Photos and related links at: https://herald.dawn.com/news/1398869/mu ... in-kashmirswamidada wrote:Herald Magazine
Muslims and pandits work together to restore a temple in Kashmir
Islam and Hinduism's blurred lines
How oppressed are Muslims in India?
Excerpt:
Finally, to return to the fraught question with which I began this essay: just how oppressed are Indian Muslims? Though the formulation of this question is problematic for multiple reasons – not least of which is the assumption of uniformity amongst this group – I will hazard an answer: while Indian Muslims are undoubtedly facing increasing insecurity and marginalisation – particularly as Hindu right-wing forces become more powerful – they are still in a more secure position than religious minorities in Pakistan.
While Hindu nationalist groups are waging a concerted campaign against all religious minorities in their efforts to Hinduise India, Islamist forces are doing the same and even worse to religious minorities on this side of the border. The marginalisation of Muslims in India, therefore, must be viewed within the wider context of growing religious majoritarianism in South Asia as a whole — a process that began picking up steam in both India and Pakistan during the 1980s.
More...
https://herald.dawn.com/news/1153473/ho ... s-in-india
Excerpt:
Finally, to return to the fraught question with which I began this essay: just how oppressed are Indian Muslims? Though the formulation of this question is problematic for multiple reasons – not least of which is the assumption of uniformity amongst this group – I will hazard an answer: while Indian Muslims are undoubtedly facing increasing insecurity and marginalisation – particularly as Hindu right-wing forces become more powerful – they are still in a more secure position than religious minorities in Pakistan.
While Hindu nationalist groups are waging a concerted campaign against all religious minorities in their efforts to Hinduise India, Islamist forces are doing the same and even worse to religious minorities on this side of the border. The marginalisation of Muslims in India, therefore, must be viewed within the wider context of growing religious majoritarianism in South Asia as a whole — a process that began picking up steam in both India and Pakistan during the 1980s.
More...
https://herald.dawn.com/news/1153473/ho ... s-in-india
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swamidada_1
- Posts: 239
- Joined: Sun Nov 18, 2018 9:21 pm
Sunday, May 05, 2019
Dalit youth thrashed for sitting on a chair, eating at wedding, dies
The incident happened on the night of April 26. The next day when the young man fell ill, he was taken for treatment to a Dehradun-based hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries on Sunday afternoon, police said.
INDIA Updated: May 05, 2019 21:09 IST
Hindustan Times, Dehradun
Shrikot,Dalit,Tehri Garhwal
Relatives of Jitendra Das with police officials at Dehradun’s Coronation Hospital where his post-mortem examination was conducted.(HT?PHOTO)
A 21-year-old Dalit man was allegedly beaten to death by upper-caste men for having his dinner while sitting on a chair in front of them at a wedding in Shrikot area of Tehri Garhwal district.
The incident happened on the night of April 26. The next day when the young man fell ill, he was taken for treatment to a Dehradun-based hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries on Sunday afternoon, police said.
According to the police, the deceased was identified as one Jitendra Das, a resident of Baasan village in Tehri Garhwal. A case was already registered on April 29 against seven accused, also residents of the same area, after his sister lodged a complaint against them.
Das used to work as a carpenter and was the sole bread-earner of his family comprising of his mother, elder sister and a younger brother, his relatives who were present in Dehradun on Sunday said.
Narrating the harrowing incident, Das’s uncle, Elam Das, said, “On that night, we had all gone to attend the wedding of one of our distant relatives in Shrikot. Jitendra alone had gone to have his dinner while we were at the other side of the venue.”
“After having our dinner, we all returned to our homes separately. We got to know about the incident next morning, when he was found unconscious by his mother and rushed to a nearby hospital,” he added.
Later, one of Jitendra’s friends, who tried to save him from the accused, told them that he was thrashed at the wedding venue as well as on his way home.
“He told us that on the wedding night, he was having dinner while sitting on a chair before the accused upper-caste men. Seeing him sitting on a chair, they got enraged and kicked his plate before kicking him off the chair using caste-based expletives for daring to sit in front of them,” he said.
“They then assaulted him after which he left the venue for home. However, they didn’t end the matter there and followed him to brutally assault him again,” he added.
Jitendra’s cousin brother, Pritam Das, who was also present at the wedding, too confirmed the incident and said, “He was hit on his head and private body parts.”
“He was so badly beaten that he barely managed to reach his house but couldn’t enter it. He slept on the verandah without telling his family members about the incident.
Next day in the morning, when his mother went to wake him and found him unconscious, they got to know about it,” he added.
Jitendra was rushed to a nearby hospital which referred them to Dehradun.
“He was admitted in a Dehradun hospital a few days back. His sister finally lodged a complaint against seven accused identified as Gajendra, Soban, Kushal, Gabbar, Gambhir, Harbir Singh and Hukam Singh. A case was registered against them in Kempty police station but none of them have been arrested so far,” said Pritam.
He also claimed that the “accused are freely moving about in the village and pressurising them to arrive at a compromise”.
“We want all of them to be nabbed and given the strongest possible punishment,” he added.
Circle officer, Narendra Nagar, Uttam Singh, who is investigating the case said, “The police after registering the case under relevant sections of IPC and SC/ST Atrocities Act, started investigations.”
“During the investigations, we tried to find any eyewitness but none came forward. The sole eye-witness seems to be the deceased himself. After his death on Sunday, the accused would now be also be booked under murder charges,” he said.
“Further action will be taken after his post-mortem examination report is received,” he added.
Director General, Law and Order, Ashok Kumar while calling the incident a serious one, said, “A case has already been registered. No accused would be spared and strict action would be taken against them.”
www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/dalit ... I8UCM.html
Dalit youth thrashed for sitting on a chair, eating at wedding, dies
The incident happened on the night of April 26. The next day when the young man fell ill, he was taken for treatment to a Dehradun-based hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries on Sunday afternoon, police said.
INDIA Updated: May 05, 2019 21:09 IST
Hindustan Times, Dehradun
Shrikot,Dalit,Tehri Garhwal
Relatives of Jitendra Das with police officials at Dehradun’s Coronation Hospital where his post-mortem examination was conducted.(HT?PHOTO)
A 21-year-old Dalit man was allegedly beaten to death by upper-caste men for having his dinner while sitting on a chair in front of them at a wedding in Shrikot area of Tehri Garhwal district.
The incident happened on the night of April 26. The next day when the young man fell ill, he was taken for treatment to a Dehradun-based hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries on Sunday afternoon, police said.
According to the police, the deceased was identified as one Jitendra Das, a resident of Baasan village in Tehri Garhwal. A case was already registered on April 29 against seven accused, also residents of the same area, after his sister lodged a complaint against them.
Das used to work as a carpenter and was the sole bread-earner of his family comprising of his mother, elder sister and a younger brother, his relatives who were present in Dehradun on Sunday said.
Narrating the harrowing incident, Das’s uncle, Elam Das, said, “On that night, we had all gone to attend the wedding of one of our distant relatives in Shrikot. Jitendra alone had gone to have his dinner while we were at the other side of the venue.”
“After having our dinner, we all returned to our homes separately. We got to know about the incident next morning, when he was found unconscious by his mother and rushed to a nearby hospital,” he added.
Later, one of Jitendra’s friends, who tried to save him from the accused, told them that he was thrashed at the wedding venue as well as on his way home.
“He told us that on the wedding night, he was having dinner while sitting on a chair before the accused upper-caste men. Seeing him sitting on a chair, they got enraged and kicked his plate before kicking him off the chair using caste-based expletives for daring to sit in front of them,” he said.
“They then assaulted him after which he left the venue for home. However, they didn’t end the matter there and followed him to brutally assault him again,” he added.
Jitendra’s cousin brother, Pritam Das, who was also present at the wedding, too confirmed the incident and said, “He was hit on his head and private body parts.”
“He was so badly beaten that he barely managed to reach his house but couldn’t enter it. He slept on the verandah without telling his family members about the incident.
Next day in the morning, when his mother went to wake him and found him unconscious, they got to know about it,” he added.
Jitendra was rushed to a nearby hospital which referred them to Dehradun.
“He was admitted in a Dehradun hospital a few days back. His sister finally lodged a complaint against seven accused identified as Gajendra, Soban, Kushal, Gabbar, Gambhir, Harbir Singh and Hukam Singh. A case was registered against them in Kempty police station but none of them have been arrested so far,” said Pritam.
He also claimed that the “accused are freely moving about in the village and pressurising them to arrive at a compromise”.
“We want all of them to be nabbed and given the strongest possible punishment,” he added.
Circle officer, Narendra Nagar, Uttam Singh, who is investigating the case said, “The police after registering the case under relevant sections of IPC and SC/ST Atrocities Act, started investigations.”
“During the investigations, we tried to find any eyewitness but none came forward. The sole eye-witness seems to be the deceased himself. After his death on Sunday, the accused would now be also be booked under murder charges,” he said.
“Further action will be taken after his post-mortem examination report is received,” he added.
Director General, Law and Order, Ashok Kumar while calling the incident a serious one, said, “A case has already been registered. No accused would be spared and strict action would be taken against them.”
www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/dalit ... I8UCM.html
India’s Most Oppressed Get Their Revenge
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s rule came with an attack on Dalits and the minorities. Now Dalit leaders are fighting back to defeat the Hindu nationalists.
Corruption scandals surrounding the Congress Party-led government, promises of inclusive growth and job creation, and calibrated anti-Muslim dog whistles helped Narendra Modi rise to power and become the prime minister of India in 2014.
And there was another factor: The Dalits, India’s most oppressed community, whom the Hindu caste system relegates to the lowest rung, doubled their votes for his Bharatiya Janata Party to 12 percent in 2014 from 6 percent in 2009.
To make up for centuries of violence, discrimination and lack of opportunity, India’s Constitution lays out that political parties can field only Dalit candidates for 84 out of 543 parliamentary seats in general elections. Five years earlier, Mr. Modi’s B.J.P. won 40 of the 84 seats reserved for the Dalits, sending the single largest contingent of Dalit lawmakers to the Parliament.
But neither increased Dalit votes nor the greater number of Dalit lawmakers within the B.J.P.’s ranks helped transform the party’s aggressive, casteist ideology. Mr. Modi’s rule has highlighted the antagonism between his party’s pandering to the dominant upper castes and the radicalism of Dalits fighting for the elimination of caste.
Mr. Modi’s election emboldened upper-caste thugs from Hindu extremist organizations to translate their religiously ordained contempt and hatred for Dalits into systematic violence against the community. Under the guise of protecting cows, upper-caste Hindu vigilantes set upon lynching Muslims and Dalits on suspicions of having consumed beef or transporting cattle for slaughter.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/opin ... y_20190515
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s rule came with an attack on Dalits and the minorities. Now Dalit leaders are fighting back to defeat the Hindu nationalists.
Corruption scandals surrounding the Congress Party-led government, promises of inclusive growth and job creation, and calibrated anti-Muslim dog whistles helped Narendra Modi rise to power and become the prime minister of India in 2014.
And there was another factor: The Dalits, India’s most oppressed community, whom the Hindu caste system relegates to the lowest rung, doubled their votes for his Bharatiya Janata Party to 12 percent in 2014 from 6 percent in 2009.
To make up for centuries of violence, discrimination and lack of opportunity, India’s Constitution lays out that political parties can field only Dalit candidates for 84 out of 543 parliamentary seats in general elections. Five years earlier, Mr. Modi’s B.J.P. won 40 of the 84 seats reserved for the Dalits, sending the single largest contingent of Dalit lawmakers to the Parliament.
But neither increased Dalit votes nor the greater number of Dalit lawmakers within the B.J.P.’s ranks helped transform the party’s aggressive, casteist ideology. Mr. Modi’s rule has highlighted the antagonism between his party’s pandering to the dominant upper castes and the radicalism of Dalits fighting for the elimination of caste.
Mr. Modi’s election emboldened upper-caste thugs from Hindu extremist organizations to translate their religiously ordained contempt and hatred for Dalits into systematic violence against the community. Under the guise of protecting cows, upper-caste Hindu vigilantes set upon lynching Muslims and Dalits on suspicions of having consumed beef or transporting cattle for slaughter.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/opin ... y_20190515
They Peddle Myths and Call It History
India’s governing party rewrites the country’s history to justify its Hindu nationalist ideology.
Excerpt:
The other equally insistent Hindutva argument is that the Hindus were victimized by the Muslims and were slaves for the thousand years of Muslim rule. In demanding a Hindu Rashtra, or Hindu state, they claim to be asserting their historical rights and avenging their victimization. The history of the “Muslim period,” the second millennium A.D., is seen solely from this perspective and remains a mechanism for fueling hatred.
Historians find no evidence for such sweeping generalizations, but their views are dismissed. There certainly were conflicts between Hindus and Muslims, just as there had been conflicts between Hindus and Buddhists in pre-Islamic times. Some powerful Muslims did attack Hindu temples, both to loot their riches and to direct aggression against the religion. But this again was known in pre-Islamic times when some Hindu kings looted and destroyed temples to acquire wealth. There was more than religious prejudice involved in such actions.
The claim to victimization is ironic given that the worst form of victimization — declaring the lower castes to be so polluted as to be untouchable — was practiced by upper-caste Hindus for 2,000 years, including through the period when they were supposedly being victimized.
It is striking that remarkable new ideas surfaced in Hinduism during the period of Muslim rule, such as those developed by its many devotional sects, which enriched the religion and gave it a form that is currently observed by some Hindu devotees. But these are treated as isolated incidents. Nor is there reference to some of the most exquisite religious poems in praise of Hindu gods that were composed by Muslim poets, and that continue to be sung in repertoires of classical music. That the higher administrative offices of this period were manned largely by Hindu upper castes is conveniently ignored.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/opin ... y_20190517
India’s governing party rewrites the country’s history to justify its Hindu nationalist ideology.
Excerpt:
The other equally insistent Hindutva argument is that the Hindus were victimized by the Muslims and were slaves for the thousand years of Muslim rule. In demanding a Hindu Rashtra, or Hindu state, they claim to be asserting their historical rights and avenging their victimization. The history of the “Muslim period,” the second millennium A.D., is seen solely from this perspective and remains a mechanism for fueling hatred.
