National Meet ‘Ham Jo Tareek Rahon Main Marey Gaye’
Tracing Sangh Terror Links And Storiesof Innocent Muslim Boys’
New Delhi, January 28, 2011
-*Investigate Hindutva terror with sincere efforts
-*Reinvestigate all terror cases of last two decades
-*Release innocent Muslim boys
-*Issue an apology to the innocent victims
-*Rehabilitate them immediately
full text:
http://www.anhadin.net/article121.html
|
January 29, 2011
January 28, 2011
Sabarimala: Makar Jyothi: Man Made 'Divinity'
by Ram Puniyani
One has heard that faith can move the mountains, but this year a mountain could not stand the weight of faith. Tragically on 14th Jan, 2011, a hillock where thousands of devotees had congregated to have a glimpse of Makar Jyothi, due to the melee of the devotees, the hillock crumbled resulting in the stampede and death of 102 people. Makar Jyothi is supposed to be the divine light, appearing in the sky to pay tribute to lord Ayyapa. Similarly at the same place 52 people died in 1998 on the same date.
This raises multiple questions. It goes without saying that the government has to ensure that the civic arrangements have to be perfected even in the matters related to faith. Be it Kumbh mela or Haj, while the government should not interfere in the people’s choices, the civic arrangements can not just be left to the bodies managing these events. There is a small problem here, some managements are very rigid and one recalls that at Sabrimala, few years ago the temple authorities refused to let a woman IAS officer, who was supposed to ensure that arrangements are in place, was refused entry to the temple on the ground that women of menstruating age group (15-45) are not permitted to enter the temple as Lord Ayyappa is a bachelor!
Sabrimala congregation of the 14th April is the second biggest religious congregation in the country. While there are various diverse interpretation of the history of Sabrimala shrine and Lord Ayyapa, one thing is very clear and that is the devotees also pay the homage to Waver, a Muslim. He is addressed as Waver Swami by the pilgrims. The Hindus believe that they must first visit this Waver mosque.
Some dimensions of Sabrimala episode are very shocking to say the least. The divine light is supposed to be the Aarti, devotional ritual with a lamp and song, offered by Sages to Lord Ayyappa. As such the reality is that the light is due to the huge chunks of camphor placed in urns which are burnt by the state electricity board officials on that day. Earlier Adivasis used to create fire as a devotion to the Lord. Many decades earlier the Adivasi ritual was going in to oblivion. This ritual has been taken over by the Temple trust, Ayyappa Devaswam, and through the state complicity burning of camphor was started at good distance from the temple. It was propagated that it is a divine light and different stories started being associated with the light. Gradually it was popularized that watching the divine light is a good omen, for which thousands and later lakhs of pilgrims started making a beeline for the area. To have the vantage point of view the people started congregating on the hill, which is crowded to the hilt. This also brought in good amount of money as the offering to the temple trust.
The government cannot be excused in any way for the lapse in the arrangement and being part of camphor burning to create ‘divine light’. The temple trust can neither be excused for continuing this fraud, nor for interfering in the Government work, when it makes the rule that Government female officials cannot enter the precincts of this place for making the arrangements. With such massive loss of lives, the responsibility of the tragedy should be squarely placed on the heads of the authorities concerned. One is shocked to know that the minister in charge of temple affairs in Kerala has been aware of this fact but has not done anything to stop the man-made light being propagated off as the divine light inviting the hoards of pilgrims from all over. The Devaswom Minister G Sudhakaran openly said a couple of years ago that “"I was present on the Makaravillukku day at the Sabarimala last season. I saw the celestial star and it is at that very time that Makaravilakku is lighted. There is no doubt about it that it is lighted by the men.''
This also raises larger questions about the acts of our authorities, including the religious trusts. While one respects the faith of devotees, what does one do if one knows clearly that the particular event is man made and is being passed off as a divine happening. Our Constitution instructs us to promote the rational thought and scientific temper. In Kerala various groups working for rational thought have been struggling to bring to light the truth behind this phenomenon. They have been campaigning to stop it, but to no avail. Faith often can be a big support system for society but one has also to know the difference between faith and blind faith. If we know the rational explanation about a phenomenon, should we sit over it or make it public. One also recalls that faith was constructed around the scientific phenomenon of ‘capillary action’ to spread the rumor that Lord Ganesha idol is drinking milk! And tons of milk went down the drain, with some top politicians endorsing the phenomenon, violating the basic norm of Indian Constitution.
The most difficult part of explaining matters of faith and opposing blind faith is the fact that faith is associated with religion and so a Benny Hinn will go on to give religious veneer to the well understood psychological phenomenon of hypnosis or hypnotherapy. Most of those struggling for social transformation for better society, better rights for deprived have opposed the blind faith and bypassed faith based understanding. Starting form Charvak of Lokayat tradition, to Lord Gautam Buddha, to the saints like Kabir, Tukaram to Mahatma Jotiba Phule and Dr Ambedkar all called for promotion of rational thought in their own way. Gandhi while recognizing the state of people in the society talked in the language of religion but kept the faith based rituals miles away. Nehru was most forthright in his opposition to the misuse of faith and talked for promotion of scientific temper, something which is not much in vogue in current times. Currently, misuse of faith is the order of the day. Nehru’s emphasis on scientific temper and his opposition to blind faith has been a major pillar for growth of Modern India. One must see the complex situation prevailing today where we need to respect the people with all their frailties and still try to also put forth the rational view of things in an honest way.
