada, the founder of ISKCON writes, “This system exists not for artificial domination of one division over another. When the aim of life, i.e., realization of the Absolute Truth, is missed by too much attachment for sense gratification, this institution is utilized by selfish men to pose an artificial predominance over the weaker section. In the Kali-yuga, or the age of quarrel, this artificial predominance is already current, but the saner section of the people knows it well that the divisions of castes and orders of life are meant for smooth social intercourse and high-thinking self-realization and not for any other purpose.”

A Global revolution since mid 15th century

Five hundred years ago Lord Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who appeared in Navadwip, West Bengal (1486-1534), preached the dharma of Kali-yuga, namely chanting of the holy names of God. Widely distributing this message, he induced all to take shelter of God, irrespective of caste and religious barriers. Some of his closest associates were not even Hindus, yet by their unflinching faith in chanting the Holy Names of God, they proved to be more glorious than the ritualistic priests and brahmanas.

One of Lord Chaitanya’s closest associate was Haridas Thakur who had taken birth in a Muslim family and was a reject according to the conventional Hindu caste system. However Lord Chaitanya recognized him as the greatest devotee of Lord Krishna of that time (16th century).

Following this tradition, Srila Prabhupada also preached this message of Krishna consciousness in the Western countries. Starting from New York in 1966, he created a revolution by initiating Americans, Europeans and Africans as Vaishnava brahmanas and sannyasis. For all the criticism by the orthodox Hindus, it is these apparently ‘low born’ who have contributed to spreading the Vedic culture all over the world. Ironically the narrow minded champions of Hindu dharma on the other hand have done little to glorify the supreme Lord and His Holy Names.

Of course Srila Prabhupada clarified that this awarding of brahmana and sannyasa to individuals should not be done indiscriminately but rather by careful examination and training in highest standards of purity and God centered principles. Today many other ‘Hindu’ societies like Art of Living, Chinmaya mission, besides many others are demonstrating this principle through their world wide preaching of the real Vedic/Indian spirituality.

Also Read : INVADING  THE  SACRED

http://worldmonitor.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/invading-the-sacred/

** To forget is to forgive

To forget would be to forgive

Kanchan Gupta

Pioneer

Twenty years ago this past week, Hindus were forced to flee Kashmir Valley, their ancestral land, by Islamic fanatics baying for their blood. Not a finger was raised by the state in admonition nor did ‘civil society’ feel outraged. In these 20 years, India has forgotten that outrage, a grotesque assault on our idea of nationhood. So much so, nobody even talks of the Kashmiri Pandits, driven out of their home and hearth, virtually stripped of their identity and reduced to living as refugees in their own country, any more.

Our ‘secular’ media, obsessed as it is with pandering to the baser instincts of Muslim separatists, waxing eloquent about the many sorrows of India’s least of all minorities, arguing the case for rabid mullahs and demanding ‘greater autonomy’ for Jammu & Kashmir so that the Tricolour doesn’t fly there any more, has not thought it fit to take note of the 20th anniversary of the new age Exodus. Our politicians, who salivate for Muslim votes and are willing to go to any extent to appease ‘minority sentiments’ — including approving the automatic though absurd inclusion of Muslims in the list of BPL beneficiaries of the Indian state’s munificence in keeping with the Prime Minister’s ‘Muslims first’ policy — would rather pretend this particular event never happened.

Our judiciary, which endlessly agonises over terrorists and their molls being killed in Gujarat, has not thought it fit to set up a Special Investigation Team to identify the guilty men of 1990 and bring them to justice. It would seem Hindu pride, Hindu dignity and Hindu lives are irrelevant in this wondrous land of ours.

Tragically, Hindus have no sense of history: Those who have come of age in these 20 years, we can be sure, are ignorant of how the Kashmir Valley was cleansed of its Hindu population through a modern day genocide.

To forget, it is often said, is to forgive. But should we forgive those who committed this monstrous act of criminal misdeed? Should we forget that the Government of India has disowned the Hindus of Kashmir Valley? Should we rationalise the remorseless attitude of the Government of Jammu & Kashmir towards the plight of Kashmiri Pandits?

***

Srinagar, January 4, 1990. Aftab, a local Urdu newspaper, publishes a Press release issued by Hizb-ul Mujahideen, set up by the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1989 to wage jihad for Jammu & Kashmir’s secession from India and accession to Pakistan, asking all Hindus to pack up and leave. Another local paper, Al Safa, repeats this expulsion order.