Historians find no evidence for such sweeping generalizations, but their views are dismissed. There certainly were conflicts between Hindus and Muslims, just as there had been conflicts between Hindus and Buddhists in pre-Islamic times. Some powerful Muslims did attack Hindu temples, both to loot their riches and to direct aggression against the religion. But this again was known in pre-Islamic times when some Hindu kings looted and destroyed temples to acquire wealth. There was more than religious prejudice involved in such actions.
The claim to victimization is ironic given that the worst form of victimization — declaring the lower castes to be so polluted as to be untouchable — was practiced by upper-caste Hindus for 2,000 years, including through the period when they were supposedly being victimized.
It is striking that remarkable new ideas surfaced in Hinduism during the period of Muslim rule, such as those developed by its many devotional sects, which enriched the religion and gave it a form that is currently observed by some Hindu devotees. But these are treated as isolated incidents. Nor is there reference to some of the most exquisite religious poems in praise of Hindu gods that were composed by Muslim poets, and that continue to be sung in repertoires of classical music. That the higher administrative offices of this period were manned largely by Hindu upper castes is conveniently ignored.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/opin ... y_20190517
-
swamidada_1
- Posts: 239
- Joined: Sun Nov 18, 2018 9:21 pm
I've Reported on Modi for Over a Decade. His Hindu Nationalist Ideas Will Be Even More Dangerous Now
BY RANA AYYUB MAY 24, 2019
Ayyub is an Indian journalist and the author of Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up
When the results started trickling in on Thursday showing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist BJP government were set for a landslide victory after a divisive and polarizing campaign, I was not shocked. As a journalist, I have covered Modi’s career since his days as the Chief Minister of Gujarat and know his strategies all too well.
Yet the defining image of the Indian election results was not of Modi’s speech in Delhi; it was of Pragya Singh Thakur, dressed in saffron robes, waving at a large crowd after a massive electoral victory. Thakur, a Hindu priestess from the northern Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, is best known for being charged under a terror law for conspiring and carrying out the 2008 bomb blasts in a Muslim-majority city of Maharashtra that left 10 people dead. She swears allegiance to a radical Hindu outfit called Abhinav Bharat that aims to establish a Hindu rashtra (state) and the supremacy of Hindus not just in India but also extending to the neighboring states of Pakistan and Nepal. A week before her constituency went to vote, Thakur hailed Nathuram Godse — the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi — as a patriot. (In the Hindu right-wing worldview, Gandhi is often seen as a Muslim sympathizer.)
It’s ironic that India will celebrate the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday in the same year the Bharatiya Janata Party and its Hindu nationalist leader will induct Thakur in the Indian parliament, seeing their victory as a mandate for their majoritarian policies.
The narrative is strikingly similar to what I saw nearly a decade ago. In 2010, I went undercover for eight months to investigate the complicity of the state in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots and the extra judicial killings of Muslims who were labeled as terrorists. In a span of eight months, posing as a student from American Film Institute Conservatory, I spoke to almost every bureaucrat and official working under Modi. I learned that Modi wanted to be seen as a Hindu leader under attack from Muslims. His 12-year term in Gujarat was seen as the victory of Gujarati asmita (Gujarati pride), with crowds welcoming him at electoral rallies. The popular slogan was, “Dekho dekho kaun aaya, Gujarat ka sher aaya.” (Look, the lion of Gujarat has arrived.)
That wasn’t the first time I reported on Modi. In 2007 as a reporter covering his provincial election, I sat in the front row of his debut election rally for the assembly elections in the state — his first election after the Gujarat riots. Modi sat next to his then minister of state for Home, Amit Shah, now the President of the ruling party. He held the mic on the stage and asked the crowd, mainly made up of women and upper middle class Gujarati traders: “What do you want me to do with a man like Sohrabuddin?”’
The crowd replied unequivocally and unanimously: ‘Kill him’. More to read....
http://time.com/5595576/modi-victory-hindu-nationalism/
BY RANA AYYUB MAY 24, 2019
Ayyub is an Indian journalist and the author of Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up
When the results started trickling in on Thursday showing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist BJP government were set for a landslide victory after a divisive and polarizing campaign, I was not shocked. As a journalist, I have covered Modi’s career since his days as the Chief Minister of Gujarat and know his strategies all too well.
Yet the defining image of the Indian election results was not of Modi’s speech in Delhi; it was of Pragya Singh Thakur, dressed in saffron robes, waving at a large crowd after a massive electoral victory. Thakur, a Hindu priestess from the northern Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, is best known for being charged under a terror law for conspiring and carrying out the 2008 bomb blasts in a Muslim-majority city of Maharashtra that left 10 people dead. She swears allegiance to a radical Hindu outfit called Abhinav Bharat that aims to establish a Hindu rashtra (state) and the supremacy of Hindus not just in India but also extending to the neighboring states of Pakistan and Nepal. A week before her constituency went to vote, Thakur hailed Nathuram Godse — the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi — as a patriot. (In the Hindu right-wing worldview, Gandhi is often seen as a Muslim sympathizer.)
It’s ironic that India will celebrate the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday in the same year the Bharatiya Janata Party and its Hindu nationalist leader will induct Thakur in the Indian parliament, seeing their victory as a mandate for their majoritarian policies.
The narrative is strikingly similar to what I saw nearly a decade ago. In 2010, I went undercover for eight months to investigate the complicity of the state in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots and the extra judicial killings of Muslims who were labeled as terrorists. In a span of eight months, posing as a student from American Film Institute Conservatory, I spoke to almost every bureaucrat and official working under Modi. I learned that Modi wanted to be seen as a Hindu leader under attack from Muslims. His 12-year term in Gujarat was seen as the victory of Gujarati asmita (Gujarati pride), with crowds welcoming him at electoral rallies. The popular slogan was, “Dekho dekho kaun aaya, Gujarat ka sher aaya.” (Look, the lion of Gujarat has arrived.)
That wasn’t the first time I reported on Modi. In 2007 as a reporter covering his provincial election, I sat in the front row of his debut election rally for the assembly elections in the state — his first election after the Gujarat riots. Modi sat next to his then minister of state for Home, Amit Shah, now the President of the ruling party. He held the mic on the stage and asked the crowd, mainly made up of women and upper middle class Gujarati traders: “What do you want me to do with a man like Sohrabuddin?”’
The crowd replied unequivocally and unanimously: ‘Kill him’. More to read....
http://time.com/5595576/modi-victory-hindu-nationalism/
-
swamidada_1
- Posts: 239
- Joined: Sun Nov 18, 2018 9:21 pm
India'a Muslims who make up some 14% of the population, have been subjected to to episode after violent episode, in which Hindu mobs, often with what seems to be the state's tacit support, have carried out a series of public lynchings in the name of the holy cow, that ready symbol of Hindu piety. Hardly a month goes by without the without the nation watching agog on their smart phones as yet another enraged Hindu mob falls upon a defenseless Muslim.
The most enduring image of Modi's tenure is the sight of Muhammad Naeem in a blood soaked undershirt in 2017, eyes white and enlarged, begging the mob for his life before he is beaten to death. The response of the leadership in every instance is the same; virtual silence. Basic norms and civility have been so completely vitiated that Modi can no longer control the direction of the violence.....
Last month, Amit Shah compared Muslim immigrants to "termites," and the BJP official Twitter handle no longer bothers with dog whistles: We will remove every single infiltrator from the country, except Buddha, Hindus, and Sikhs.....
Excerpts from the article written by Aatish Taseer " The Modi's Era " from Time magazine " May 20 2019.
The most enduring image of Modi's tenure is the sight of Muhammad Naeem in a blood soaked undershirt in 2017, eyes white and enlarged, begging the mob for his life before he is beaten to death. The response of the leadership in every instance is the same; virtual silence. Basic norms and civility have been so completely vitiated that Modi can no longer control the direction of the violence.....
Last month, Amit Shah compared Muslim immigrants to "termites," and the BJP official Twitter handle no longer bothers with dog whistles: We will remove every single infiltrator from the country, except Buddha, Hindus, and Sikhs.....
Excerpts from the article written by Aatish Taseer " The Modi's Era " from Time magazine " May 20 2019.
India’s hunt for “illegal immigrants” is aimed at Muslims
Many are in fact citizens
Amit shah, India’s home minister, calls them “termites” and “infiltrators”. The government will hunt them down and throw them into the sea, he thunders. Unfortunately, it is not just the standard bluster from a nativist politician railing against illegal immigration. Last year bureaucrats in the Indian state of Assam, which has a population of about 33m people, produced a list of more than 4m of its residents whom they consider foreigners, without any right to live there. A further 100,000 people were deemed non-citizens in June (see article).
Mr Shah insists that all these people will be deported. In practice, neighbouring Bangladesh, from which they are said to have migrated, will not accept them, since in most cases there is no evidence that they are anything other than Indians too poor and uneducated to navigate the complex bureaucracy of citizenship. But even if the threatened mass deportations never take place, the process of declaring people aliens, and hauling lots of them off to internment camps, is not only a rank injustice, but also a threat to stability. The supposed illegal immigrants are overwhelmingly Muslim. The purge is therefore exacerbating sectarian tension in a state that saw bloody Hindu-Muslim riots as recently as 2012, when some 400,000 people were displaced. Yet Mr Shah considers the campaign in Assam against illegal immigrants such a success that he wants to replicate it throughout the entire country.
More...
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/ ... at-muslims
Many are in fact citizens
Amit shah, India’s home minister, calls them “termites” and “infiltrators”. The government will hunt them down and throw them into the sea, he thunders. Unfortunately, it is not just the standard bluster from a nativist politician railing against illegal immigration. Last year bureaucrats in the Indian state of Assam, which has a population of about 33m people, produced a list of more than 4m of its residents whom they consider foreigners, without any right to live there. A further 100,000 people were deemed non-citizens in June (see article).
Mr Shah insists that all these people will be deported. In practice, neighbouring Bangladesh, from which they are said to have migrated, will not accept them, since in most cases there is no evidence that they are anything other than Indians too poor and uneducated to navigate the complex bureaucracy of citizenship. But even if the threatened mass deportations never take place, the process of declaring people aliens, and hauling lots of them off to internment camps, is not only a rank injustice, but also a threat to stability. The supposed illegal immigrants are overwhelmingly Muslim. The purge is therefore exacerbating sectarian tension in a state that saw bloody Hindu-Muslim riots as recently as 2012, when some 400,000 people were displaced. Yet Mr Shah considers the campaign in Assam against illegal immigrants such a success that he wants to replicate it throughout the entire country.
More...
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/ ... at-muslims
Sealed for 72 years, ancient Hindu temple in Pakistan opens to worshippers
SIALKOT, Pakistan: In April this year, Pakistani Hindu community leader Surinder Kumar got the phone call he had been waiting almost two decades to receive.
On the line, an official from the state-run Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) offered good news: the government had decided that a 1,000-year-old temple in Kumar’s hometown of Sialkot, sealed for 72 years, would be reopened.
The ancient Shawala Teja Singh temple was closed to worshippers after thousands of Hindus fled to India when Britain divided its Indian empire into Muslim Pakistan and mainly Hindu India in 1947. The structure has since been governed by the ETPB in Pakistan, a body responsible for the maintenance of properties abandoned by people who left the newly created Pakistan at Partition.
Kumar says he has written hundreds of letters to Pakistani presidents and prime ministers since 2002, pleading that the temple be reopened. In each letter, he penned the same line: “There are close to 100 Hindu families in Sialkot, and only one temple, and that too is closed.”
But no one ever responded to Kumar’s supplications and he had all but given up when he heard from the Board earlier this year, igniting hope that the temple dedicated to the Hindu god of recreation would once again come alive with chants of “Hail Lord Shiva!”
On Saturday, the temple finally got a mini launch. Sialkot Deputy Commissioner Bilal Haider told local reporters that officials had collaborated with the Evacuee Trust Property Board to reopen the temple and “people are now free to visit anytime.”
On August 5, officials of the Board said, a formal opening ceremony would be held to mark the day Hindus celebrate the snake festival of Nag Panchami.
Minority communities in Pakistan are often targeted by right-wing groups and successive governments have in the past been reluctant to embrace the country’s non-Muslim heritage. But recent attempts to improve Pakistan’s image have included overtures to minority communities by the last government of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, and now by the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
On December 25, just a few months after being elected to office in July polls, Khan said in a Twitter post that his government would “ensure that our minorities are treated as equal citizens.”
More....
http://www.arabnews.pk/node/1531926/pakistan
SIALKOT, Pakistan: In April this year, Pakistani Hindu community leader Surinder Kumar got the phone call he had been waiting almost two decades to receive.
On the line, an official from the state-run Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) offered good news: the government had decided that a 1,000-year-old temple in Kumar’s hometown of Sialkot, sealed for 72 years, would be reopened.
The ancient Shawala Teja Singh temple was closed to worshippers after thousands of Hindus fled to India when Britain divided its Indian empire into Muslim Pakistan and mainly Hindu India in 1947. The structure has since been governed by the ETPB in Pakistan, a body responsible for the maintenance of properties abandoned by people who left the newly created Pakistan at Partition.
Kumar says he has written hundreds of letters to Pakistani presidents and prime ministers since 2002, pleading that the temple be reopened. In each letter, he penned the same line: “There are close to 100 Hindu families in Sialkot, and only one temple, and that too is closed.”
But no one ever responded to Kumar’s supplications and he had all but given up when he heard from the Board earlier this year, igniting hope that the temple dedicated to the Hindu god of recreation would once again come alive with chants of “Hail Lord Shiva!”
On Saturday, the temple finally got a mini launch. Sialkot Deputy Commissioner Bilal Haider told local reporters that officials had collaborated with the Evacuee Trust Property Board to reopen the temple and “people are now free to visit anytime.”
On August 5, officials of the Board said, a formal opening ceremony would be held to mark the day Hindus celebrate the snake festival of Nag Panchami.
Minority communities in Pakistan are often targeted by right-wing groups and successive governments have in the past been reluctant to embrace the country’s non-Muslim heritage. But recent attempts to improve Pakistan’s image have included overtures to minority communities by the last government of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, and now by the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
On December 25, just a few months after being elected to office in July polls, Khan said in a Twitter post that his government would “ensure that our minorities are treated as equal citizens.”
More....
http://www.arabnews.pk/node/1531926/pakistan
India Revokes Kashmir’s Special Status, Raising Fears of Unrest
NEW DELHI — India’s Hindu nationalist government on Monday unilaterally wiped out the autonomy of the restive Kashmir region, sending in thousands of army troops to quell any possible unrest the move would bring in a disputed territory fought over by India and Pakistan.