One has heard that faith can move the mountains, but this year a mountain could not stand the weight of faith. Tragically on 14th Jan, 2011, a hillock where thousands of devotees had congregated to have a glimpse of Makar Jyothi, due to the melee of the devotees, the hillock crumbled resulting in the stampede and death of 102 people. Makar Jyothi is supposed to be the divine light, appearing in the sky to pay tribute to lord Ayyapa. Similarly at the same place 52 people died in 1998 on the same date.
This raises multiple questions. It goes without saying that the government has to ensure that the civic arrangements have to be perfected even in the matters related to faith. Be it Kumbh mela or Haj, while the government should not interfere in the people’s choices, the civic arrangements can not just be left to the bodies managing these events. There is a small problem here, some managements are very rigid and one recalls that at Sabrimala, few years ago the temple authorities refused to let a woman IAS officer, who was supposed to ensure that arrangements are in place, was refused entry to the temple on the ground that women of menstruating age group (15-45) are not permitted to enter the temple as Lord Ayyappa is a bachelor!
Sabrimala congregation of the 14th April is the second biggest religious congregation in the country. While there are various diverse interpretation of the history of Sabrimala shrine and Lord Ayyapa, one thing is very clear and that is the devotees also pay the homage to Waver, a Muslim. He is addressed as Waver Swami by the pilgrims. The Hindus believe that they must first visit this Waver mosque.
Some dimensions of Sabrimala episode are very shocking to say the least. The divine light is supposed to be the Aarti, devotional ritual with a lamp and song, offered by Sages to Lord Ayyappa. As such the reality is that the light is due to the huge chunks of camphor placed in urns which are burnt by the state electricity board officials on that day. Earlier Adivasis used to create fire as a devotion to the Lord. Many decades earlier the Adivasi ritual was going in to oblivion. This ritual has been taken over by the Temple trust, Ayyappa Devaswam, and through the state complicity burning of camphor was started at good distance from the temple. It was propagated that it is a divine light and different stories started being associated with the light. Gradually it was popularized that watching the divine light is a good omen, for which thousands and later lakhs of pilgrims started making a beeline for the area. To have the vantage point of view the people started congregating on the hill, which is crowded to the hilt. This also brought in good amount of money as the offering to the temple trust.
The government cannot be excused in any way for the lapse in the arrangement and being part of camphor burning to create ‘divine light’. The temple trust can neither be excused for continuing this fraud, nor for interfering in the Government work, when it makes the rule that Government female officials cannot enter the precincts of this place for making the arrangements. With such massive loss of lives, the responsibility of the tragedy should be squarely placed on the heads of the authorities concerned. One is shocked to know that the minister in charge of temple affairs in Kerala has been aware of this fact but has not done anything to stop the man-made light being propagated off as the divine light inviting the hoards of pilgrims from all over. The Devaswom Minister G Sudhakaran openly said a couple of years ago that “"I was present on the Makaravillukku day at the Sabarimala last season. I saw the celestial star and it is at that very time that Makaravilakku is lighted. There is no doubt about it that it is lighted by the men.''
This also raises larger questions about the acts of our authorities, including the religious trusts. While one respects the faith of devotees, what does one do if one knows clearly that the particular event is man made and is being passed off as a divine happening. Our Constitution instructs us to promote the rational thought and scientific temper. In Kerala various groups working for rational thought have been struggling to bring to light the truth behind this phenomenon. They have been campaigning to stop it, but to no avail. Faith often can be a big support system for society but one has also to know the difference between faith and blind faith. If we know the rational explanation about a phenomenon, should we sit over it or make it public. One also recalls that faith was constructed around the scientific phenomenon of ‘capillary action’ to spread the rumor that Lord Ganesha idol is drinking milk! And tons of milk went down the drain, with some top politicians endorsing the phenomenon, violating the basic norm of Indian Constitution.
The most difficult part of explaining matters of faith and opposing blind faith is the fact that faith is associated with religion and so a Benny Hinn will go on to give religious veneer to the well understood psychological phenomenon of hypnosis or hypnotherapy. Most of those struggling for social transformation for better society, better rights for deprived have opposed the blind faith and bypassed faith based understanding. Starting form Charvak of Lokayat tradition, to Lord Gautam Buddha, to the saints like Kabir, Tukaram to Mahatma Jotiba Phule and Dr Ambedkar all called for promotion of rational thought in their own way. Gandhi while recognizing the state of people in the society talked in the language of religion but kept the faith based rituals miles away. Nehru was most forthright in his opposition to the misuse of faith and talked for promotion of scientific temper, something which is not much in vogue in current times. Currently, misuse of faith is the order of the day. Nehru’s emphasis on scientific temper and his opposition to blind faith has been a major pillar for growth of Modern India. One must see the complex situation prevailing today where we need to respect the people with all their frailties and still try to also put forth the rational view of things in an honest way.
January 26, 2011
‘Owning’ yoga
Himal Southasian, January 2011
by Meera Nanda
Yoga is to North America what McDonalds is to India: both are foreign implants gone native. Today, anywhere in the US, you are bound to run into neighbourhood health clubs, spas and even churches and synagogues offering yoga classes. Some 16 million Americans do some form of yoga, primarily as a part of their exercise and fitness routine. Thus, when everyday Americans talk about yoga, they mostly mean physical, or hatha yoga, involving stretches, breathing and bodily postures, or asanas. Many styles of postural yoga pioneered by India-origin teachers are thriving, including the Iyengar and Sivananada schools, the Ashtanga Vinyasa or ‘power yoga’ of Pattabhi Jois, and ‘hot yoga’ recently copyrighted by Bikram Chaudhary. The more meditational forms of yoga popularised by the disciples of Vivekananda, Sivananda and others are less popular. Americans’ preference for postural over meditational yoga is not all that unique: In India, too, hundreds of millions follow Baba Ramdev, who teaches a purely medicalised, asana-oriented yoga.