In the following days, there is near chaos in the Kashmir Valley with Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and his National Conference Government abdicating all responsibilities. Masked men run amok, waving Kalashnikovs, shooting to kill and shouting anti-India slogans.

Reports of killing of Kashmiri Pandits begin to trickle in; there are explosions; inflammatory speeches are made from the pulpits of mosques, using public address systems meant for calling the faithful to prayers. A terrifying fear psychosis begins to take grip of Kashmiri Pandits.

Walls are plastered with posters and handbills, summarily ordering all Kashmiris to strictly follow the Islamic dress code, prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks and imposing a ban on video parlours and cinemas. The masked men with Kalashnikovs force people to re-set their watches and clocks to Pakistan Standard Time.

Shops, business establishments and homes of Kashmiri Pandits, the original inhabitants of the Kashmir Valley with a recorded cultural and civilisational history dating back 5,000 years, are marked out. Notices are pasted on doors of Pandit houses, peremptorily asking the occupants to leave Kashmir within 24 hours or face death and worse. Some are more lucid: “Be one with us, run, or die!”

* * *

Srinagar, January 19, 1990. Mr Jagmohan arrives to take charge as Governor. Mr Farooq Abdullah, whose Government has all but ceased to exist, resigns and goes into a sulk. Curfew is imposed as a first measure to restore some semblance of law and order. But it fails to have a deterrent effect.

Throughout the day, Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front and Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists use public address systems at mosques to exhort people to defy curfew and take to the streets. Masked men, firing from their Kalashnikovs, march up and down, terrorising cowering Pandits who, by then, have locked themselves in their homes.

As evening falls, the exhortations become louder and shriller. Three taped slogans are repeatedly played the whole night from mosques: ‘Kashmir mei agar rehna hai, Allah-o-Akbar kehna hai’ (If you want to stay in Kashmir, you have to say Allah-o-Akbar); ‘Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa’ (What do we want here? Rule of Sharia’h); ‘Asi gachchi Pakistan, Batao roas te Batanev san’ (We want Pakistan along with Hindu women but without their men).

The Pandits have reason to be fearful. In the preceding months, 300 Hindu men and women, nearly all of them Kashmiri Pandits, had been slaughtered ever since the brutal murder of noted lawyer Pandit Tika Lal Taploo by the JKLF in Srinagar on September 14, 1989.

Soon after that, Justice NK Ganju of the Srinagar High Court was shot dead. Pandit Sarwanand Premi, 80-year-old poet, and his son were kidnapped, tortured, their eyes gouged out, and hanged to death. A Kashmiri Pandit nurse working at the Soura Medical College Hospital in Srinagar was gang-raped and then beaten to death. Another woman was abducted, raped and sliced into pieces at a saw mill.

In villages and towns across the valley, terrorist hit lists have been floating about. All the names are of Pandits. With no Government worth its name, the administration having collapsed, the police nowhere to be seen, despondency sets in. As the night of January 19, 1990, wears itself out, despondency gives way to desperation.

And tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits across the valley take a painful decision: To flee their homeland to save their lives. Thus takes place a 20th century Exodus.

* * *

After the Holocaust, Jews reflected on their persecution and resolved, ‘Never again.’ Yad Vashem is not only a moving memorial to the atrocities committed against Jews, it is also an archive that documents specific details, including names, addresses and photographs, so that future generations neither forget nor forgive their tormentors.

Twenty years after the persecution of Hindus began in Kashmir Valley, we don’t even know how many men, women and children were stripped of their rights; how many were raped, slaughtered and maimed; their names; and, what happened to those who survived. Barring those living in refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi, in the hope that some day they will be able to return to Kashmir Valley with their dignity and safety assured. Deep within they know, and the rest of us know, that is never going to happen.

And thereby hangs a tragic tale of callous Hindu indifference.

Related stories Below:

1) Stakeholders of Kashmir @ http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=1036

2) Francois Gautier on  History @ http://indiaview. wordpress.com/2008/01/25/ forgive-but-never-forget-–- history

** Shameless Games

http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=778

Christian Sadhus and Sastris: shameless conversion games

28 August 2009

B R Haran

Conversion as Motive

It is an open secret that the foremost aim of the Church is to spread Christianity throughout the world and establish its rule. Yet an Indian government led by a ‘Hindu’ party welcomed Pope John Paul II as a State Guest and allowed him to give a clarion call for evangelization of India on this sacred Hindu Bhumi.

With the advent of Republican Party rule, the US government under George Bush allotted millions of dollars for this purpose through the Joshua Projects.