Government authorities severed internet connections, mobile phone lines and even land lines, casting Kashmir into an information black hole that made it very difficult to discern what was unfolding.
For years, India’s Hindu nationalists have wanted to curtail the special freedoms enjoyed by Kashmir, a mountainous, predominantly Muslim territory that has turned into a tinderbox between India and Pakistan, both of which wield nuclear arms.
On Monday, Amit Shah, India’s home minister, announced in a quick speech, which belied years of steady plotting, that the central government was removing the special, somewhat autonomous status that served as the foundation for Kashmir joining India more than 70 years ago.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/worl ... 3053090806
https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/08/ ... a/289621/n
NEW DELHI — India’s Hindu nationalist government on Monday unilaterally wiped out the autonomy of the restive Kashmir region, sending in thousands of army troops to quell any possible unrest the move would bring in a disputed territory fought over by India and Pakistan.
Government authorities severed internet connections, mobile phone lines and even land lines, casting Kashmir into an information black hole that made it very difficult to discern what was unfolding.
For years, India’s Hindu nationalists have wanted to curtail the special freedoms enjoyed by Kashmir, a mountainous, predominantly Muslim territory that has turned into a tinderbox between India and Pakistan, both of which wield nuclear arms.
On Monday, Amit Shah, India’s home minister, announced in a quick speech, which belied years of steady plotting, that the central government was removing the special, somewhat autonomous status that served as the foundation for Kashmir joining India more than 70 years ago.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/worl ... 3053090806
https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/08/ ... a/289621/n
India Annexes Kashmir and Brings Us Back to Partition
Subjugating an entire people wasn’t enough for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Excerpt:
But subjugating Kashmiris was not enough. The cheerleaders for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India are cheering for Partition redux, a world-class massacre, ethnic cleansing. The brute power of Hindu supremacy has its own logic, and it requires not only that Kashmiris be denied a future but also that they be humiliated and punished for their past sin of not being grateful Indians. While individual Indian Muslims across the country are being lynched for trading beef or forced to chant Hindutva slogans, Kashmiris are locked up en masse. Thank you, we don’t need collaborators anymore.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/opin ... y_20190808
*******
Modi’s Majoritarian March to Kashmir
For India’s new rulers, Muslim-majority Kashmir was the perfect place to announce the rise of India’s new muscular nationalism and unabashed majoritarianism.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/opin ... y_20190808#
Subjugating an entire people wasn’t enough for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Excerpt:
But subjugating Kashmiris was not enough. The cheerleaders for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India are cheering for Partition redux, a world-class massacre, ethnic cleansing. The brute power of Hindu supremacy has its own logic, and it requires not only that Kashmiris be denied a future but also that they be humiliated and punished for their past sin of not being grateful Indians. While individual Indian Muslims across the country are being lynched for trading beef or forced to chant Hindutva slogans, Kashmiris are locked up en masse. Thank you, we don’t need collaborators anymore.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/opin ... y_20190808
*******
Modi’s Majoritarian March to Kashmir
For India’s new rulers, Muslim-majority Kashmir was the perfect place to announce the rise of India’s new muscular nationalism and unabashed majoritarianism.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/opin ... y_20190808#
-
swamidada_2
- Posts: 297
- Joined: Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:18 pm
Hindustantimes
Saturday, Aug 24, 2019
McDonald’s faces flak on social media over serving halal meat
After a Twitter user asked McDonald’s India whether their restaurants are halal certified, the company said it does serve halal meat to its customers.
After food delivery platform Zomato, McDonald’s is now facing a major backlash from Twitterati over whether the fast food company serves jhatka or halal meat to its customers.
After a Twitter user asked McDonald’s India whether their restaurants are halal certified, the company said it does serve halal meat to its customers.
“The meat that we use, across our restaurants, is of the highest quality and is sourced from government-approved suppliers who are HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) certified”. “All our restaurants have HALAL certificates. You can ask the respective restaurant Managers to show you the certificate for your satisfaction and confirmation,” McDonald’s India tweeted.
The response left Netizens attacking the company’s Twitter handle. “McDonald’s we Hindus want jhatka meat,” posted an angry user while another wrote: “I don’t want to eat needlessly cruel halal meat. What option do I have? Or should I not eat at McDonald’s?”
The response irked many users who blasted the fast food major for serving halal meat to a nation where 80% people are non-Muslims.
“Dear @McDonalds, per your response, should I understand that your products are not meant for non-Muslims in India? Do let me know,” tweeted another.
In a similar incident, Zomato faced flak after it said that food doesn’t have any religion while responding to a customer declining to accept an order delivered by a Muslim delivery agent. “Thanks for the info what about jhatka meat which we Hindus eat either start serving or we ain’t gonna come to ur outlets ever,” posted an angry user to McDonald’s India.
About a week ago, Zomato employees in West Bengal went on an indefinite strike protesting against delivering beef and pork dishes, saying it hurts their religious sentiments.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-ne ... bD7AL.html
Saturday, Aug 24, 2019
McDonald’s faces flak on social media over serving halal meat
After a Twitter user asked McDonald’s India whether their restaurants are halal certified, the company said it does serve halal meat to its customers.
After food delivery platform Zomato, McDonald’s is now facing a major backlash from Twitterati over whether the fast food company serves jhatka or halal meat to its customers.
After a Twitter user asked McDonald’s India whether their restaurants are halal certified, the company said it does serve halal meat to its customers.
“The meat that we use, across our restaurants, is of the highest quality and is sourced from government-approved suppliers who are HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) certified”. “All our restaurants have HALAL certificates. You can ask the respective restaurant Managers to show you the certificate for your satisfaction and confirmation,” McDonald’s India tweeted.
The response left Netizens attacking the company’s Twitter handle. “McDonald’s we Hindus want jhatka meat,” posted an angry user while another wrote: “I don’t want to eat needlessly cruel halal meat. What option do I have? Or should I not eat at McDonald’s?”
The response irked many users who blasted the fast food major for serving halal meat to a nation where 80% people are non-Muslims.
“Dear @McDonalds, per your response, should I understand that your products are not meant for non-Muslims in India? Do let me know,” tweeted another.
In a similar incident, Zomato faced flak after it said that food doesn’t have any religion while responding to a customer declining to accept an order delivered by a Muslim delivery agent. “Thanks for the info what about jhatka meat which we Hindus eat either start serving or we ain’t gonna come to ur outlets ever,” posted an angry user to McDonald’s India.
About a week ago, Zomato employees in West Bengal went on an indefinite strike protesting against delivering beef and pork dishes, saying it hurts their religious sentiments.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-ne ... bD7AL.html
India’s Move in Kashmir: More Than 2,000 Rounded Up With No Recourse
Kashmiri politicians, business owners, activists and scholars are among those swept up as India tightens its grip — critics say illegally — on the territory.
Excerpt:
Political analysts say the mass roundup was the final piece of a detailed plan that Mr. Modi’s government set into motion last year. This included postponing state elections in Kashmir to create a gap in local leadership. Indian officials then changed India’s Constitution and moved to erase Kashmir’s autonomy and statehood without any input from Kashmiris — though many lawyers have said that might not be legal, either.
Bringing Kashmir to heel has been a Hindu-nationalist dream. It was India’s only Muslim-majority state (it is now to become two federally administered territories) and a place where Pakistan, India’s archrival, enjoys some support. Kashmir was an obvious sore for the nationalist political movement that has flourished among India’s Hindu majority, powering Mr. Modi’s stunning rise.
For decades, Kashmir has been racked by militancy, oppression and unrest. Kashmiris are feeling especially demoralized and cornered now. The fear is that the area is about to ignite; even with phone lines cut, leaders in jail and soldiers on every street, protests are erupting. Some are peaceful. Others descend into stone-pelting clashes.
But the fury is there, always.
“There is only one solution!” the crowds cheer. “Gun solution! Gun solution!”
Video, photos and more...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/worl ... ogin-email
Kashmiri politicians, business owners, activists and scholars are among those swept up as India tightens its grip — critics say illegally — on the territory.
Excerpt:
Political analysts say the mass roundup was the final piece of a detailed plan that Mr. Modi’s government set into motion last year. This included postponing state elections in Kashmir to create a gap in local leadership. Indian officials then changed India’s Constitution and moved to erase Kashmir’s autonomy and statehood without any input from Kashmiris — though many lawyers have said that might not be legal, either.
Bringing Kashmir to heel has been a Hindu-nationalist dream. It was India’s only Muslim-majority state (it is now to become two federally administered territories) and a place where Pakistan, India’s archrival, enjoys some support. Kashmir was an obvious sore for the nationalist political movement that has flourished among India’s Hindu majority, powering Mr. Modi’s stunning rise.
For decades, Kashmir has been racked by militancy, oppression and unrest. Kashmiris are feeling especially demoralized and cornered now. The fear is that the area is about to ignite; even with phone lines cut, leaders in jail and soldiers on every street, protests are erupting. Some are peaceful. Others descend into stone-pelting clashes.
But the fury is there, always.
“There is only one solution!” the crowds cheer. “Gun solution! Gun solution!”
Video, photos and more...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/worl ... ogin-email
-
swamidada_2
- Posts: 297
- Joined: Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:18 pm
As Received:
Newly inaugurated Dawoodi Bohra Masjid in the name of MODI.
Modi Masjid is built in Shivaji Nagar, Bangalore. In the lobby photos of Syedna and Modi are hanging a top. Cake cutting and opening ceremonies were performed under that photo in which Syedna and Modi are seen together. What a mockery of house of God!!
Newly inaugurated Dawoodi Bohra Masjid in the name of MODI.
Modi Masjid is built in Shivaji Nagar, Bangalore. In the lobby photos of Syedna and Modi are hanging a top. Cake cutting and opening ceremonies were performed under that photo in which Syedna and Modi are seen together. What a mockery of house of God!!
[b[India’s magnificent stepwells are relics of a nuanced history
A restoration drive is reviving their glory—and uncovering their wisdom[/b]
Excerpt:
Next door, in Sunder Nursery, the trust has converted 90 acres (36 hectares) of abandoned land into the sooty capital’s first new park in years, laid out as a classical Persian garden. Again, tanks and wells are an essential component. “Delhi needed a refuge,” says Mr Nanda. The gardens have become one of the most popular spots for the city’s families and lovers. The aktc is now taking on the most ambitious project yet: a 106-acre site in Hyderabad, where seven stepwells were built by the Qutb Shabi dynasty in ornate, white-plastered granite. As became clear during the restoration, they were linked by underground channels that also connect to aquifers.
Some of the obstacles to this effort are not physical but political. To help pay for its conservation work, the trust seeks donations from Indian companies. Yet supporters of the Hindu-nationalist government of Narendra Modi, the prime minister, dislike the idea of a body headed by the Aga Khan, an Islamic leader, being involved in Indian cultural work; besides, the Hindutva agenda is to expunge Mughal influence from Indian life, as if it were an alien, Muslim carbuncle rather than an intrinsic part of the country’s inheritance. They are said to have been leaning on companies not to donate. That arid worldview is refuted by the joyful families picnicking in Sunder Nursery, and the devotion of pilgrims at Nizamuddin baoli.
More...
https://www.economist.com/books-and-art ... ed-history
A restoration drive is reviving their glory—and uncovering their wisdom[/b]
Excerpt:
Next door, in Sunder Nursery, the trust has converted 90 acres (36 hectares) of abandoned land into the sooty capital’s first new park in years, laid out as a classical Persian garden. Again, tanks and wells are an essential component. “Delhi needed a refuge,” says Mr Nanda. The gardens have become one of the most popular spots for the city’s families and lovers. The aktc is now taking on the most ambitious project yet: a 106-acre site in Hyderabad, where seven stepwells were built by the Qutb Shabi dynasty in ornate, white-plastered granite. As became clear during the restoration, they were linked by underground channels that also connect to aquifers.
Some of the obstacles to this effort are not physical but political. To help pay for its conservation work, the trust seeks donations from Indian companies. Yet supporters of the Hindu-nationalist government of Narendra Modi, the prime minister, dislike the idea of a body headed by the Aga Khan, an Islamic leader, being involved in Indian cultural work; besides, the Hindutva agenda is to expunge Mughal influence from Indian life, as if it were an alien, Muslim carbuncle rather than an intrinsic part of the country’s inheritance. They are said to have been leaning on companies not to donate. That arid worldview is refuted by the joyful families picnicking in Sunder Nursery, and the devotion of pilgrims at Nizamuddin baoli.
More...
https://www.economist.com/books-and-art ... ed-history
Why Is India Making Its Own People Stateless?
The Modi government will stop at nothing, it seems, to repress the country’s Muslims.
DHAKA, Bangladesh — More than 1.9 million people living in Assam, a state of about 33 million in northeastern India, effectively became stateless recently. Many have never lived anywhere but in India, and yet late last month, the government, claiming to crack down on illegal immigration, announced that it was removing them from the National Register of Citizens. Many of them are ethnic Bengalis, but there is no evidence that they are Bangladeshi.
The process by which the register has been compiled wasn’t just flawed; it was heavily politicized, as well as rife with prejudice. Since the overwhelming majority of the nearly two million people excluded from the registry are thought to be Muslim, the effort looks far more like an ethnic purge than anything like a census.
The Indian government hardly even pretends otherwise. Last fall, ahead of general elections earlier this year, the president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.), Amit Shah, referred to immigrants as “infiltrators” and “termites,” and threatened to “throw them into the Bay of Bengal.” This July, Mr. Shah told Parliament, “Illegal immigrants living on every inch of this country will be deported according to the law.” A first step in implementing that plan is to leave Muslim Bengalis off the register in Assam and try to strip them of their citizenship.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/opin ... d=45305309
The Modi government will stop at nothing, it seems, to repress the country’s Muslims.
DHAKA, Bangladesh — More than 1.9 million people living in Assam, a state of about 33 million in northeastern India, effectively became stateless recently. Many have never lived anywhere but in India, and yet late last month, the government, claiming to crack down on illegal immigration, announced that it was removing them from the National Register of Citizens. Many of them are ethnic Bengalis, but there is no evidence that they are Bangladeshi.
The process by which the register has been compiled wasn’t just flawed; it was heavily politicized, as well as rife with prejudice. Since the overwhelming majority of the nearly two million people excluded from the registry are thought to be Muslim, the effort looks far more like an ethnic purge than anything like a census.