By and large, the US yoga industry does not hide the origins of what it teaches. On the contrary, in a country that is so young and so constantly in flux, yoga’s presumed antiquity (‘5000-year-old exercise system’, etc.) and its connections with Eastern spirituality have become part of the sales pitch. Thus, doing namastes, intoning ‘om’ and chanting Sanskrit mantras have become a part of the experience of doing yoga in America. Many yoga studios use Indian classical or kirtan music, incense, signs of om and other paraphernalia of the Subcontinent to create a suitably ‘spiritual’ ambience. Iyengar yoga schools begin their sessions with a hymn to Patanjali, the second-century composer of the Yoga Sutras, and some have even installed his murthis. This Hinduisation is not entirely decorative, either, as yoga instructors are required to study Hindu philosophy and scripture in order to get a license to teach yoga.
One would think that yoga’s immense popularity and Hinduisation would gladden the hearts of Hindu immigrants to the US. But in fact, the leading Hindu advocacy organisation in the US, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), is not swelling with pride. On the contrary, it has recently accused the American yoga industry of ‘stealing’ yoga from Hinduism. Millions of Americans will be shocked to learn that they are committing ‘intellectual property theft’ whenever they do an asana, because they do not acknowledge their debt to ‘yoga’s mother tradition’. HAF’s co-founder and chief spokesperson, Aseem Shukla, is now exhorting his fellow Hindus to ‘take back yoga and reclaim the intellectual property of their spiritual heritage.’
The take-back-yoga campaigners are not impressed with the growing visibility of Hindu symbols and rituals in yoga and other cultural institutions in the US. They still find Hindu-phobia lurking everywhere they look. They want Americans to think of yoga, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the great Vedas when they think of Hinduism, instead of the old stereotypes of caste, cows and curry. They would rather that, to paraphrase Shukla, Hinduism is linked less with ‘holy cows than Gomukhasana,’ a reference to a particularly arduous asana; less with the ‘colourful and harrowing wandering sadhus’ than with ‘the spiritual inspiration of Patanjali’. It seems that this yoga-reclamation campaign is less about yoga and more about the Indian diaspora’s strange mix of defensiveness, combined with an exaggerated sense of the excellence of the elite, Sanskritic, aspects of Hindu religion and culture.
The ‘who owns yoga’ debate gained worldwide attention in late November, when the New York Times carried a front-page feature on the issue. But the dispute started earlier this year, with a battle of blogs hosted online by the Washington Post between HAF’s Shukla and the New Age guru, Deepak Chopra. Shukla complained of the yoga establishment shunning the ‘H-word’ while making its fortunes out of Hindu ideas and practices. Chopra, who shuns the Hindu label, instead describing himself as an ‘Advaita Vedantist’, declared that Hinduism had no patent on yoga. He argued that yoga existed in ‘consciousness and consciousness alone’ much before Hinduism, just like wine and bread existed before Jesus Christ’s Last Supper, implying that Hindus had as much claim over yoga as Christians had over bread and wine. Shukla called Chopra a ‘philosophical profiteer’ who did not honour his Hindu heritage, while Chopra accused Shukla and his foundation of Hindu-fundamentalist bias.
Neither eternal nor Vedic
This ‘debate’ is really about two equally fundamentalist views of Hindu history. The underlying objective is to draw an unbroken line connecting the 21st-century yogic postures with the nearly 2000-year-old Yoga Sutras, and tie both to the supposedly 5000-year-old Vedas. The only difference is that, for Chopra, yoga existed before Hinduism, while Shukla and HAF want to claim the entire five millennia for the glory of Hinduism. For Chopra, yoga is a part of a ‘timeless Eastern wisdom’, while for HAF, ‘Yoga and Vedas are synonymous, and are as eternal as they are contemporaneous.’
The reality is that yoga as we know it is neither ‘eternal’ nor synonymous with the Vedas or the Yoga Sutras. On the contrary, modern yoga was born in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is a child of the Hindu Renaissance and Indian nationalism in which Western ideas about science, evolution, eugenics, health and physical fitness played as crucial a role as the ‘mother tradition’. In the massive, multi-level hybridisation that took place during this period, the spiritual aspects of yoga and tantra were rationalised, largely along the Theosophical ideas of ‘spiritual science’ introduced into India by the US-origin, India-based Theosophical Society, and internalised by Swami Vivekananda, who led the yoga renaissance.
In turn, the physical aspects of yoga were hybridised with drills, gymnastics and body-building techniques introduced from Sweden, Denmark, England and other Western countries. These innovations were creatively grafted on the Yoga Sutras – which has been correctly described by Agehananda Bharati, the Austria-born Hindu monk-mystic, as ‘the yoga canon for people who have accepted Brahmin theology’ – to create an impression of 5000 years worth of continuity where none really exists. HAF’s current insistence is thus part of a false-advertising campaign that has been going on for much of the 20th century.
Contrary to widespread impressions, the vast majority of asanas taught by modern yoga gurus are nowhere described in the ancient texts. The highly ritualistic, yagna-oriented Vedas have nothing to say about Patanjali’s quest for experiencing pure consciousness. Indeed, out of the 195 sutras that make up the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali devotes barely three short sutras to asanas. The Mahabharata mentions asanas only twice out of 900 references to yoga, and the Bhagvat Gita does not mention them at all.