Simultaneously, with the advent of the Congress-led UPA government with Sonia Gandhi as Chairperson, conversions have become rampant, as evidenced by an alarming increase in the planting of churches across the country totally disproportionate to the population of Christians, and the brazen implementation of ‘inculturation’ techniques.

Conversion activities have increased manifold in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, the former ruled by the Congress and led by a Christian Chief Minister, and the later ruled by an atheist (read anti-Hindu) Dravidian-racist party.

The deficient growth of Hindu organizations and lack of public awareness of the danger of conversions has helped the growth of churches in these states.

 Christian missionaries, who were concentrating on the poor and downtrodden sections, have now started focusing on the upper echelons of society. The employees in media houses, workers in cinema and small-screen industries, and Hindus working in Christian institutions have become vulnerable to conversion attempts. Of late, special attention is being shown to the Brahmin community.

Planting a Church near an ancient Temple and focus on Brahmins

Thiruvanmiyur is a beautiful place in Chennai, on the East Coast Road leading up to the southern tip of Tamil Nadu. Thiruvanmiyur is historically significant as the place where  Vanmiki Maharishi (the Valmiki of Ramayana fame) did penance and worshipped Bhagwan Shiva; hence the name Thiruvanmikiyur (Thiru-Sri; Vanmiki, Oor-place), which later became Thiruvanmiyur. Shiva, worshipped by Valmiki, blesses the people from his magnificent and ancient Sri Marundeeswarar Temple. There is also a small temple for Maharishi Vanmiki opposite (slightly diagonal) to the Shiva Temple; both stand as testimonies to the ancient history of this sacred place.

Now, within hundred yards of the Shiva Temple, stands a huge ‘Advent Church’ which was started as a small prayer house just three years ago. On 5 August 2009, two digital banners, placed just above the compound wall of the Church, attracted the attention of passers by. They read, “Christian Brahmin Seva Samiti – First Year Anniversary” and announced, “Kathaakaalakshebam (Religious discourse) by Pujya Sri Bhagavathar Vedanayaga Saastrigal on Saturday 8 August evening by 5 pm – Entry free.”    

Though churches claim they don’t practice casteism, the reality is exactly the opposite, as evidenced by conflicts between various castes within Christianity in various places.

In fact, when evangelists convert gullible Hindus, especially Scheduled Castes, they always deceive them saying, “All are equal in the eyes of Jesus.” But once the conversion is over, the evangelists close their eyes and the converted group finds no change except in the god and the pattern of worship. Still, the “Christian-Brahmin” Samiti was a real shocker as Brahmins converting is a rare phenomenon.

Brahmins were, are and will always be a “Prize Catch” for Christian evangelists. For them, converting even a single Brahmin is a great achievement.

A converted Brahmin becomes a great asset, for with one Brahmin convert they would be able to easily convert a hundred non-Brahmins.

Of late, Christian missionaries have started targeting the Brahmin community, and in the last four or five years, they have been able to achieve some gains. 

Although the ‘Christian Brahmin Seva Samiti’ seems to be new, the man behind this dubious organization, ‘Sadhu Chellappaa’ is a notorious figure, whose modus operandi is distortion of Hindu scriptures to advance Christianity. Before going into the happenings in Thiruvanmiyur, it would be better to have a complete picture about this imposter who masquerades as a sadhu, wearing saffron robes.

Saffron-attired evangelist masquerading as Sadhu    

Born in a Hindu family and raised in and around a temple, Chellappaa claims to have complete knowledge of the Vedas, Upanishads, Ithihasas and Puranas. As the temple priests and other scholars could not clarify his doubts on some questions, one day (15 May 1967) he decided to commit suicide by jumping from a running train. As he was about to do so, he claims to have heard holy verses of the Bible; he got down at the next station and went straight to the Church, where he claims to have seen Jesus and received answers for all his doubts through divine blessing.

As per orders of Jesus, he became a Christian and travelled throughout the state converting thousands of Hindus to Christianity. He became a full time evangelist in 1974 and founded the Agni Ministries. Since 1982, he has been running a Tamil monthly magazine, “Agni,” for Tamil people worldwide. As per orders of Jesus, he has been planting new churches since 1995, and has so far planted 27 churches and appointed 27 pastors for effective harvests.  He has appointed four full-time evangelists and established a full fledged office with four faculty and other staff.