The Indian government hardly even pretends otherwise. Last fall, ahead of general elections earlier this year, the president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.), Amit Shah, referred to immigrants as “infiltrators” and “termites,” and threatened to “throw them into the Bay of Bengal.” This July, Mr. Shah told Parliament, “Illegal immigrants living on every inch of this country will be deported according to the law.” A first step in implementing that plan is to leave Muslim Bengalis off the register in Assam and try to strip them of their citizenship.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/opin ... d=45305309
Hard Times Have Pakistani Hindus Looking to India, Where Some Find Only Disappointment
JODHPUR, India — By the time an angry Muslim mob stormed the local Hindu school and ransacked an adjacent temple a few weeks ago, many members of Pakistan’s dwindling Hindu minority had already been wondering whether it was worth trying to stay in a country where they felt increasingly unsafe.
In April, an angry mob vandalized a different Hindu temple, smashing its idols and chucking the pieces in an open sewer. In May, a Hindu veterinarian was accused of blasphemy in a neighboring town, his shop burned to the ground on the rumor that he was selling medicine wrapped in Islamic religious text.
More than 70 years after the partition of India and Pakistan, increasing violence in this officially Muslim country against the Hindu minority — about 1 percent of Pakistan’s 210 million people — is leading some Hindus to rethink the choices and fate that left their families on the Pakistani side of the line in 1947, residents say.
“Most of our elders at the time of partition did not migrate to India because they did not want to lose their businesses. But now they see it was the wrong decision,” said Kumar, a small-business owner from Ghotki District in Pakistan’s Sindh Province, where the attacks unfolded on Sept. 15. He asked that his last name be withheld, fearing mob violence.
“I am considering moving to India, where at least no one can kill me on the basis of my faith,” he said.
The trepidation among Pakistani Hindus is mirrored in many ways among the Muslim minority in India, where a campaign of Hindu nationalism led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party has left many Muslims feeling targeted. Sectarian fears in both India and Pakistan always peak during times of tension, and hostility between the neighbors is running particularly high right now.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/05/worl ... 3053091006
JODHPUR, India — By the time an angry Muslim mob stormed the local Hindu school and ransacked an adjacent temple a few weeks ago, many members of Pakistan’s dwindling Hindu minority had already been wondering whether it was worth trying to stay in a country where they felt increasingly unsafe.
In April, an angry mob vandalized a different Hindu temple, smashing its idols and chucking the pieces in an open sewer. In May, a Hindu veterinarian was accused of blasphemy in a neighboring town, his shop burned to the ground on the rumor that he was selling medicine wrapped in Islamic religious text.
More than 70 years after the partition of India and Pakistan, increasing violence in this officially Muslim country against the Hindu minority — about 1 percent of Pakistan’s 210 million people — is leading some Hindus to rethink the choices and fate that left their families on the Pakistani side of the line in 1947, residents say.
“Most of our elders at the time of partition did not migrate to India because they did not want to lose their businesses. But now they see it was the wrong decision,” said Kumar, a small-business owner from Ghotki District in Pakistan’s Sindh Province, where the attacks unfolded on Sept. 15. He asked that his last name be withheld, fearing mob violence.
“I am considering moving to India, where at least no one can kill me on the basis of my faith,” he said.
The trepidation among Pakistani Hindus is mirrored in many ways among the Muslim minority in India, where a campaign of Hindu nationalism led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party has left many Muslims feeling targeted. Sectarian fears in both India and Pakistan always peak during times of tension, and hostility between the neighbors is running particularly high right now.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/05/worl ... 3053091006
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mahebubchatur
- Posts: 735
- Joined: Mon Jan 13, 2014 7:01 pm
Politically lines between Hindus and Muslims are blurred mainly because of ignorance, despite the internet and substantial information at your finger tips.
Religiously and doctrinally lines between Hinduism and Islam are blurred also because of ignorance. There are more similarities then differences & both religions say they must respect all religions including the many sects within Hindus and Muslims.
There are many sects within Islam and interpretations. Conflicts today are not because of religion, but due to ignorance which is used to exploit misinform and manipulate for political and economic reasons.
We are today living in a post fact society and cynical times. The silent majority is peaceful but today also fearful.
Islam accepts other religions in the Quran, and so a part of the Hindu religion is in fact a part of Ismailism. Muslims must respect other religions and does not seperate the worldly and the religious. They are both an equal and integral parts of Islam.
His Highness the Aga Khan says replacing ignorance and pluralism by education and understanding are a critical priority in the world today.
His gave his insights “ we live in a “post-fact” society. Yes - a post-fact society. ( meaning below) It’s not just that everyone feels entitled to his or her own opinion - that’s a good thing. But the problem comes when people feel they are entitled to their own facts.
What is true, too often, can then depend not on what actually happened, but on whose side you are.
Our search for the truth can then become less important than our allegiance to a cause - an ideology, for example, or a political party, or a tribal or religious identity, or a pro-government or opposition outlook.
And so publics - all over the world - can begin to fragment - and societies can drift into deadlock.
In such a world, it is absolutely critical - more than ever - that the public should have somewhere to turn for reliable, balanced, objective and accurate information -“ Hazar Imam
Meaning of “Post Fact community and world ? (Post truth and kal yug)
A group, community, or world where people do not seek the truth and act on perceptions misinformation , & lies.
Where lines are blurred between truth and lies, honesty and dishonesty, fiction and nonfiction.
Where Deceiving or misleading others becomes more important as a challenge, a game, a need, and ultimately this becomes their habit and culture
A post fact society is motivated more by excessive material greed and the accumulation of possessions. This mind set is driven by a post fact political ideology which challenges morality, and religious ethical values WITH legalities, deceptions confrontation conflict or and misinformation. “
And,
“How, in an increasingly cynical time, can we inspire people to a new set of aspirations -- reaching beyond rampant materialism, the new relativism, self-serving individualism, and resurgent tribalism.
A deepening sense of spiritual commitment, and the ethical framework that goes with it, will be a central requirement if we are to find our way through the minefields and the quick sands of modern life.
A strengthening of religious institutions should be a vital part of this process.
To be sure, freedom of religion is a critical value in a pluralistic society. But if freedom of religion deteriorates into freedom from religion, then societies will find themselves lost in a bleak and unpromising landscape with no compass, no roadmap and no sense of ultimate direction.
What I am calling for, in sum, is an ethical sensibility which can be shared across denominational lines and which can foster a universal moral outlook.
In conclusion, then, I would ask you think with me about these three requirements:
1. a new emphasis on civil institutions,
2. a more rigorous concern for educational excellence, and
3. a renewed commitment to ethical standards.
For these are all ways in which we can encourage a climate of positive pluralism in our world, and thus help meet the current crisis of democracy.
Imam Shah Karim al-Husayni Aga Khan IV
Address to the Evora University Symposium, ‘Cosmopolitan Society, Human Safety and Rights in Plural and Peaceful Societies’ (Evora, Portugal), 12 February 2006
Interview
SPIEGEL: Does Islam have a problem with reason?
Aga Khan: Not at all. Indeed, I would say the contrary. Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God’s creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason.
SPIEGEL: So, what are the root causes of terrorism?
Aga Khan: Unsolved political conflicts, frustration and, above all, ignorance. Nothing that was born out of a theological conflict.
http://ismaili.net/heritage/node/32697
Religiously and doctrinally lines between Hinduism and Islam are blurred also because of ignorance. There are more similarities then differences & both religions say they must respect all religions including the many sects within Hindus and Muslims.
There are many sects within Islam and interpretations. Conflicts today are not because of religion, but due to ignorance which is used to exploit misinform and manipulate for political and economic reasons.
We are today living in a post fact society and cynical times. The silent majority is peaceful but today also fearful.
Islam accepts other religions in the Quran, and so a part of the Hindu religion is in fact a part of Ismailism. Muslims must respect other religions and does not seperate the worldly and the religious. They are both an equal and integral parts of Islam.
His Highness the Aga Khan says replacing ignorance and pluralism by education and understanding are a critical priority in the world today.
His gave his insights “ we live in a “post-fact” society. Yes - a post-fact society. ( meaning below) It’s not just that everyone feels entitled to his or her own opinion - that’s a good thing. But the problem comes when people feel they are entitled to their own facts.
What is true, too often, can then depend not on what actually happened, but on whose side you are.
Our search for the truth can then become less important than our allegiance to a cause - an ideology, for example, or a political party, or a tribal or religious identity, or a pro-government or opposition outlook.
And so publics - all over the world - can begin to fragment - and societies can drift into deadlock.
In such a world, it is absolutely critical - more than ever - that the public should have somewhere to turn for reliable, balanced, objective and accurate information -“ Hazar Imam
Meaning of “Post Fact community and world ? (Post truth and kal yug)
A group, community, or world where people do not seek the truth and act on perceptions misinformation , & lies.
Where lines are blurred between truth and lies, honesty and dishonesty, fiction and nonfiction.
Where Deceiving or misleading others becomes more important as a challenge, a game, a need, and ultimately this becomes their habit and culture
A post fact society is motivated more by excessive material greed and the accumulation of possessions. This mind set is driven by a post fact political ideology which challenges morality, and religious ethical values WITH legalities, deceptions confrontation conflict or and misinformation. “
And,
“How, in an increasingly cynical time, can we inspire people to a new set of aspirations -- reaching beyond rampant materialism, the new relativism, self-serving individualism, and resurgent tribalism.
A deepening sense of spiritual commitment, and the ethical framework that goes with it, will be a central requirement if we are to find our way through the minefields and the quick sands of modern life.
A strengthening of religious institutions should be a vital part of this process.
To be sure, freedom of religion is a critical value in a pluralistic society. But if freedom of religion deteriorates into freedom from religion, then societies will find themselves lost in a bleak and unpromising landscape with no compass, no roadmap and no sense of ultimate direction.
What I am calling for, in sum, is an ethical sensibility which can be shared across denominational lines and which can foster a universal moral outlook.
In conclusion, then, I would ask you think with me about these three requirements:
1. a new emphasis on civil institutions,
2. a more rigorous concern for educational excellence, and
3. a renewed commitment to ethical standards.
For these are all ways in which we can encourage a climate of positive pluralism in our world, and thus help meet the current crisis of democracy.
Imam Shah Karim al-Husayni Aga Khan IV
Address to the Evora University Symposium, ‘Cosmopolitan Society, Human Safety and Rights in Plural and Peaceful Societies’ (Evora, Portugal), 12 February 2006
Interview
SPIEGEL: Does Islam have a problem with reason?
Aga Khan: Not at all. Indeed, I would say the contrary. Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God’s creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason.
SPIEGEL: So, what are the root causes of terrorism?
Aga Khan: Unsolved political conflicts, frustration and, above all, ignorance. Nothing that was born out of a theological conflict.
http://ismaili.net/heritage/node/32697
-
swamidada_2
- Posts: 297
- Joined: Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:18 pm
The Bajrang Dal on Saturday asked ‘Garba and Dandiya’ event organizers in Hyderabad to make Aadhaar cards mandatory for those taking part in the celebrations during the Navratri festivities to check entry of those belonging to “non-Hindu communities.” The outfit asked organizers to make Aadhaar cards mandatory at the entry spot “to detect non-Hindus entering venues.” In an open letter to the organizers, it claimed during the past couple of years, non-Hindu youths were entering such events and misbehaving with women participants.
Such youths also manhandle men who come to the rescue of the alleged victims, it claimed.
“Also, the said miscreants used these events as places to trap innocent girls and thus leading to LOVE-JIHAD cases,” it said.
Event organizers should also avoid employing “non-Hindu bouncers,” it said.
“Teams of Bajrang Dal karyakarthas will be present at the venues and if any such case is reported, immediate action would be taken to stop the miscreants from entering,which might lead to the disruption of the whole event,” the letter said.
First Published: Sep 29, 2019 07:00 IST
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-ne ... SMzaK.html
Such youths also manhandle men who come to the rescue of the alleged victims, it claimed.
“Also, the said miscreants used these events as places to trap innocent girls and thus leading to LOVE-JIHAD cases,” it said.
Event organizers should also avoid employing “non-Hindu bouncers,” it said.
“Teams of Bajrang Dal karyakarthas will be present at the venues and if any such case is reported, immediate action would be taken to stop the miscreants from entering,which might lead to the disruption of the whole event,” the letter said.
First Published: Sep 29, 2019 07:00 IST
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-ne ... SMzaK.html
-
swamidada_2
- Posts: 297
- Joined: Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:18 pm
Not just Hindu versus Muslim: Ayodhya dispute has several parties battling each other in court
Sruthisagar Yamunan Published about 15 hours ago
Over 38 days since August 6, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court has heard final arguments in the Ayodhya case. The case is often presented in the media as a Hindu-Muslim dispute, obscuring the fact that there are several Hindu parties and Muslim parties involved, with significantly different — even contradictory — positions.
As previously explained by Scroll.in, the case is essentially a title dispute over 2.77 acres of land in the town of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. In December 1992, a mob of Hindutva supporters demolished a 16th century mosque on the site, claiming that it had been built by the Mughal emperor Babur on the very spot on which the god Ram had been born. The legal battle itself, however, dates back to the 19th century. The current suits being heard by the Supreme Court can be traced to district court proceedings in 1950.
There are three main parties in the case: the Nirmohi Akhara, a group of Hindu ascetics who worship Ram and want to build a temple on the disputed site; the Sunni Waqf Board, which is seeking the control of the site so that the demolished mosque can be reconstructed; and Ram Lalla, the deity placed illegally under the central dome of the demolished mosque in 1949, along with Ramjanmasthan, the claimed site of Ram’s birth, represented by activists associated with the Sangh Parivar.
In 2010, the Allahabad High Court divided the disputed 2.77 acres between these three parties.
There are several other participants in the case, including the Ramjanmabhoomi Nyas, a trust created by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad that is supporting the case of Ram Lalla, and the All India Shia Conference and the Shia Waqf Board, which claim to represent the Shia sect.
In the media, these parties have been broadly categorised as the Hindu side and the Muslim side. But there are significant differences in what these parties seek. While the Nirmohi Akhara refuses to recognise Ram Lalla or Ramjanmasthan as juridical persons — artificial entities with legal rights that can be represented in the title suit — Ram Lalla and Ramjanmasthan oppose the claim of the Akhara that it is the manager of the disputed site.