There are, of course asana-centred, hatha-yoga texts. But they were authored by precisely those matted-haired, ash-smeared ‘harrowing’ sadhus that the HAF wants to banish from the Western imagination. Indeed, if any Hindu tradition can at all claim a patent on postural yoga, it is these caste-defying, ganja-smoking, sexually permissive, Shiva- and shakti-worshipping sorcerers, alchemists and Tantriks who were cowherds, potters and such. They undertook arduous physical austerities not because they sought to transcend the material world, but because they wanted magical powers (siddhis) to control their bodies and the rest of the material world.
Krishnamacharya lynchpin
The problem for historians of modern yoga is that even these medieval hatha-yoga texts describe only a small fraction of modern yogic postures taught today – Iyengar’s Light on Yoga alone teaches 200 asanas. The 14th-century Hatha Yoga Pradipika lists only 15 asanas, as do the 17th-century Gheranda Samhita and Shiva Samhita.
Given that there is so little ancient tradition upon which to stand, unverifiable claims of ancient-but-now-lost texts have been promoted. The Ashtanga Vinyasa system of Pattabhi Jois, for example, is allegedly based on a palm-leaf manuscript called the Yoga Kurunta that Jois’s teacher, renowned yoga master T Krishnamacharya (1888-1989), unearthed in a Calcutta library. But this manuscript has reportedly been eaten by ants, and today not even a copy of it exists. Another ‘ancient’ text, the Yoga Rahasya – which no one has been able to trace either – was supposedly dictated to Krishnamacharya in a trance by the ghost of an ancestor who had been dead nearly a millennium. Such are the grounds on which rest Hinduism’s intellectual property rights to yoga.
Furthermore, new research has brought to light intriguing historical documents and oral histories that raise serious doubts about the ‘ancient’ lineage of Ashatanga Vinyasa of Pattabhi Jois and Iyengar yoga. Both Jois and Iyengar learned yoga from Krishnamacharya during the late 1930s, when he directed a yogasala in a wing of the Jaganmohan palace of the Maharaja of Mysore, Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV (1884-1940). The maharaja was also a great cultural innovator, welcoming positive innovations from the West and incorporating them into his social programmes. Promoting physical education was one of his passions, and under his rein Mysore became the hub of a revival of physical culture for the whole country. He hired Krishnamacharya primarily to teach yoga to the young princes of the royal family, but also funded him and his protégés to travel throughout the Subcontinent giving yoga demonstrations. In turn, this encouraged an enormous popular revival of yoga.
Indeed, Mysore’s royal family had a long-standing interest in hatha yoga. An ancestor of the maharaja, Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar III (1799-1868) is credited with composing an exquisitely illustrated manual, titled Sritattvanidhi, discovered by a Swedish yoga student named Norman Sjoman only during the mid-1980s. Both Sjoman and Mark Singleton, a US-based scholar who has interviewed many of those associated with the Mysore Palace during its 1930s heyday, believe that the seeds of modern yoga lie in the innovative style of the Sritattvanidhi. Krishnamacharya was familiar with this text, and carried on the innovation by adding a variety of Western gymnastics and drills to the routines. Interestingly, Sjoman has excerpted the Western gymnastics manual that was available to Krishnamacharya – much of which, he claims, found its way into Krishnamacharya’s teachings. Further, Singleton argues that at least 28 exercises included in a Danish manual popular at the time were ‘strikingly similar (often identical)’ to yoga postures popularised by Jois and Iyengar’s Light on Yoga. Again, the link was Krishnamacharya.
Today, the shrill claims from HAF about Westerners ‘stealing’ yoga cover up the tremendous amount of cross-breeding and hybridisation that has given birth to yoga as we know it. Indeed, contemporary yoga is a unique example of a truly global innovation, in which Eastern and Western practices merged to produce something that is valued and cherished around the world. Whether ancient, medieval or modern, Hinduism has no special claims on yoga. To pretend otherwise is not only churlish, but simply untrue.
--Meera Nanda is a philosopher of science who initially trained in biology. Her most recent book is The God Market: How globalization is making India more Hindu.
by Meera Nanda
Yoga is to North America what McDonalds is to India: both are foreign implants gone native. Today, anywhere in the US, you are bound to run into neighbourhood health clubs, spas and even churches and synagogues offering yoga classes. Some 16 million Americans do some form of yoga, primarily as a part of their exercise and fitness routine. Thus, when everyday Americans talk about yoga, they mostly mean physical, or hatha yoga, involving stretches, breathing and bodily postures, or asanas. Many styles of postural yoga pioneered by India-origin teachers are thriving, including the Iyengar and Sivananada schools, the Ashtanga Vinyasa or ‘power yoga’ of Pattabhi Jois, and ‘hot yoga’ recently copyrighted by Bikram Chaudhary. The more meditational forms of yoga popularised by the disciples of Vivekananda, Sivananda and others are less popular. Americans’ preference for postural over meditational yoga is not all that unique: In India, too, hundreds of millions follow Baba Ramdev, who teaches a purely medicalised, asana-oriented yoga.