Sadhu Chellappaa has written over 28 books in Tamil and two in English. He claims his book “IS CHRISTIANITY A NECESSITY?” is always in demand and is likely to go into reprint for the fifth time. Another book, BIBLE AND BAGAVAT GITA, VARANASHRA DHARMA sells like hot cakes! He has travelled widely abroad, meeting evangelists and church leaders in pursuit of name and fame.

Chellappaa is believed to have met Dr. Billy Graham at the itinerant Evangelists Conference at Amsterdam in 1983; his life story appeared in “Challenge” magazine published by Campus Crusade, USA. But his ‘Sri Lankan connection’ is telling! A regular speaker at the Impetus Conference in Colombo for Third World Pastors and Evangelists, Sadhu is a close friend of Dr. Colton Wickramaratne, Senior Pastor of People’s Church, Colombo and his ministry has ‘saved’ numerous Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka.

Most Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus who are scattered as refugees through out the world have been converted to Christianity through his ministries. Rev. Colin Dye, Senior Pastor of Kensington Temple, London, the largest church in England, interviewed Chellappaa and his story appeared in “The Edge,” a leading British Christian magazine, in its May 1996 issue.

(http://www.agniministries.org/ and http://www.agniministries.org/Testimony.aspx).

Sadhu Chellappa’s ‘Agni Ministries’ (AM) are governed by “Evangelical Action Team of India” (EATI), founded by him in 1980 in Coimbatore, with 20 persons in the Board of Directors; he is the ‘Managing Director’. EATI concentrates on conversion activities in the guise of services in Education and Health.

The main objective of EATI and AM is to Plant Churches and Harvest Souls, for which purpose they recruit Pastors and Evangelists and conduct training courses for them.

They teach distorted versions of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh scriptures and other books relevant to those Indigenous religions and train recruits how to use those scriptures (by comparing with Christian concepts and Bible stories) for converting the gullible sections from those faiths.

They send trained recruits to set up ‘Prayer Cells’ to facilitate planting of new Churches in predominantly Hindu areas. The recruits also teach at Bible schools and colleges. EATI and AM have tie-ups with international missionaries, mainly for fund raising, which makes harvesting easier.

(http://www.agniministries.org/AboutUs.aspx  and

http://www.agniministries.org/EATI.aspx)

Sadhu Chellappaa audaciously claims, “Diwali, the festival of lights, is a Christian Festival; Animal Sacrifice is a Christian culture adopted by Hindus and Gayatri Mantra actually glorifies Jesus.

The Vedas, the ancient Indian sacred writings had anticipated the coming of Christ to take away the sins of man. They call Him Purusha Prajapati the creator God who would come as a man to offer himself as a sacrifice. Jesus Christ came to fulfill the Vedic quest of the Indian people, because the Vedhas are incomplete without Him, just as the Old Testament was fulfilled at the coming of the Messiah”. He waxes eloquent on ‘You Tube’ on “Hinduism came from Bible” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syBSPQvIqYs)

Thiruvanmiyur episode

 It is said Sadhu Chellappaa has a few Brahmin families in his kitty since the launching of this Christian Brahmin Seva Samiti. He uses the services of another convert Vedanayagam, who brazenly calls himself ‘Bhagavathar’ and ‘Sastrigal’ with a title of ‘Pujya Sri’. Both of them organize evangelical sessions in the guise of “Kathaakaalakshebam” and hoodwink gullible Hindus.

They focus on poor and lower middle class Brahmins, who are ignorant and have poor knowledge of their religious scriptures. Most have personal and financial problems, which make them vulnerable to the Chellappaas and Vedanayagams.

As the two were making preparations for a huge show on 8 August, the news spread and some concerned citizens called up senior police officials to ban the proposed event; there was absolutely no response. Details about the proposed event were sent to the only Brahmin MLA of the Dravidian Assembly, who took up the issue with higher authorities, but didn’t get the desired results, possibly because he neither belonged to the ruling coalition nor to the opposition ranks, having been recently dismissed by AIADMK. Other leaders of Hindu organizations were busy with bi-elections and Ganesh Chaturthi arrangements. The so-called Brahmin Association (TAMBRAS) was nowhere to be seen! 

It was left to a few individuals (some cadres of Hindu organizations and freelance writers, editors and journalists numbering around ten) who went to Thiruvanmiyur Police Station on 6 August and complained to the Inspector, who immediately got the banners removed and warned the Church not to host the event. The banners sprang up again on 8 August  morning, without the title ‘Christian Brahmin Seva Samiti’, which portion was covered with a cloth. A ‘panthal’ (shamiana) was set up at the entrance to the Church and two plantain trees and a bunch of fresh tender coconuts tied on both sides of the entrance to give the Church a typical Hindu look! 