Among the Muslim parties, while the Sunni Waqf Board wants control of the land to build a mosque and is supported by the All India Shia Conference in its quest, the Shia Waqf Board is ready to part with the land to facilitate the construction of a Ram temple.
Nirmohi Akhara vs Ram Lalla:
The Nirmohi Akhara’s claim over the disputed site goes back to 1885, when Raghubar Das, its mahant, instituted a suit against the administration of Faizabad, the district in which Ayodhya is located. He sought an order from the district court restraining the administration from interfering in the construction of a Ram temple on the disputed site. However, the court dismissed this.
After a lull that lasted several decades, the Ayodhya dispute was reanimated when the idol of Ram Lalla was illegally placed under the central dome of the Babri mosque in December 1949.
In January 1950, the first suit in the dispute that is currently being heard by the Supreme Court was filed by GS Visharad, a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha. He wanted the court to protect his right to worship at the site. The court in Faizabad accepted his plea and passed an order restraining the authorities from removing the idol placed there in 1949.
By the 1960s, the Nirmohi Akhara and the Sunni Waqf Board joined the proceedings. The driving force for the suits was the state government’s decision to take control of the land, citing the communal discord after the idols were put under the central dome. The Akhara’s position was that this constrained its right as the manager of the place and debased its possession. The Sunni Wafq Board, on the other hand, moved to dispute the claim of the Akhara over the land.
Later, in 1989, Deoki Nandan Agarwal, a former judge of the Allahabad High Court and a member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, filed a petition seeking to become the "sakha" or friend of the deity and its birthplace in the title suits. The Allahabad High Court allowed this, paving the way for the deity and the janmasthan to become juristic personalities with rights to hold properties.
With the entry of Agarwal, the case had two primary Hindu parties claiming possession of the land — Ram Lalla and Ramjanmasthan on one side and Nirmohi Akhara on the other. Visharad’s suit was not one claiming title or possession but only the right to access the place and offer worship.
The Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, November 1990. — Photo courtesy PTI
Before the Supreme Court, lawyers representing Ram Lalla and Ramjanmasthan said that the disputed site belonged exclusively to the deity.
Senior lawyers K Parasaran and CS Vaidyanathan argued that the Allahabad High Court had erred in its decision to divide the land three way. This is because the Ramjanmasthan itself has been worshipped as a deity for thousands of years. A deity cannot be divided because such a move would affect its sanctity.
"The question has been if it [the structure] is a temple or a mosque," said Parasaran. "Either way, it is one integrated entity. You cannot say that physically 'you take this' and 'you take this'. You cannot partition an institution or bisect it." In other words, there can neither be joint possession nor joint title of the disputed site which is held sacred by the Hindus.
Parasaran invoked the story of King Solomon, who settled a dispute between two mothers by seeking to cut the baby into two halves so that each woman could have a piece. The real mother pleaded with him not to do so, which revealed to Solomon where the truth lay.
The Nirmohi Akhara, to which the Allahabad High Court gave one-third of the disputed site in 2010, also laid claim to the entire land.
Arguing for the institution, senior lawyer SK Jain on August 23 said the Akhara has been in possession of the disputed site as its shebait or manager since time immemorial. It had also filed the suit 30 years before the application by Agarwal to represent the deities as a friend was moved in 1989. "I have taken a plea that decree in interest of deity can only be given in shebait’s favour," he added.
Jain further argued that the idol and the Janmasthan should have never been included as parties through a friend as the Akhara was an existing manager. "There are Supreme Court judgements which say that possession of temple endowment can be given only to the manager and not to the next friend of the deity," Jain claimed. This meant that the Akhara was seeking possession of the entire disputed structure and was in contradiction to the claim of Ram Lalla and Ramjanmasthan.
The bench repeatedly told the lawyer that a manager of a temple endowment cannot take a stand against the deity and its rights. Such a stand would make its suit liable to be dismissed. This forced the lawyer to state that the Akhara was willing to give up claims to the land title if its position as the manager of the temple endowment is recognised by the parties representing Ram Lalla and Ramjanmasthan.
Sunni vs Shia:
Sunni Waqf Board, a body created under the Waqf Act to help the government manage Sunni Muslim public properties, has been the principal party on the Muslim side in the Ayodhya dispute. In its 1961 suit, it had sought possession of the entire disputed site. The Shia Waqf Board, however, continues to dispute the Sunni board’s right over the site, arguing that the mosque was a Shia mosque.
The Sunni board contends that Babur built the mosque in the 16th century and Muslims had been offering prayers at the site continuously till 1949, when the idol of Ram Lalla was illegally placed under the central dome and the district administration took over the site.
The board has disputed the claims of the Hindu parties that Babur demolished a temple to build the mosque and that the mosque structure was raised with the material from the razed ancient temple. The board seeks to manage the endowment or waqf of the Babri Masjid, with its principal aim being the reconstruction of the mosque.
However, there were several twists and turns in the hearings of the Sunni Waqf Board’s position. Senior lawyer Rajeev Dhawan, during his submissions in August, said the board recognised the position of the Nirmohi Akhara as the manager of a part of disputed site that encompassed the outer courtyard of the demolished mosque, prompting the bench to state that this was an argument running against the board’s position in the high court. The board, however, opposed the case of Ram Lalla and Ramjanmasthan as juristic personalities and their claims over the land.
In the meantime, the Shia Waqf Board, which looks after Shia Muslim public estates, wants to hand over the disputed site to the Hindu parties for the sake of peace and the country’s integrity. The board moved an application before the Supreme Court in 2018 even though it is not a party to the original suits. The All India Shia Conference, which is a defendant in the Sunni Waqf Board’s suit, on the other hand, supports the Sunni Waqf Board’s position.
This article originally appeared at Scroll.in and has been reproduced with permission.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1511174/not-j ... r-in-court
Sruthisagar Yamunan Published about 15 hours ago
Over 38 days since August 6, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court has heard final arguments in the Ayodhya case. The case is often presented in the media as a Hindu-Muslim dispute, obscuring the fact that there are several Hindu parties and Muslim parties involved, with significantly different — even contradictory — positions.
As previously explained by Scroll.in, the case is essentially a title dispute over 2.77 acres of land in the town of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. In December 1992, a mob of Hindutva supporters demolished a 16th century mosque on the site, claiming that it had been built by the Mughal emperor Babur on the very spot on which the god Ram had been born. The legal battle itself, however, dates back to the 19th century. The current suits being heard by the Supreme Court can be traced to district court proceedings in 1950.
There are three main parties in the case: the Nirmohi Akhara, a group of Hindu ascetics who worship Ram and want to build a temple on the disputed site; the Sunni Waqf Board, which is seeking the control of the site so that the demolished mosque can be reconstructed; and Ram Lalla, the deity placed illegally under the central dome of the demolished mosque in 1949, along with Ramjanmasthan, the claimed site of Ram’s birth, represented by activists associated with the Sangh Parivar.
In 2010, the Allahabad High Court divided the disputed 2.77 acres between these three parties.
There are several other participants in the case, including the Ramjanmabhoomi Nyas, a trust created by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad that is supporting the case of Ram Lalla, and the All India Shia Conference and the Shia Waqf Board, which claim to represent the Shia sect.
In the media, these parties have been broadly categorised as the Hindu side and the Muslim side. But there are significant differences in what these parties seek. While the Nirmohi Akhara refuses to recognise Ram Lalla or Ramjanmasthan as juridical persons — artificial entities with legal rights that can be represented in the title suit — Ram Lalla and Ramjanmasthan oppose the claim of the Akhara that it is the manager of the disputed site.
Among the Muslim parties, while the Sunni Waqf Board wants control of the land to build a mosque and is supported by the All India Shia Conference in its quest, the Shia Waqf Board is ready to part with the land to facilitate the construction of a Ram temple.
Nirmohi Akhara vs Ram Lalla:
The Nirmohi Akhara’s claim over the disputed site goes back to 1885, when Raghubar Das, its mahant, instituted a suit against the administration of Faizabad, the district in which Ayodhya is located. He sought an order from the district court restraining the administration from interfering in the construction of a Ram temple on the disputed site. However, the court dismissed this.
After a lull that lasted several decades, the Ayodhya dispute was reanimated when the idol of Ram Lalla was illegally placed under the central dome of the Babri mosque in December 1949.
In January 1950, the first suit in the dispute that is currently being heard by the Supreme Court was filed by GS Visharad, a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha. He wanted the court to protect his right to worship at the site. The court in Faizabad accepted his plea and passed an order restraining the authorities from removing the idol placed there in 1949.
By the 1960s, the Nirmohi Akhara and the Sunni Waqf Board joined the proceedings. The driving force for the suits was the state government’s decision to take control of the land, citing the communal discord after the idols were put under the central dome. The Akhara’s position was that this constrained its right as the manager of the place and debased its possession. The Sunni Wafq Board, on the other hand, moved to dispute the claim of the Akhara over the land.
Later, in 1989, Deoki Nandan Agarwal, a former judge of the Allahabad High Court and a member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, filed a petition seeking to become the "sakha" or friend of the deity and its birthplace in the title suits. The Allahabad High Court allowed this, paving the way for the deity and the janmasthan to become juristic personalities with rights to hold properties.
With the entry of Agarwal, the case had two primary Hindu parties claiming possession of the land — Ram Lalla and Ramjanmasthan on one side and Nirmohi Akhara on the other. Visharad’s suit was not one claiming title or possession but only the right to access the place and offer worship.
The Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, November 1990. — Photo courtesy PTI
Before the Supreme Court, lawyers representing Ram Lalla and Ramjanmasthan said that the disputed site belonged exclusively to the deity.
Senior lawyers K Parasaran and CS Vaidyanathan argued that the Allahabad High Court had erred in its decision to divide the land three way. This is because the Ramjanmasthan itself has been worshipped as a deity for thousands of years. A deity cannot be divided because such a move would affect its sanctity.
"The question has been if it [the structure] is a temple or a mosque," said Parasaran. "Either way, it is one integrated entity. You cannot say that physically 'you take this' and 'you take this'. You cannot partition an institution or bisect it." In other words, there can neither be joint possession nor joint title of the disputed site which is held sacred by the Hindus.
Parasaran invoked the story of King Solomon, who settled a dispute between two mothers by seeking to cut the baby into two halves so that each woman could have a piece. The real mother pleaded with him not to do so, which revealed to Solomon where the truth lay.
The Nirmohi Akhara, to which the Allahabad High Court gave one-third of the disputed site in 2010, also laid claim to the entire land.
Arguing for the institution, senior lawyer SK Jain on August 23 said the Akhara has been in possession of the disputed site as its shebait or manager since time immemorial. It had also filed the suit 30 years before the application by Agarwal to represent the deities as a friend was moved in 1989. "I have taken a plea that decree in interest of deity can only be given in shebait’s favour," he added.
Jain further argued that the idol and the Janmasthan should have never been included as parties through a friend as the Akhara was an existing manager. "There are Supreme Court judgements which say that possession of temple endowment can be given only to the manager and not to the next friend of the deity," Jain claimed. This meant that the Akhara was seeking possession of the entire disputed structure and was in contradiction to the claim of Ram Lalla and Ramjanmasthan.
The bench repeatedly told the lawyer that a manager of a temple endowment cannot take a stand against the deity and its rights. Such a stand would make its suit liable to be dismissed. This forced the lawyer to state that the Akhara was willing to give up claims to the land title if its position as the manager of the temple endowment is recognised by the parties representing Ram Lalla and Ramjanmasthan.
Sunni vs Shia:
Sunni Waqf Board, a body created under the Waqf Act to help the government manage Sunni Muslim public properties, has been the principal party on the Muslim side in the Ayodhya dispute. In its 1961 suit, it had sought possession of the entire disputed site. The Shia Waqf Board, however, continues to dispute the Sunni board’s right over the site, arguing that the mosque was a Shia mosque.
The Sunni board contends that Babur built the mosque in the 16th century and Muslims had been offering prayers at the site continuously till 1949, when the idol of Ram Lalla was illegally placed under the central dome and the district administration took over the site.
The board has disputed the claims of the Hindu parties that Babur demolished a temple to build the mosque and that the mosque structure was raised with the material from the razed ancient temple. The board seeks to manage the endowment or waqf of the Babri Masjid, with its principal aim being the reconstruction of the mosque.
However, there were several twists and turns in the hearings of the Sunni Waqf Board’s position. Senior lawyer Rajeev Dhawan, during his submissions in August, said the board recognised the position of the Nirmohi Akhara as the manager of a part of disputed site that encompassed the outer courtyard of the demolished mosque, prompting the bench to state that this was an argument running against the board’s position in the high court. The board, however, opposed the case of Ram Lalla and Ramjanmasthan as juristic personalities and their claims over the land.
In the meantime, the Shia Waqf Board, which looks after Shia Muslim public estates, wants to hand over the disputed site to the Hindu parties for the sake of peace and the country’s integrity. The board moved an application before the Supreme Court in 2018 even though it is not a party to the original suits. The All India Shia Conference, which is a defendant in the Sunni Waqf Board’s suit, on the other hand, supports the Sunni Waqf Board’s position.
This article originally appeared at Scroll.in and has been reproduced with permission.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1511174/not-j ... r-in-court
The Transformation of India Is Nearly Complete
The Indian Supreme Court’s decision to allow the building of a temple for Rama on a disputed site is likely to intensify the Hindu nationalist efforts to turn India into a majoritarian nation.
NEW DELHI — On Saturday, fireworks were set off in parts of India to celebrate the verdict by the country’s Supreme Court to clear the way for the building of a temple for Rama — the Hindu deity and the protagonist of the epic poem “Ramayana” — in Ayodhya, a northern Indian town.
The piece of land where the temple for Rama will be built is considered by many Hindus to be his exact birthplace. But the land in question and its ownership have been long disputed. The Babri Masjid, a mosque built in 1528, stood there until Dec. 1992, when a Hindu mob demolished it. Hindu and Muslim litigants had been fighting for its ownership for decades. When the Supreme Court announced its decision, lawyers outside the court yelled, “Hail Lord Ram!”