By and large, the US yoga industry does not hide the origins of what it teaches. On the contrary, in a country that is so young and so constantly in flux, yoga’s presumed antiquity (‘5000-year-old exercise system’, etc.) and its connections with Eastern spirituality have become part of the sales pitch. Thus, doing namastes, intoning ‘om’ and chanting Sanskrit mantras have become a part of the experience of doing yoga in America. Many yoga studios use Indian classical or kirtan music, incense, signs of om and other paraphernalia of the Subcontinent to create a suitably ‘spiritual’ ambience. Iyengar yoga schools begin their sessions with a hymn to Patanjali, the second-century composer of the Yoga Sutras, and some have even installed his murthis. This Hinduisation is not entirely decorative, either, as yoga instructors are required to study Hindu philosophy and scripture in order to get a license to teach yoga.
One would think that yoga’s immense popularity and Hinduisation would gladden the hearts of Hindu immigrants to the US. But in fact, the leading Hindu advocacy organisation in the US, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), is not swelling with pride. On the contrary, it has recently accused the American yoga industry of ‘stealing’ yoga from Hinduism. Millions of Americans will be shocked to learn that they are committing ‘intellectual property theft’ whenever they do an asana, because they do not acknowledge their debt to ‘yoga’s mother tradition’. HAF’s co-founder and chief spokesperson, Aseem Shukla, is now exhorting his fellow Hindus to ‘take back yoga and reclaim the intellectual property of their spiritual heritage.’
The take-back-yoga campaigners are not impressed with the growing visibility of Hindu symbols and rituals in yoga and other cultural institutions in the US. They still find Hindu-phobia lurking everywhere they look. They want Americans to think of yoga, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the great Vedas when they think of Hinduism, instead of the old stereotypes of caste, cows and curry. They would rather that, to paraphrase Shukla, Hinduism is linked less with ‘holy cows than Gomukhasana,’ a reference to a particularly arduous asana; less with the ‘colourful and harrowing wandering sadhus’ than with ‘the spiritual inspiration of Patanjali’. It seems that this yoga-reclamation campaign is less about yoga and more about the Indian diaspora’s strange mix of defensiveness, combined with an exaggerated sense of the excellence of the elite, Sanskritic, aspects of Hindu religion and culture.
The ‘who owns yoga’ debate gained worldwide attention in late November, when the New York Times carried a front-page feature on the issue. But the dispute started earlier this year, with a battle of blogs hosted online by the Washington Post between HAF’s Shukla and the New Age guru, Deepak Chopra. Shukla complained of the yoga establishment shunning the ‘H-word’ while making its fortunes out of Hindu ideas and practices. Chopra, who shuns the Hindu label, instead describing himself as an ‘Advaita Vedantist’, declared that Hinduism had no patent on yoga. He argued that yoga existed in ‘consciousness and consciousness alone’ much before Hinduism, just like wine and bread existed before Jesus Christ’s Last Supper, implying that Hindus had as much claim over yoga as Christians had over bread and wine. Shukla called Chopra a ‘philosophical profiteer’ who did not honour his Hindu heritage, while Chopra accused Shukla and his foundation of Hindu-fundamentalist bias.
Neither eternal nor Vedic
This ‘debate’ is really about two equally fundamentalist views of Hindu history. The underlying objective is to draw an unbroken line connecting the 21st-century yogic postures with the nearly 2000-year-old Yoga Sutras, and tie both to the supposedly 5000-year-old Vedas. The only difference is that, for Chopra, yoga existed before Hinduism, while Shukla and HAF want to claim the entire five millennia for the glory of Hinduism. For Chopra, yoga is a part of a ‘timeless Eastern wisdom’, while for HAF, ‘Yoga and Vedas are synonymous, and are as eternal as they are contemporaneous.’
The reality is that yoga as we know it is neither ‘eternal’ nor synonymous with the Vedas or the Yoga Sutras. On the contrary, modern yoga was born in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is a child of the Hindu Renaissance and Indian nationalism in which Western ideas about science, evolution, eugenics, health and physical fitness played as crucial a role as the ‘mother tradition’. In the massive, multi-level hybridisation that took place during this period, the spiritual aspects of yoga and tantra were rationalised, largely along the Theosophical ideas of ‘spiritual science’ introduced into India by the US-origin, India-based Theosophical Society, and internalised by Swami Vivekananda, who led the yoga renaissance.
In turn, the physical aspects of yoga were hybridised with drills, gymnastics and body-building techniques introduced from Sweden, Denmark, England and other Western countries. These innovations were creatively grafted on the Yoga Sutras – which has been correctly described by Agehananda Bharati, the Austria-born Hindu monk-mystic, as ‘the yoga canon for people who have accepted Brahmin theology’ – to create an impression of 5000 years worth of continuity where none really exists. HAF’s current insistence is thus part of a false-advertising campaign that has been going on for much of the 20th century.
Contrary to widespread impressions, the vast majority of asanas taught by modern yoga gurus are nowhere described in the ancient texts. The highly ritualistic, yagna-oriented Vedas have nothing to say about Patanjali’s quest for experiencing pure consciousness. Indeed, out of the 195 sutras that make up the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali devotes barely three short sutras to asanas. The Mahabharata mentions asanas only twice out of 900 references to yoga, and the Bhagvat Gita does not mention them at all.
There are, of course asana-centred, hatha-yoga texts. But they were authored by precisely those matted-haired, ash-smeared ‘harrowing’ sadhus that the HAF wants to banish from the Western imagination. Indeed, if any Hindu tradition can at all claim a patent on postural yoga, it is these caste-defying, ganja-smoking, sexually permissive, Shiva- and shakti-worshipping sorcerers, alchemists and Tantriks who were cowherds, potters and such. They undertook arduous physical austerities not because they sought to transcend the material world, but because they wanted magical powers (siddhis) to control their bodies and the rest of the material world.