Though the title was covered by a cloth, other terms such as ‘Pujya Sri’, ‘Bhagavathar’ and ‘Sastrigal’ were not removed from the banner; despite repeated phone calls and personal calls the local police didn’t take further actions and the “Kathaakaalakshebam” of “Vedanayagam Sastrigal” went as planned, with police protection! If the police thought they acted neutrally they were wrong; what happened in the church was a blatant violation of law. 

The organizers deserve stringent punishment  

How can a Christian evangelical session be named Kathaakaalakshebam (religious discourse)? How can evangelists call themselves Sadhus, Bhagavatars, Sastrigals and keep the title ‘Pujya Sri’? Claiming to be a casteless religion and a society sans caste discrimination, how could they start an organization exclusively for Brahmins? What have Brahmins to do with Christianity? From when is Christianity having a separate Brahmin sect? 

The Vedas, Upanishads, Ithihasas and Puranas are religious treasures of the Hindus. No other religionists have the right to touch them. Distorting and using them to market Jesus and Christianity is shameless and clearly establishes that there is nothing of value in Christianity since its god and bible need Hindu scriptures to succeed.

By thus misusing the Hindu scriptures, the Chellappaas, Vedanayagams and other imposters should be booked under Sections 153A, 295A, 298 and other sections of the IPC and punished. 

In Thiruvanmiyur Church, the so-called Sastrigal marketed the Christian god as “Purusha Prajapati” of the Rig Veda! Evangelists are like sales representatives and they cannot be allowed to use Hindu scriptures to sell their religion and god; one company’s sales rep cannot use other company’s merchandise to sell his product. This can only create conflict in society and law and order problems, with disastrous consequences. 

The subterfuge, also called inculturation, has grown to dangerous proportions. The deep slumber of Hindu organizations (social, cultural, religious, spiritual, et al) is disturbing and it is high time they woke up and put an end to this ugly business by the church and the missionaries.

Related Stories:

1) Inculturation @ http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/inculturation-fooling-hindus/

2) Shalokas on Mount? @ http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/slokas-on-the-mount/

3) What’s in Name @ https://indiasecular.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/what-is-in-name/

** Communal vs. Secular

‘Secular Congress’ or Communal anti-National’ Congress?

Ravi Lochanan Iyengar

Indian Perspective

The Congress Party claims to be a ‘secular’ party. The party president Ms. Sonia Gandhi and PM Dr. Manmohan Singh have repeatedly stated that Congress is a ‘secular’ party to the core.

The dictionary meaning of ‘secular’ is: ‘not pertaining to or connected with religion’. 

Let us look at some of the allies of the ‘secular’ Congress:

1. Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) in Kerala – a Muslim party

2. Kerala Congress (Mani) [KC(M)] in Kerala – a Christian party

3. All India Majlis e-Itaahid al-Muslimin (MIM) in Andhra Pradesh – a Muslim party.

Among these 3 parties, the two Muslim parties are exclusively Islamic in their outlook and membership. How could these parties be called ‘secular’? Can the Congress justify its alliance with these parties?

IUML is the new arm of erstwhile Muslim League which partitioned the nation on the basis of religion. The Muslims of North Kerala were staunch supporters of Muslim League in the pre-independence era and had also showed their beastly nature by killing thousands of Hindus during the Moplah rebellion. Post-independence, the community has been supporting IUML. This shows that the situation has not changed a single bit. These Muslims do not consider themselves a part of the national mainstream and IUML is a party which is representing such internal ‘anti-nationals’.

Still, the Congress party is in alliance with IUML for decades. Can it explain the reason for this? If the Muslims of the region had changed their opinion, why does the Congress still need the IUML which is basically the same party which advocated Islamic extremism and partitioned the nation?

MIM is even more radical. It was a party which opposed the integration of Hyderabad with India. It was the party which organised Razakars who went about killing thousands of Hindus to maintain the ‘Islamic’ State of Hyderabad. The party was initially banned in 1948 and the Razakars’ leader was deported to Pakistan in the late 1950s.

The current party organisation tries to separate itself from the activities during the period of Indian independence. But the party has always maintained its ‘Islamic’ nature and character. Anyone who believes that the party members suddenly became pro-India after Indian independence must be living in a ‘fools’ paradise’.

Thus, we see that Congress is allied not only with three ‘communal’ parties but also, two ‘anti-national’ parties. Still, it dares to call itself has ‘secular’ (or perhaps they mean ‘sickular’). 