In the mid-1980s, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a sister organization of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, started a campaign to reclaim the birthplace of Rama in Ayodhya. In 1990, Lal Krishna Advani, then the president of the B.J.P., rode through India on a truck designed like a chariot to whip up support for Rama’s temple. Amid appeals to Hindu pride, Mr. Advani and other B.J.P. leaders framed the building of the temple as the way to end what they termed as thousand years of servitude to Muslim rulers.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/opin ... d=45305309
The Indian Supreme Court’s decision to allow the building of a temple for Rama on a disputed site is likely to intensify the Hindu nationalist efforts to turn India into a majoritarian nation.
NEW DELHI — On Saturday, fireworks were set off in parts of India to celebrate the verdict by the country’s Supreme Court to clear the way for the building of a temple for Rama — the Hindu deity and the protagonist of the epic poem “Ramayana” — in Ayodhya, a northern Indian town.
The piece of land where the temple for Rama will be built is considered by many Hindus to be his exact birthplace. But the land in question and its ownership have been long disputed. The Babri Masjid, a mosque built in 1528, stood there until Dec. 1992, when a Hindu mob demolished it. Hindu and Muslim litigants had been fighting for its ownership for decades. When the Supreme Court announced its decision, lawyers outside the court yelled, “Hail Lord Ram!”
In the mid-1980s, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a sister organization of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, started a campaign to reclaim the birthplace of Rama in Ayodhya. In 1990, Lal Krishna Advani, then the president of the B.J.P., rode through India on a truck designed like a chariot to whip up support for Rama’s temple. Amid appeals to Hindu pride, Mr. Advani and other B.J.P. leaders framed the building of the temple as the way to end what they termed as thousand years of servitude to Muslim rulers.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/opin ... d=45305309
By Hammad Khan
Hindu nationalists are known for Islamophobia. But Adityanath's religious order shares a history with Islam
Some Hindu nationalists in India are noted for their admiration for Nazism, along with their hatred for Muslims that can at times reach genocidal proportions.
Recently, sections of Hindu nationalists have found another hero in the form of President Donald Trump, whose racist and bigoted rhetoric has resonated with many of them.
Trump’s travel ban on citizens from five Muslim-majority countries entering the US was enthusiastically supported by the Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, who called for similar measures to tackle terrorism in India.
Adityanath is the spiritual leader of the Nath community of Gorakhpur, a city in north east of Uttar Pradesh, which represents the ascetic Saiva sectarian movement (sampradaya) dating back to the 13th century.
Traditionally, however, the Nath Yogi movement has resisted the application of fixed religious identities of Hindu or Muslim, and the tradition “blurred the borders in a dialogical process where they combined elements from both traditions,” as noted by social anthropologist Véronique Bouillier.
In fact, the collection of vernacular poetry attributed to Guru Gorakhnath, the founder of the movement, contains several multi-religious references resisting modern religious categorisation.
A well-known passage, as pointed out by the American scholar Marrewa Karwoski, states:
The Hindu meditates in the temple,
the Muslim in the Mosque.
The Yogi meditates on the supreme goal,
where there is neither temple nor mosque.
The Nath sampradaya has a long ecumenical history with Islam. The greatest Sufi poet of Sindh, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, expressed unconditional love and admiration for the Nath Yogis in his poetry.
Looking at the Nath Yogi tradition from the Sufi perspective of Shah Abdul Latif’s poetry puts it in contrasts with the modernist Hindutva rhetoric of Adityanath.
Yogis and Sufism
The holiest site of the Nath Yogi tradition is located in Hinglaj in Balochistan. The traditional route of the annual pilgrimage on foot to Balochistan is the settlement of Mount Ganjo, a hill in District Hyderabad.
It is said that Shah Abdul Latif had spent around three years in the company of the wandering ascetics. His travels with the Yogis left a deep impression on him and the theme of Yogis as perfect practitioners of spiritual life feature prominently in his Risalo, a large collection of Sindhi lyrical poetry considered to be the greatest classic of Sindhi literature.
A translation of the Risalo was published in English this year by the British scholar Christopher Shackle and I have used his translations in this article.
In Sur Ramakali, Shah Abdul Latif describes the Yogis as manifesting the divine qualities of light and fire, nuri and nari, which represents the two aspects of God: His eternal Beauty (jamal) and His Majesty (jalal).
In the Islamic tradition, God’s greatness is manifested through the interplay of His Mercy and His Majesty.
Describing the physical attributes of the Yogis, Shah Abdul Latif identifies their characteristic pierced ears and long earrings, matted braids and loincloths.
They practice strict asceticism and deny the physical body all comforts. Constantly fasting, “they mortify their bodies”.
Shah Abdul Latif even goes as far as to describe them as ugly on the outside, but “the yogis are priceless within.” Shah Abdul Latif says:
People think it is hunger that makes ascetics thin,
But it is actually the pains of love.
The pain and suffering in love, which the German scholar Annemarie Schimmel calls the ‘mysticism of suffering,’ defines the experiential nature of the spiritual purification of Yogis.
“Having been alighted on the field of love,” Shah Abdul Latif claims, “the more they burn, the purer and the happier they become.”
Inner struggle of purification is described metaphorically as burning, where the fire of love burns away all impurity within.
As the Arabic saying puts it: al-bala`lil-wala` ka`l-lahab li` dh-dhahab, “Affliction is for saintliness the same as are flames for the gold”.
For a Yogi, sickness is a much greater blessing than health. So, Shah Abdul Latif says: “Mother, the community of yogis is always sick.”
The inward orientation of the Yogis necessitates worldly detachment and material poverty — as part of the larger spiritual and psychological process of subduing the lower self (nafs al-ammara). Thus, Shah Abdul Latif sings:
Take nonbeing on your shoulders and do not be like
those who are tied to existence, true yogis are not
like this, says Latif. How can those who maintain
the least connection with the world be called true ascetics?
Dissolving the self (fa`na) to discover the divine Self within (ba’qa) is the goal of the spiritual quest, or the Greater Jihad as enumerated in the Islamic tradition.
Yogis believe it is only through negating the “I” of selfhood that the true tawhid — Divine Unity — can be fully realised.
Duality is illusory, says Latif, so the existence of the individual self is a form of idolatry. True monotheism requires annihilation of the self and the idea of anything existent independent of God is false. Shah Abdul Latif says:
The yogis have destroyed their separate existence,
their business is with the universal. The lodge
where they stay is nonexistence; I will not survive
without them.
Converging paths to the Divine
In Nath terminology, creation is explained as the gradual self-revelation of Shiva’s (Absolute Spirit) inherent shakti (His Unique Power).
Indian scholar Sayyid Athar Rizvi explains the Nath theory of creation as: “The divine Shakti who in the process of cosmic self-manifestation gradually descends from the highest transcendent spiritual plane of Absolute Unity and Bliss to the lowest phenomenal material level of endless diversities and imperfections, again ascends by means of the self-conscious process of Yoga Jnana (knowledge) and Bhakti (devotion).”
Yogic introspection, exercises, and meditation is directed towards such spiritual flight and (re)union of the devotee with the Beloved.
In the Sufi tradition, man is created as a mirror of God’s manifestations, His tajalliyat.
The Sufi Way (tariqa), in a way, is an experiential exegesis of the attributes of Allah (asmaʾu llahi lhusna) revealed in the Holy Quran.
The parallels in the Sufi and Nath theory of creation bring forth a unitive sense of the purpose of man, which is to self-consciously actualise and perfect the divine qualities of God through the annihilation of the individual self.
This spiritual state is called ba’qa or ontological immortality in the Sufi tradition, implying the nonexistence of the individual identity and identification with the universal.
So in Khahori (Yogi Foragers), Shah Abdul Latif sings:
With silent prayer, the Khahoris have searched and
found the divine. With these syllables the lovers
have passed the stage of infinity. United with the
divine, they have become divine, baked by their
master. To them everything appears divine.
They are true lovers who, Schimmel notes, “have touched lahut, the dwelling place of divinity, and have become lahuti themselves.”
According to a famous Islamic tradition, the dwelling place of God is the heart of the believer.
East in Shah Abdul Latif’s poetry symbolises the eternal home of the soul from the World of Exile (i.e. material world).
It is suggested in the very name of one of the chapters on Yogis, Sur Purab, meaning ‘East’.
Travelling eastward, the ascetics find God in their hearts and become lahuti. In Sur Ramakali, Shah Abdul Latif says:
The knees of the sannyasis are like Mount Sinai.
The renouncers do not take their ego with them
to the east, the yogis are draped in the cloak of
mysteries. They are covered from top to toe in
closeness to the divine.
Leaving the ego at the threshold of the spiritual east is the only way to find the divine abode.
The reference of Mount Sinai is interesting in the context of Yogi practices.
Mount Sinai is where God revealed himself to Moses; contextually, it implies that Yogis have a vision of the divine presence in their yogic posture of sitting with their heads supported by their knees.
Shah Abdul Latif says:
For what purpose do the yogis follow this path?
Their hearts are not set on hell, nor do they
desire paradise. They have nothing to do with
unbelievers, and they do not have Islam in their
minds. They stand there saying: “Make the
beloved your own.”
Transcending the outward
The spiritual path of the Yogis transcends religious norms and outward forms of worship.
Irreducible to religious categories, these ascetics are devotees of maddhab-i ishq (Path of Love), which is concerned with the intuitive experience of love.
In the Sufi tradition, Rabi`a al-Adawiyya (d. 801) was the first to express this ideal of seeking neither paradise nor fearing hell, but contemplating only the divine Beloved.
Freed from self, Yogis are beyond faith and infidelity. So, in Sur Ramakali, Shah Abdul Latif says:
Those who wear the loincloth around them do not
perform ablutions. They have heard the call
to prayer that preceded Islam. Abandoning
all other support, the masters are united with
Gorakhnath.
Shah Abdul Latif identifies Yogis as ‘true Muslims’ who completely submit to God. He follows the Quranic tradition of categorising pre-Islamic prophets, such as Noah and Abraham, as ‘Muslims’ — those who truly submit to God.
Generally, Islam refers to the reified religion revealed to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) by God, but the original Quranic usage of islam (submission) refers to the submission of man to God, which is quintessential of true faith.
Shah Abdul Latif’s representation of jogis as ‘Muslims’ refers to this universal, nonsectarian submission that lies at the root of all authentic religious traditions.
Indian Sufi tradition has established precedents of identifying truths about tawhid (Divine Unity) with Indian religions, in particular, with the Nath Yogi tradition.
Shaikh Abdul-Quddus Gangohi, a Chishti Sufi belonging to Radauli in Uttar Pradesh in the 16th century, wrote Rushd Nama which brings forth parallels in the Sufi conception of wahdat al-wujud (Unity of Being) and the philosophy of Gorakhnath.
The conventional religious journey from here to Hereafter is not what the Yogi is after, but the struggle is towards awareness of the divine presence and union with the Beloved here and now. Shah Abdul Latif says:
Their knees are a mihrab, and their bodies are
a mosque. Their hearts point the direction
to Mecca, their bodies circumbulate the
Kaaba. Proclaiming the divine reality they have
renounced the body. The guide is contained in
their hearts, how can they be held accountable for
sin?
Having sanctified their bodies, the jogis turn their heads towards the mihrab (prayer-niche) in contemplation of the Divine Beauty and have found the friend in the heart which “is the only true prayer-niche.”
They have realised that the object of worship dwells in their hearts and they have turned the heart into the Kaaba, the House of God.
Jogis, the pilgrims of Hinglaj, are accepted and admired in Shah Abdul Latif’s Risalo as true pilgrims striving towards the eternal Light.
For Shah Abdul Latif, jogis become the exemplars of true Muslims and mu’mins, of true believers.
The religious inclusivity of Shah Abdul Latif’s poetry is reflective of the Indo-Persian Sufi tradition.
It is therefore no surprise that the three books Shah Abdul Latif carried with him for poetic inspiration were the Quran, Jalaluddin Rumi’s Masnavi and the Sindhi verses of his grandfather, Shah Karim.
Rooted in the Sufi tradition, Shah Abdul Latif’s portrayal of the Nath Yogis represents an ideal of the Greater Jihad against the individual self, which the Prophet of Islam called the “man’s greatest enemy.”
Defying the formal other-ness of the Yogis, Shah Abdul Latif collapses the illusion of such duality through seeing the love of the Beloved reflected in the Nath Yogis.
The Hindutva rhetoric of Adityanath undermines the traditional tenets of the Nath Yogi tradition. The turn towards religious exclusivism is decidedly anti-traditional in espousing modern religious identities.
Prior to the 20th century, Karwoski notes that the political influence of the Nath Yogi community was based on the principles of religious ecumenism and inclusivity.
Religious exclusivism in the Nath Yogi tradition is a modern construct, which contrasts the non-sectarian love as embodied by the jogis of Shah Abdul Latif’s Risalo.
The concluding vai of Sur Purab sums up beautifully the love of Shah Abdul Latif for the jogis:
Lord, may my connection with the yogis not be
broken.
The yogis told me to travel to Hinglaj.
The ascetics took me to the land of the east.
That is the goal of my pilgrimage, and my resting
place; that is my journey.
The masters have shown me my place of pilgrimage
and my resting place.
Hindu nationalists are known for Islamophobia. But Adityanath's religious order shares a history with Islam
Some Hindu nationalists in India are noted for their admiration for Nazism, along with their hatred for Muslims that can at times reach genocidal proportions.
Recently, sections of Hindu nationalists have found another hero in the form of President Donald Trump, whose racist and bigoted rhetoric has resonated with many of them.
Trump’s travel ban on citizens from five Muslim-majority countries entering the US was enthusiastically supported by the Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, who called for similar measures to tackle terrorism in India.
Adityanath is the spiritual leader of the Nath community of Gorakhpur, a city in north east of Uttar Pradesh, which represents the ascetic Saiva sectarian movement (sampradaya) dating back to the 13th century.
Traditionally, however, the Nath Yogi movement has resisted the application of fixed religious identities of Hindu or Muslim, and the tradition “blurred the borders in a dialogical process where they combined elements from both traditions,” as noted by social anthropologist Véronique Bouillier.
In fact, the collection of vernacular poetry attributed to Guru Gorakhnath, the founder of the movement, contains several multi-religious references resisting modern religious categorisation.
A well-known passage, as pointed out by the American scholar Marrewa Karwoski, states:
The Hindu meditates in the temple,
the Muslim in the Mosque.
The Yogi meditates on the supreme goal,
where there is neither temple nor mosque.
The Nath sampradaya has a long ecumenical history with Islam. The greatest Sufi poet of Sindh, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, expressed unconditional love and admiration for the Nath Yogis in his poetry.