Krishnamacharya lynchpin
The problem for historians of modern yoga is that even these medieval hatha-yoga texts describe only a small fraction of modern yogic postures taught today – Iyengar’s Light on Yoga alone teaches 200 asanas. The 14th-century Hatha Yoga Pradipika lists only 15 asanas, as do the 17th-century Gheranda Samhita and Shiva Samhita.
Given that there is so little ancient tradition upon which to stand, unverifiable claims of ancient-but-now-lost texts have been promoted. The Ashtanga Vinyasa system of Pattabhi Jois, for example, is allegedly based on a palm-leaf manuscript called the Yoga Kurunta that Jois’s teacher, renowned yoga master T Krishnamacharya (1888-1989), unearthed in a Calcutta library. But this manuscript has reportedly been eaten by ants, and today not even a copy of it exists. Another ‘ancient’ text, the Yoga Rahasya – which no one has been able to trace either – was supposedly dictated to Krishnamacharya in a trance by the ghost of an ancestor who had been dead nearly a millennium. Such are the grounds on which rest Hinduism’s intellectual property rights to yoga.
Furthermore, new research has brought to light intriguing historical documents and oral histories that raise serious doubts about the ‘ancient’ lineage of Ashatanga Vinyasa of Pattabhi Jois and Iyengar yoga. Both Jois and Iyengar learned yoga from Krishnamacharya during the late 1930s, when he directed a yogasala in a wing of the Jaganmohan palace of the Maharaja of Mysore, Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV (1884-1940). The maharaja was also a great cultural innovator, welcoming positive innovations from the West and incorporating them into his social programmes. Promoting physical education was one of his passions, and under his rein Mysore became the hub of a revival of physical culture for the whole country. He hired Krishnamacharya primarily to teach yoga to the young princes of the royal family, but also funded him and his protégés to travel throughout the Subcontinent giving yoga demonstrations. In turn, this encouraged an enormous popular revival of yoga.
Indeed, Mysore’s royal family had a long-standing interest in hatha yoga. An ancestor of the maharaja, Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar III (1799-1868) is credited with composing an exquisitely illustrated manual, titled Sritattvanidhi, discovered by a Swedish yoga student named Norman Sjoman only during the mid-1980s. Both Sjoman and Mark Singleton, a US-based scholar who has interviewed many of those associated with the Mysore Palace during its 1930s heyday, believe that the seeds of modern yoga lie in the innovative style of the Sritattvanidhi. Krishnamacharya was familiar with this text, and carried on the innovation by adding a variety of Western gymnastics and drills to the routines. Interestingly, Sjoman has excerpted the Western gymnastics manual that was available to Krishnamacharya – much of which, he claims, found its way into Krishnamacharya’s teachings. Further, Singleton argues that at least 28 exercises included in a Danish manual popular at the time were ‘strikingly similar (often identical)’ to yoga postures popularised by Jois and Iyengar’s Light on Yoga. Again, the link was Krishnamacharya.
Today, the shrill claims from HAF about Westerners ‘stealing’ yoga cover up the tremendous amount of cross-breeding and hybridisation that has given birth to yoga as we know it. Indeed, contemporary yoga is a unique example of a truly global innovation, in which Eastern and Western practices merged to produce something that is valued and cherished around the world. Whether ancient, medieval or modern, Hinduism has no special claims on yoga. To pretend otherwise is not only churlish, but simply untrue.
--Meera Nanda is a philosopher of science who initially trained in biology. Her most recent book is The God Market: How globalization is making India more Hindu.
January 25, 2011
Swami Aseemanand's confessions on the involvement of Hindutva outfits in terror attacks leave investigating agencies red-faced
Frontline Magazine,
Volume 28 - Issue 03 :: Jan. 29-Feb. 11, 2011
TERRORISM
Swami's confession
VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN
Swami Aseemanand's confessions on the involvement of Hindutva outfits in terror attacks leave investigating agencies red-faced.
THE HINDU ARCHIVES
Swami Aseemanand, a file photograph. He was originally arrested in connection with the 2006 Malegaon blasts but his reported confessions of December 18, 2010, point to his involvement in as many as five terror attacks.
WHATEVER the final verdict on the reported confessions made recently by Swami Aseemanand, leader of Abhinav Bharat, a Hindutva extremist organisation, the fact is that they have raised vital questions about terrorist activity in India. The most important of these relates to the process that security agencies adopt for investigating terrorist attacks and the projections they make as part of it.
The confessions also suggest that a widespread network of Hindutva terror groups has advanced its extremist activities systematically over the past six to seven years with help from many leaders in mainstream Hindutva organisations as also groups within these organisations that are a part of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar.
Another important question relates to the responsibility of the government and the larger judicial establishment towards persons found to have been implicated wrongly and arrested in many terror-related cases that have taken a dramatic about-turn as a result of new revelations such as the one made by Swami Aseemanand. This also raises the question as to how the government and other institutions plan to redress the wrong done to these innocent persons.
On the central question raised by Swami Aseemanand's confessions, that is, of the process of investigation into a terror attack, administrative and political authorities claim that the multidimensional investigations carried out by a clutch of agencies, including the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), working together or separately, are done secretly and confidentially.
However, it has been the practice in the immediate aftermath of almost every attack to blame “jehadi groups” working within the country or their so-called cohorts based in different parts of the world, including neighbouring countries. The experience has been that investigating agencies and those who wield control over them in the security establishment or the Home Ministry at the Centre or in the States help in the propagation of such jehad-oriented stories. Aseemanand's reported confessions raise questions about this practice as well as the line of investigation that has been adopted in many cases over the past decade.