Next, look at the policies of the Congress party.

The Constitution of India (Article 44) clearly states that the State shall ‘endeavour to secure for the citizens a Uniform Civil Code throughout the territory of India’.

Does the party believe that the framers of the Indian Constitution were ‘communal’ for having stated such in the Constitution? If not, why is it that the Congress does not support the forming of a ‘Common Civil Code’?

The party claims that the endeavour for adoption of a Common Civil Code must come from within the Muslim community. This is utter nonsense. The Common Civil Code will go a long way in bringing the Muslim community into the national mainstream.

The Indian nation is secular. Being so, why should the government create a separate civil code for each community?

Secular government should be ‘equally sceptical’ to all religious practices. It does not mean ‘enclosing all religious practices’. Will the Congress party accept to any demand for implementation of Shariat for cases of rape, murder etc in which the accused or the victim is a Muslim? If not, why is Shariat followed in the case of civil code?

This practice is an utter nonsense which divides the society on communal lines. Congress wants to maintain this situation in perpetuity. Still, the party calls itself ‘secular’.

PM Manmohan Singh had stated that Muslims shall have the first right on the nations’ resources. May I know what is the difference between our PM and Bengal’s Muslim League government of Mr. Suhrawardy who advocated that preference shall be given to a Muslim candidate with a third-class degree over a Hindu candidate with a first-class degree (as happened in the case of filling a vacancy for lecturer in the Government College near Calcutta)?

What is the difference between Manmohan Singh and Sir Bamfylde Fuller who had stated that in the Eastern Bengal, Muslims would be nurtured and Hindus will be neglected (an advocate of the partition of Bengal which occurred during 1905).

Sir Fuller did that to garner the support of Muslims. Isn’t Manmohan doing the same thing by stating that Muslims will be preferred over others? He appears to be an ‘anti-national’ who wants to implement the policies of the traitorous Muslim League and the colonist British Empire. He does so to get the votes of the Muslim community. On the whole, the party is certainly not secular.

The current Congress leadership does not appear to care about the integrity of the country. This party’s leadership accepted to a partition of India. How can we be sure that they will not do so once again just to remain in power?

After all, the support given by this treacherous party to the various successor parties of the anti-national Islamic parties and the way they encourage illegal infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims into Assam and West Bengal does show the true philosophy of the party leadership which is ‘anything shall be done to remain in power’. It is lead by power-mongers who do not care about the nation a single bit.

May Goddess Bharati save this nation from these modern-day demons who do not worry about destroying the nation for their own selfishness.   

 1) Mr.PM, Who should be Ashamed of Whom? @ http://www.blogs.ivarta.com/Who-should-be-Ashamed-Whom-MrPM/blog-267.htm 

2) Congress trying Caste Formula @ http://specials.rediff.com/election/2009/apr/09slide1-elections-hot-up-in-eastern-uttar-pradesh.htm

Congress Terminology: Communal vs. Secular

1.. Sikhs getting slaughtered in thousands = A MISTAKE.

2. Hindus getting killed in thousands in Kashmir = Political problem.

3. Muslims getting killed by a few hundred = Holocaust.

4. Protestors getting shot in WB under Left Govt = Misunderstanding.

5. Talking about Hindus and Hinduism = Communal.

6. Talking about Muslims and Islam = Secular.

7. Kargil Attack = Government failure.

8. Chinese invasion in 1962 = Unfortunate betrayal.

9. Reservations in every school and college on caste lines = Secular.

10. Reservations in Minority institutions =Communal.

11. Fake encounters in Gujarat [Sohrabuddin] = BJP Communalism.

12. Fake encounters under Cong-NCP in Maharashtra [Khwaja Younus] = Police atrocity.

13. Banning Parzania in Gujarat = Communal.

14. Banning Da Vinci Code and Jo Bole So Nihaal = Secular.

15. BJP freeing 3 terrorists to save 100 Indian hostages = Shameful

16.Congress freeing 4 militants to save just a life of one Daughter of its minister
in Kashmir [Rubina Sayed] Political dilemma = Natural Dilemma

17.Attack on Parliament = BJP ineptitude.

18. Not hanging Afzal Guru the mastermind despite Supreme Court orders = Humanity and Political dilemma.

19. BJP questioning Islamic Terrorist Forces = Communal.

20. Congress questioning Lord Ram existence = Clerical Error. 

http://ravilochanan.blogspot.com/2009/04/secular-congress-or-communal-anti.html