Looking at the Nath Yogi tradition from the Sufi perspective of Shah Abdul Latif’s poetry puts it in contrasts with the modernist Hindutva rhetoric of Adityanath.
Yogis and Sufism
The holiest site of the Nath Yogi tradition is located in Hinglaj in Balochistan. The traditional route of the annual pilgrimage on foot to Balochistan is the settlement of Mount Ganjo, a hill in District Hyderabad.
It is said that Shah Abdul Latif had spent around three years in the company of the wandering ascetics. His travels with the Yogis left a deep impression on him and the theme of Yogis as perfect practitioners of spiritual life feature prominently in his Risalo, a large collection of Sindhi lyrical poetry considered to be the greatest classic of Sindhi literature.
A translation of the Risalo was published in English this year by the British scholar Christopher Shackle and I have used his translations in this article.
In Sur Ramakali, Shah Abdul Latif describes the Yogis as manifesting the divine qualities of light and fire, nuri and nari, which represents the two aspects of God: His eternal Beauty (jamal) and His Majesty (jalal).
In the Islamic tradition, God’s greatness is manifested through the interplay of His Mercy and His Majesty.
Describing the physical attributes of the Yogis, Shah Abdul Latif identifies their characteristic pierced ears and long earrings, matted braids and loincloths.
They practice strict asceticism and deny the physical body all comforts. Constantly fasting, “they mortify their bodies”.
Shah Abdul Latif even goes as far as to describe them as ugly on the outside, but “the yogis are priceless within.” Shah Abdul Latif says:
People think it is hunger that makes ascetics thin,
But it is actually the pains of love.
The pain and suffering in love, which the German scholar Annemarie Schimmel calls the ‘mysticism of suffering,’ defines the experiential nature of the spiritual purification of Yogis.
“Having been alighted on the field of love,” Shah Abdul Latif claims, “the more they burn, the purer and the happier they become.”
Inner struggle of purification is described metaphorically as burning, where the fire of love burns away all impurity within.
As the Arabic saying puts it: al-bala`lil-wala` ka`l-lahab li` dh-dhahab, “Affliction is for saintliness the same as are flames for the gold”.
For a Yogi, sickness is a much greater blessing than health. So, Shah Abdul Latif says: “Mother, the community of yogis is always sick.”
The inward orientation of the Yogis necessitates worldly detachment and material poverty — as part of the larger spiritual and psychological process of subduing the lower self (nafs al-ammara). Thus, Shah Abdul Latif sings:
Take nonbeing on your shoulders and do not be like
those who are tied to existence, true yogis are not
like this, says Latif. How can those who maintain
the least connection with the world be called true ascetics?
Dissolving the self (fa`na) to discover the divine Self within (ba’qa) is the goal of the spiritual quest, or the Greater Jihad as enumerated in the Islamic tradition.
Yogis believe it is only through negating the “I” of selfhood that the true tawhid — Divine Unity — can be fully realised.
Duality is illusory, says Latif, so the existence of the individual self is a form of idolatry. True monotheism requires annihilation of the self and the idea of anything existent independent of God is false. Shah Abdul Latif says:
The yogis have destroyed their separate existence,
their business is with the universal. The lodge
where they stay is nonexistence; I will not survive
without them.
Converging paths to the Divine
In Nath terminology, creation is explained as the gradual self-revelation of Shiva’s (Absolute Spirit) inherent shakti (His Unique Power).
Indian scholar Sayyid Athar Rizvi explains the Nath theory of creation as: “The divine Shakti who in the process of cosmic self-manifestation gradually descends from the highest transcendent spiritual plane of Absolute Unity and Bliss to the lowest phenomenal material level of endless diversities and imperfections, again ascends by means of the self-conscious process of Yoga Jnana (knowledge) and Bhakti (devotion).”
Yogic introspection, exercises, and meditation is directed towards such spiritual flight and (re)union of the devotee with the Beloved.
In the Sufi tradition, man is created as a mirror of God’s manifestations, His tajalliyat.
The Sufi Way (tariqa), in a way, is an experiential exegesis of the attributes of Allah (asmaʾu llahi lhusna) revealed in the Holy Quran.
The parallels in the Sufi and Nath theory of creation bring forth a unitive sense of the purpose of man, which is to self-consciously actualise and perfect the divine qualities of God through the annihilation of the individual self.
This spiritual state is called ba’qa or ontological immortality in the Sufi tradition, implying the nonexistence of the individual identity and identification with the universal.
So in Khahori (Yogi Foragers), Shah Abdul Latif sings:
With silent prayer, the Khahoris have searched and
found the divine. With these syllables the lovers
have passed the stage of infinity. United with the
divine, they have become divine, baked by their
master. To them everything appears divine.
They are true lovers who, Schimmel notes, “have touched lahut, the dwelling place of divinity, and have become lahuti themselves.”
According to a famous Islamic tradition, the dwelling place of God is the heart of the believer.
East in Shah Abdul Latif’s poetry symbolises the eternal home of the soul from the World of Exile (i.e. material world).
It is suggested in the very name of one of the chapters on Yogis, Sur Purab, meaning ‘East’.
Travelling eastward, the ascetics find God in their hearts and become lahuti. In Sur Ramakali, Shah Abdul Latif says:
The knees of the sannyasis are like Mount Sinai.
The renouncers do not take their ego with them
to the east, the yogis are draped in the cloak of
mysteries. They are covered from top to toe in
closeness to the divine.
Leaving the ego at the threshold of the spiritual east is the only way to find the divine abode.
The reference of Mount Sinai is interesting in the context of Yogi practices.
Mount Sinai is where God revealed himself to Moses; contextually, it implies that Yogis have a vision of the divine presence in their yogic posture of sitting with their heads supported by their knees.
Shah Abdul Latif says:
For what purpose do the yogis follow this path?
Their hearts are not set on hell, nor do they
desire paradise. They have nothing to do with
unbelievers, and they do not have Islam in their
minds. They stand there saying: “Make the
beloved your own.”
Transcending the outward
The spiritual path of the Yogis transcends religious norms and outward forms of worship.
Irreducible to religious categories, these ascetics are devotees of maddhab-i ishq (Path of Love), which is concerned with the intuitive experience of love.
In the Sufi tradition, Rabi`a al-Adawiyya (d. 801) was the first to express this ideal of seeking neither paradise nor fearing hell, but contemplating only the divine Beloved.
Freed from self, Yogis are beyond faith and infidelity. So, in Sur Ramakali, Shah Abdul Latif says:
Those who wear the loincloth around them do not
perform ablutions. They have heard the call
to prayer that preceded Islam. Abandoning
all other support, the masters are united with
Gorakhnath.
Shah Abdul Latif identifies Yogis as ‘true Muslims’ who completely submit to God. He follows the Quranic tradition of categorising pre-Islamic prophets, such as Noah and Abraham, as ‘Muslims’ — those who truly submit to God.
Generally, Islam refers to the reified religion revealed to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) by God, but the original Quranic usage of islam (submission) refers to the submission of man to God, which is quintessential of true faith.
Shah Abdul Latif’s representation of jogis as ‘Muslims’ refers to this universal, nonsectarian submission that lies at the root of all authentic religious traditions.
Indian Sufi tradition has established precedents of identifying truths about tawhid (Divine Unity) with Indian religions, in particular, with the Nath Yogi tradition.
Shaikh Abdul-Quddus Gangohi, a Chishti Sufi belonging to Radauli in Uttar Pradesh in the 16th century, wrote Rushd Nama which brings forth parallels in the Sufi conception of wahdat al-wujud (Unity of Being) and the philosophy of Gorakhnath.
The conventional religious journey from here to Hereafter is not what the Yogi is after, but the struggle is towards awareness of the divine presence and union with the Beloved here and now. Shah Abdul Latif says:
Their knees are a mihrab, and their bodies are
a mosque. Their hearts point the direction
to Mecca, their bodies circumbulate the
Kaaba. Proclaiming the divine reality they have
renounced the body. The guide is contained in
their hearts, how can they be held accountable for
sin?
Having sanctified their bodies, the jogis turn their heads towards the mihrab (prayer-niche) in contemplation of the Divine Beauty and have found the friend in the heart which “is the only true prayer-niche.”
They have realised that the object of worship dwells in their hearts and they have turned the heart into the Kaaba, the House of God.
Jogis, the pilgrims of Hinglaj, are accepted and admired in Shah Abdul Latif’s Risalo as true pilgrims striving towards the eternal Light.
For Shah Abdul Latif, jogis become the exemplars of true Muslims and mu’mins, of true believers.
The religious inclusivity of Shah Abdul Latif’s poetry is reflective of the Indo-Persian Sufi tradition.
It is therefore no surprise that the three books Shah Abdul Latif carried with him for poetic inspiration were the Quran, Jalaluddin Rumi’s Masnavi and the Sindhi verses of his grandfather, Shah Karim.
Rooted in the Sufi tradition, Shah Abdul Latif’s portrayal of the Nath Yogis represents an ideal of the Greater Jihad against the individual self, which the Prophet of Islam called the “man’s greatest enemy.”
Defying the formal other-ness of the Yogis, Shah Abdul Latif collapses the illusion of such duality through seeing the love of the Beloved reflected in the Nath Yogis.
The Hindutva rhetoric of Adityanath undermines the traditional tenets of the Nath Yogi tradition. The turn towards religious exclusivism is decidedly anti-traditional in espousing modern religious identities.
Prior to the 20th century, Karwoski notes that the political influence of the Nath Yogi community was based on the principles of religious ecumenism and inclusivity.
Religious exclusivism in the Nath Yogi tradition is a modern construct, which contrasts the non-sectarian love as embodied by the jogis of Shah Abdul Latif’s Risalo.
The concluding vai of Sur Purab sums up beautifully the love of Shah Abdul Latif for the jogis:
Lord, may my connection with the yogis not be
broken.
The yogis told me to travel to Hinglaj.
The ascetics took me to the land of the east.
That is the goal of my pilgrimage, and my resting
place; that is my journey.
The masters have shown me my place of pilgrimage
and my resting place.
Indian Parliament Passes Divisive Citizenship Bill, Moving It Closer to Law
The government says it is trying to protect religious minorities from being persecuted in Muslim countries. Indian Muslims say the bill is discriminatory, and protests are spreading.
NEW DELHI — The upper house of the Indian Parliament passed a contentious citizenship bill on Wednesday, bringing a religiously polarizing measure one step closer to law as new protests erupted across the country.
The measure, called the Citizenship Amendment Bill, uses religion as a criterion for determining whether illegal migrants in India can be fast-tracked for citizenship. The bill favors members of all South Asia’s major religions except Islam, and leaders of India’s 200-million-strong Muslim community have called it blatant discrimination.
The Rajya Sabha, India’s version of a senate, approved the bill in a 125-to-105 vote. It next goes to the president’s desk, where it is expected to be signed into law in the coming days.
Opponents of the legislation in India and international rights groups have called the bill a major blow to India’s long-held commitment to a secular democracy. Officials in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government have insisted that the legislation would protect human rights.
“The bill provides expedited consideration for Indian citizenship to persecuted religious minorities already in India from certain contiguous countries,” said Raveesh Kumar, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry. “It seeks to address their current difficulties and meet their basic human rights. Such an initiative should be welcomed, not criticized by those who are genuinely committed to religious freedom.”
The bill is a central piece of a far-reaching agenda by Mr. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, which has long espoused a Hindu-centric worldview.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/worl ... ogin-email
The government says it is trying to protect religious minorities from being persecuted in Muslim countries. Indian Muslims say the bill is discriminatory, and protests are spreading.
NEW DELHI — The upper house of the Indian Parliament passed a contentious citizenship bill on Wednesday, bringing a religiously polarizing measure one step closer to law as new protests erupted across the country.
The measure, called the Citizenship Amendment Bill, uses religion as a criterion for determining whether illegal migrants in India can be fast-tracked for citizenship. The bill favors members of all South Asia’s major religions except Islam, and leaders of India’s 200-million-strong Muslim community have called it blatant discrimination.
The Rajya Sabha, India’s version of a senate, approved the bill in a 125-to-105 vote. It next goes to the president’s desk, where it is expected to be signed into law in the coming days.
Opponents of the legislation in India and international rights groups have called the bill a major blow to India’s long-held commitment to a secular democracy. Officials in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government have insisted that the legislation would protect human rights.
“The bill provides expedited consideration for Indian citizenship to persecuted religious minorities already in India from certain contiguous countries,” said Raveesh Kumar, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry. “It seeks to address their current difficulties and meet their basic human rights. Such an initiative should be welcomed, not criticized by those who are genuinely committed to religious freedom.”
The bill is a central piece of a far-reaching agenda by Mr. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, which has long espoused a Hindu-centric worldview.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/worl ... ogin-email
India protests spread over 'anti-Muslim' law
Slideshow by Photo Services:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/in ... =AAK6tLA|1
Fresh protests were expected across India on Monday over a new citizenship law seen as anti-Muslim, after clashes overnight in the capital and days of unrest in the northeast that left six people dead.
The bill fast-tracks citizenship for non-Muslim immigrants from three neighbouring countries, but critics allege it is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda to marginalise India's 200 million Muslims -- something he denies.
Slideshow by Photo Services:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/in ... =AAK6tLA|1
Fresh protests were expected across India on Monday over a new citizenship law seen as anti-Muslim, after clashes overnight in the capital and days of unrest in the northeast that left six people dead.
The bill fast-tracks citizenship for non-Muslim immigrants from three neighbouring countries, but critics allege it is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda to marginalise India's 200 million Muslims -- something he denies.
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swamidada_2
- Posts: 297
- Joined: Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:18 pm
On your updated front page dated Jan 13,2020 next to Dr. Karim Gill's munqabat there was a recorded interview of Mr.Tarek Fatah by Vivek Sinha on 3rd Jan, who is a sworn in enemy of Pakistan and Islam. He was born in Pakistan, left for Saudia in 70's, worked there for 10 years then moved to Canada, became Canadian citizen, at present living in India appearing on various tv channels and news papers outlets speaking against Pakistan and Islam. He is a darling of India nowadays, I know him well. I think it is not appropriate that making "Ismaili.net as a political blog". You may liked him because in beginning paragraph, he said Ismailis were among who created Pakistan because Jinnah was follower of Aga Khan. In one of other interview on an Indian channel he described Muhammad Ali Jinnah as alcoholic consuming pork. He has objection, why Jinnah's photo still hanging in Ali Gadah University, or why on gate of Jamia Milliya University Dehli is inscribed Allahu Akbar.