Aseemanand was originally arrested in connection with the 2006 Malegaon blasts but his reported confessions of December 18, 2010, point to his involvement in as many as five terror attacks. According to the reported confession, Aseemanand and his associates, who were members of Hindutva terror outfits, were involved in the many terror attacks, including the bomb blasts in the Samjhauta Express (February 2007) and those at Hyderabad Mecca Masjid (May 2007) and Ajmer dargah (October 2007). The associates apparently included Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Lokesh Sharma, Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, Retired Major Ramesh Upadhyay, Swami Dayanand Pandey (all of whom were arrested during the course of the investigations) and Sandeep Dange, who is absconding, and Sunil Joshi, who was apparently killed by a few of his own associates. The name of Indresh Kumar, a member of the RSS national executive, also finds mention in the recorded confession.
According to it, these Hindutva activists had joined hands to carry out attacks at Muslim places of worship or in areas with a significant population of Muslims. A common feature of the terror strikes was that a large number of the victims were Muslims. The deadliest attack by this group was on the Samjhauta Express on the night of February 18-19, 2007, in which 68 persons were killed.
Significantly, in all the terror attacks referred to in Aseemanand's confessions, the line of investigation by different agencies focussed only on “jehadi terror groups” and their national and international associates such as the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), the Lakshar–e-Taiba (LeT) and the Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami (HuJI).
The Samjhauta Express blasts, for instance, were described as a macabre attack by the LeT. This line of investigation and the projections made on that basis found such widespread currency that this was highlighted even in international forums such as the United Nations. The U.N.'s listing of the LeT as a terror outfit in its international watch list made a specific mention of the Samjhauta Express blasts. Similarly, it was widely propagated that the Mecca Masjid blasts were planned and executed by the HuJI. Hundreds of people from different parts of the country were arrested in these cases as part of the investigation, which has now been exposed as fallacious, and kept either in custody or in jail for long periods of time.
For example, as many as 60 persons were arrested immediately after the Mecca Masjid blasts following the HuJI attack theory. The line of investigation advanced at that time by the Hyderabad police and broadly supported by Central investigating agencies was as follows: Shahid Bilal, a resident of Moosrambagh in the old city of Hyderabad had carried out these blasts in order to create communal tension. There were two first information reports (FIRs) in this case, one dealing with the blasts and the other dealing with the recovery of unexploded explosives.
Charges ranging from involvement in seditious activity to conspiracy were brought against all the 60. The viewing of recordings of the demolition of the Babri Masjid was held to be an act that spurred the suspects into indulging in terrorist acts.
The investigation into the Samjhauta Express blasts has also been nothing short of a roller coaster ride. The attack on the train named after the Urdu and Hindi word for accord or compromise was perceived as an attack on the efforts to strengthen India-Pakistan cooperation. The train connects New Delhi to Lahore and passes through the India-Pakistan border in Punjab at Attari.
On the basis of the perception that the blasts were perpetrated by those who wanted to scuttle or at least impair India-Pakistan cooperation, both the Indian and Pakistan governments condemned the attack. A day after the bombings, Indian investigating agencies said it was a suitcase bomb attack carried out by five people associated with the LeT. The agencies even released sketches of two suspects. Later, some people who allegedly sold the suitcases to the alleged attackers were arrested from Indore. But that was about all in terms of concrete progress.
R.V. MOORTHY
THE DEADLIEST ATTACK by Aseemanand and his associates, according to his confession, was on the Samjhauta Express in February 2007, in which 68 persons were killed. Here, an NSG commando inspects a bombed out coach of the train near Panipat station, 80 km from New Delhi.
Things started to unfold differently in November 2008 when the interrogation of Lt Col Purohit revealed that there could be a Hindutva terror dimension to the attack. This aspect gained momentum in October 2010 when the charge sheet prepared by the Rajasthan anti-terrorism squad stated that a meeting of Hindutva bomb makers in February 2006 discussed the Samjhauta Express as a potential target for attack. In yet another development, WikiLeaks linked David Headley, the suspected brain behind the Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008, to the bombing. Aseemanand's confessions have come as the latest twist in this series of events.
The Sangh Parivar as a whole, and specifically the RSS and its political arm the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have pointed to the changing facets in the investigations to claim that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre is using various agencies to prop up a “misnomer” called “Hindu terror”. According to an editorial in Organiser, the journal of the RSS, Aseemanand's confessions are nothing but the concoctions of the investigating agencies to suit the political needs of the Congress.
The editorial stated: “So far there has been no instance of any Hindu organisation boasting credit for a terror strike anywhere in the world. So far no outfit has claimed to work underground to advance a Hindu agenda through arbitrary force, undemocratic means or through intimidation. Normally gangs resort to such methods when they are in a miserable minority and have no hope of achieving their goal through democratic, constitutional methods. Or when they are not confident of the support they enjoy in society. In any case, even home-grown terrorism cannot sustain without technical and logistic support and funds from outside the country. By general consensus there is no religion or colour for terrorism. But the jihadi outfits do not make any secret of the religious agenda they want to enforce. By all these parameters Hindu terror is a misnomer.”
It also wondered why “only the persons named in alleged Hindu radicalism seem to be making ‘confessions'” and why “we have not heard of a [Ajmal] Kasab, [Mohammad] Afzal [a.k.a Afzal Guru] or Geelani or such other jihadi terrorists making any confession”. The Sangh Parivar leaders, including BJP president Nitin Gadkari, have made bold to absolve RSS national executive committee member Indresh Kumar of all culpability and have appeared along with him in several public functions.