Mostly Ismailis in western countries do not know proper history and political dynamics of subcontinent. According to a historical account MSMS was originally against partition. Some one read 'India in Transition' published in 1918 written by MSMS.
Sindh was merged with Pakistan by ONE Vote because of Mr. G.M Syed, for which he regretted before his death that he made blunder for fate of Sindhis, otherwise Sindh should have been part of India.
Since partition pakistan's problem with India is WATER. Water comes through Himaliyas passing through Kashmir entering Punjab (SINDH BASIN). Though there is a treaty between two countries on water resources, but India made two vast and large dams restricting water to Pakistan, because of this in coming years there can be drought in Pakistan. Lately Mr. Modi threatening Pakistan to stop water entering into Pakistan. Hazar Imam is a party because he has a stake in land surrounding Hunza Valley, Gilgit, Baltistan, and some parts of Kashmir under Pakistan control where Ismailis live.
Mostly Ismailis in western countries do not know proper history and political dynamics of subcontinent. According to a historical account MSMS was originally against partition. Some one read 'India in Transition' published in 1918 written by MSMS.
Sindh was merged with Pakistan by ONE Vote because of Mr. G.M Syed, for which he regretted before his death that he made blunder for fate of Sindhis, otherwise Sindh should have been part of India.
Since partition pakistan's problem with India is WATER. Water comes through Himaliyas passing through Kashmir entering Punjab (SINDH BASIN). Though there is a treaty between two countries on water resources, but India made two vast and large dams restricting water to Pakistan, because of this in coming years there can be drought in Pakistan. Lately Mr. Modi threatening Pakistan to stop water entering into Pakistan. Hazar Imam is a party because he has a stake in land surrounding Hunza Valley, Gilgit, Baltistan, and some parts of Kashmir under Pakistan control where Ismailis live.
Narendra Modi stokes divisions in the world’s biggest democracy
India’s 200m Muslims fear the prime minister is building a Hindu state
Last month India changed the law to make it easier for adherents of all the subcontinent’s religions, except Islam, to acquire citizenship. At the same time, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp) wants to compile a register of all India’s 1.3bn citizens, as a means to hunt down illegal immigrants (see Briefing). Those sound like technicalities, but many of the country’s 200m Muslims do not have the papers to prove they are Indian, so they risk being made stateless. Ominously, the government has ordered the building of camps to detain those caught in the net.
You might think that the bjp’s scheme was a miscalculation. It has sparked widespread and lasting protests. Students, secularists, even the largely fawning media have begun to speak out against Narendra Modi, the prime minister, for his apparent determination to transform India from a tolerant, multi-religious place into a chauvinist Hindu state.
More...
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/ ... a/386311/n
India’s 200m Muslims fear the prime minister is building a Hindu state
Last month India changed the law to make it easier for adherents of all the subcontinent’s religions, except Islam, to acquire citizenship. At the same time, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp) wants to compile a register of all India’s 1.3bn citizens, as a means to hunt down illegal immigrants (see Briefing). Those sound like technicalities, but many of the country’s 200m Muslims do not have the papers to prove they are Indian, so they risk being made stateless. Ominously, the government has ordered the building of camps to detain those caught in the net.
You might think that the bjp’s scheme was a miscalculation. It has sparked widespread and lasting protests. Students, secularists, even the largely fawning media have begun to speak out against Narendra Modi, the prime minister, for his apparent determination to transform India from a tolerant, multi-religious place into a chauvinist Hindu state.
More...
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/ ... a/386311/n
Modi Lost in Delhi. It Doesn’t Matter.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party have ensured that no political parties speak about equal citizenship and political rights of the country’s Muslims.
NEW DELHI — On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party suffered a major defeat in elections for the Delhi state legislature. Amit Shah, the prime minister’s confidante and the country’s home minister, led a highly divisive and sectarian campaign foregrounding Hindu nationalism and demonizing the city’s Muslims, and tried to paint the opposition Aam Aadmi Party and its leaders as treasonous.
Yet out of Delhi’s 70 seats, Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah’s B.J.P. won a mere eight seats, and the A.A.P., led by Arvind Kejriwal, who has been the chief minister of Delhi since 2015, won 62.
Mr. Kejriwal, an anti-graft activist turned politician, focused the electoral campaign of his party on his record of governance — the significant improvement he made to the delivery of services in public hospitals, the quality of education and infrastructure in schools, and the cost of electricity in Delhi.
Delhi chose Mr. Kejriwal for his performance as chief minister. While the B.J.P. plastered Mr. Modi’s face across the city, it did not offer any candidates for the Delhi state government who were more impressive or convincing than Mr. Kejriwal and his team.
Mr. Modi and his party might have lost an election but they won the ideological battle by setting the terms of electoral politics: For electoral success in India, it is no longer acceptable to speak about equal citizenship and political rights of India’s Muslims or speak out against the violence and hostility they encounter.
The election in Delhi was held while India has been witnessing continuous protests against a citizenship law passed by Mr. Modi’s government in December that makes religion the basis for citizenship. The new law discriminates against Muslims and advances the Hindu nationalist agenda of reshaping India into a majoritarian Hindu nation.
Mr. Shah, the home minister, had insisted the citizenship law would be followed by a National Register of Citizens, or N.R.C., which would require citizens to submit a set of documents to prove they are Indians. India’s Muslims and liberals worried that the citizenship register would become a tool to exclude or threaten to exclude Indian Muslims from citizenship.
Over the past two months, protests against the citizenship law and the impending N.R.C. spread across the country, from university campuses to poor Muslim neighborhoods, from distant border states to starry avenues of Bollywood.
On Dec. 15, the police in Delhi, which reports to Mr. Modi’s government, violently attacked students at Jamia Millia Islamia, a university with a large number of Muslim students. After the police assault, women from Shaheen Bagh, a working-class, mostly Muslim neighborhood adjacent to university, gathered in protest against the citizenship law and blocked a major road passing through the area. A tent was set up on the road and the protest quickly took on the air of a defiant carnival.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/opin ... 0920200213
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party have ensured that no political parties speak about equal citizenship and political rights of the country’s Muslims.
NEW DELHI — On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party suffered a major defeat in elections for the Delhi state legislature. Amit Shah, the prime minister’s confidante and the country’s home minister, led a highly divisive and sectarian campaign foregrounding Hindu nationalism and demonizing the city’s Muslims, and tried to paint the opposition Aam Aadmi Party and its leaders as treasonous.
Yet out of Delhi’s 70 seats, Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah’s B.J.P. won a mere eight seats, and the A.A.P., led by Arvind Kejriwal, who has been the chief minister of Delhi since 2015, won 62.
Mr. Kejriwal, an anti-graft activist turned politician, focused the electoral campaign of his party on his record of governance — the significant improvement he made to the delivery of services in public hospitals, the quality of education and infrastructure in schools, and the cost of electricity in Delhi.
Delhi chose Mr. Kejriwal for his performance as chief minister. While the B.J.P. plastered Mr. Modi’s face across the city, it did not offer any candidates for the Delhi state government who were more impressive or convincing than Mr. Kejriwal and his team.
Mr. Modi and his party might have lost an election but they won the ideological battle by setting the terms of electoral politics: For electoral success in India, it is no longer acceptable to speak about equal citizenship and political rights of India’s Muslims or speak out against the violence and hostility they encounter.
The election in Delhi was held while India has been witnessing continuous protests against a citizenship law passed by Mr. Modi’s government in December that makes religion the basis for citizenship. The new law discriminates against Muslims and advances the Hindu nationalist agenda of reshaping India into a majoritarian Hindu nation.
Mr. Shah, the home minister, had insisted the citizenship law would be followed by a National Register of Citizens, or N.R.C., which would require citizens to submit a set of documents to prove they are Indians. India’s Muslims and liberals worried that the citizenship register would become a tool to exclude or threaten to exclude Indian Muslims from citizenship.
Over the past two months, protests against the citizenship law and the impending N.R.C. spread across the country, from university campuses to poor Muslim neighborhoods, from distant border states to starry avenues of Bollywood.
On Dec. 15, the police in Delhi, which reports to Mr. Modi’s government, violently attacked students at Jamia Millia Islamia, a university with a large number of Muslim students. After the police assault, women from Shaheen Bagh, a working-class, mostly Muslim neighborhood adjacent to university, gathered in protest against the citizenship law and blocked a major road passing through the area. A tent was set up on the road and the protest quickly took on the air of a defiant carnival.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/opin ... 0920200213
In India, Modi’s Policies Have Lit a Fuse
Many Indians believed it was only a matter of time before Hindu nationalism provoked the kind of bloodshed that exploded in New Delhi.
NEW DELHI — This past week, as neighborhoods in India’s capital burned and religiously driven bloodletting consumed more than 40 lives, most of them Muslim, India’s government was quick to say that the violence was spontaneous.
But as reality has settled in, critics say the killings were neither spontaneous nor without warning: They were inevitable.
Step by step, they argue, policies enacted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi have entrenched impunity, captured institutions and fanned religious hatred — methodically building a dangerous Hindu-nationalist ecosystem. It was only a matter of time till something blew up.
“Supporters of the government feel enabled to commit all kinds of crimes, because they feel they have political protection,’’ said Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia director for Human Rights Watch.
Mr. Modi and his party, she said, “have allowed a culture of hate and bigotry to prevail.’’
Neighborhoods in the capital that for generations had been integrated between Hindus, who make up the vast majority of India’s population, and Muslims, who compose less than 15 percent, are tearing apart along religious lines.
Many Muslims are now leaving, hoisting their unburned things on their heads and trudging away from streets that still smell of smoke.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/worl ... 3053090302
Many Indians believed it was only a matter of time before Hindu nationalism provoked the kind of bloodshed that exploded in New Delhi.
NEW DELHI — This past week, as neighborhoods in India’s capital burned and religiously driven bloodletting consumed more than 40 lives, most of them Muslim, India’s government was quick to say that the violence was spontaneous.
But as reality has settled in, critics say the killings were neither spontaneous nor without warning: They were inevitable.
Step by step, they argue, policies enacted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi have entrenched impunity, captured institutions and fanned religious hatred — methodically building a dangerous Hindu-nationalist ecosystem. It was only a matter of time till something blew up.
“Supporters of the government feel enabled to commit all kinds of crimes, because they feel they have political protection,’’ said Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia director for Human Rights Watch.
Mr. Modi and his party, she said, “have allowed a culture of hate and bigotry to prevail.’’
Neighborhoods in the capital that for generations had been integrated between Hindus, who make up the vast majority of India’s population, and Muslims, who compose less than 15 percent, are tearing apart along religious lines.
Many Muslims are now leaving, hoisting their unburned things on their heads and trudging away from streets that still smell of smoke.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/worl ... 3053090302
‘If We Kill You, Nothing Will Happen’: How Delhi’s Police Turned Against Muslims
NEW DELHI — Kaushar Ali, a house painter, was trying to get home when he ran into a battle.
Hindu and Muslim mobs were hurling rocks at each other, blocking a street he needed to cross to get to his children. Mr. Ali, who is Muslim, said that he turned to some police officers for help. That was his mistake.
The officers threw him onto the ground, he said, and cracked him on the head. They started beating him and several other Muslims. As the men lay bleeding, begging for mercy — one of them died two days later from internal injuries — the officers laughed, jabbed them with their sticks and made them sing the national anthem. That abuse, on Feb. 24, was captured on video.
“The police were toying with us,” Mr. Ali said. He recalled them saying, “Even if we kill you, nothing will happen to us.”
So far, they have been right.
India has suffered its worst sectarian bloodshed in years, in what many here see as the inevitable result of Hindu extremism that has flourished under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His party has embraced a militant brand of Hindu nationalism and its leaders have openly vilified Indian Muslims. In recent months Mr. Modi has presided over a raft of policies widely seen as anti-Muslim, such as erasing the statehood of what had been India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir.
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https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/if ... ailsignout
NEW DELHI — Kaushar Ali, a house painter, was trying to get home when he ran into a battle.
Hindu and Muslim mobs were hurling rocks at each other, blocking a street he needed to cross to get to his children. Mr. Ali, who is Muslim, said that he turned to some police officers for help. That was his mistake.
The officers threw him onto the ground, he said, and cracked him on the head. They started beating him and several other Muslims. As the men lay bleeding, begging for mercy — one of them died two days later from internal injuries — the officers laughed, jabbed them with their sticks and made them sing the national anthem. That abuse, on Feb. 24, was captured on video.
“The police were toying with us,” Mr. Ali said. He recalled them saying, “Even if we kill you, nothing will happen to us.”
So far, they have been right.
India has suffered its worst sectarian bloodshed in years, in what many here see as the inevitable result of Hindu extremism that has flourished under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His party has embraced a militant brand of Hindu nationalism and its leaders have openly vilified Indian Muslims. In recent months Mr. Modi has presided over a raft of policies widely seen as anti-Muslim, such as erasing the statehood of what had been India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir.
Links to videos and more...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/if ... ailsignout
Islam influencing India
hussain Randathani kallen
Islam had played a great role in India contributing its Equality and brother hood to do away the caste ridden social structure, and enriching the Indian culture with Arabian and Persian ones. Often the contribution of Islam in India is seldom brought to discussion by Historians and facts are undermined to bring communal discords and differences. When we analyse the facts it is crystal clear that Islam propagated by Sufis had contributed to enrich the Indian culture. In the sphere of Arts, literature, music, customs and ceremonies and life styles Islam had completely changed the Indian culture.
The paper can be accessed at:
https://www.academia.edu/38903125/Islam ... view-paper
hussain Randathani kallen
Islam had played a great role in India contributing its Equality and brother hood to do away the caste ridden social structure, and enriching the Indian culture with Arabian and Persian ones. Often the contribution of Islam in India is seldom brought to discussion by Historians and facts are undermined to bring communal discords and differences. When we analyse the facts it is crystal clear that Islam propagated by Sufis had contributed to enrich the Indian culture. In the sphere of Arts, literature, music, customs and ceremonies and life styles Islam had completely changed the Indian culture.
The paper can be accessed at:
https://www.academia.edu/38903125/Islam ... view-paper