Notwithstanding such protestations, there is enough evidence to show that Hindutva terror groups have time and again received overt or covert support from mainstream Hindutva organisations. Not only the cases cited by Aseemanand but also a number of untoward happenings in Maharashtra underscore this point. Independent civil society investigations into the blast in the house of an RSS worker in Nanded, which resulted in the death of two Sangh Parivar activists, and the attacks later in Pabhani, Beed and Jalna have underscored the collusion between leaders and activists of mainstream Hindutva organisations and peripheral Hindutva terror units.
Incidentally, Aseemanand himself came into prominence within the Hindutva fold when he organised a massive Hindutva-oriented conference in the tribal-dominated Dangs district of Gujarat in 2006. That conference, where plans were made for the coming decades, was perceived by Sangh Parivar observers as a milestone event. Aseemanand worked closely with the BJP's Hindutva icon, Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and his ministerial colleagues in convening the conference. A similar meeting is being organised in 2011, obviously without the presence of Aseemanand, but of course with the blessings of Narendra Modi. Clearly, these connections and the push they give to fringe Hindutva groups cannot be wished away.
According to the Lucknow-based political observer Indra Bhushan Singh, who is also a senior lawyer in the Lucknow High Court, the trajectory of terrorism of different hues can be distilled and identified properly only if such organisational activity, too, is monitored properly.
He said: “Only such scrutiny will lead to correct investigations and correct conclusions. Unfortunately, our investigating agencies seem to be perennially in reaction mode and not in a proactive mode. That is why we have spectacles such as the investigation into the 2006 Varanasi blasts, where a man was arrested and even convicted but a couple of years later new accused were discovered and paraded from different parts of the country. Clearly, this is an issue involving basic human rights and demands serious attention and concrete action from different sections of society, including lawmakers. “
Indra Bhushan Singh's contention has special relevance in the context of Aseemanand's confessions and the effect it will have on people linked to the several attacks he has mentioned. However, given the track record of the investigating agencies and their political bosses, it may be too much to expect concrete measures to correct the flip-flop methods that drive terror investigations.
Volume 28 - Issue 03 :: Jan. 29-Feb. 11, 2011
TERRORISM
Swami's confession
VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN
Swami Aseemanand's confessions on the involvement of Hindutva outfits in terror attacks leave investigating agencies red-faced.
THE HINDU ARCHIVES
Swami Aseemanand, a file photograph. He was originally arrested in connection with the 2006 Malegaon blasts but his reported confessions of December 18, 2010, point to his involvement in as many as five terror attacks.
WHATEVER the final verdict on the reported confessions made recently by Swami Aseemanand, leader of Abhinav Bharat, a Hindutva extremist organisation, the fact is that they have raised vital questions about terrorist activity in India. The most important of these relates to the process that security agencies adopt for investigating terrorist attacks and the projections they make as part of it.
The confessions also suggest that a widespread network of Hindutva terror groups has advanced its extremist activities systematically over the past six to seven years with help from many leaders in mainstream Hindutva organisations as also groups within these organisations that are a part of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar.
Another important question relates to the responsibility of the government and the larger judicial establishment towards persons found to have been implicated wrongly and arrested in many terror-related cases that have taken a dramatic about-turn as a result of new revelations such as the one made by Swami Aseemanand. This also raises the question as to how the government and other institutions plan to redress the wrong done to these innocent persons.
On the central question raised by Swami Aseemanand's confessions, that is, of the process of investigation into a terror attack, administrative and political authorities claim that the multidimensional investigations carried out by a clutch of agencies, including the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), working together or separately, are done secretly and confidentially.
However, it has been the practice in the immediate aftermath of almost every attack to blame “jehadi groups” working within the country or their so-called cohorts based in different parts of the world, including neighbouring countries. The experience has been that investigating agencies and those who wield control over them in the security establishment or the Home Ministry at the Centre or in the States help in the propagation of such jehad-oriented stories. Aseemanand's reported confessions raise questions about this practice as well as the line of investigation that has been adopted in many cases over the past decade.
Aseemanand was originally arrested in connection with the 2006 Malegaon blasts but his reported confessions of December 18, 2010, point to his involvement in as many as five terror attacks. According to the reported confession, Aseemanand and his associates, who were members of Hindutva terror outfits, were involved in the many terror attacks, including the bomb blasts in the Samjhauta Express (February 2007) and those at Hyderabad Mecca Masjid (May 2007) and Ajmer dargah (October 2007). The associates apparently included Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Lokesh Sharma, Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, Retired Major Ramesh Upadhyay, Swami Dayanand Pandey (all of whom were arrested during the course of the investigations) and Sandeep Dange, who is absconding, and Sunil Joshi, who was apparently killed by a few of his own associates. The name of Indresh Kumar, a member of the RSS national executive, also finds mention in the recorded confession.
According to it, these Hindutva activists had joined hands to carry out attacks at Muslim places of worship or in areas with a significant population of Muslims. A common feature of the terror strikes was that a large number of the victims were Muslims. The deadliest attack by this group was on the Samjhauta Express on the night of February 18-19, 2007, in which 68 persons were killed.
Significantly, in all the terror attacks referred to in Aseemanand's confessions, the line of investigation by different agencies focussed only on “jehadi terror groups” and their national and international associates such as the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), the Lakshar–e-Taiba (LeT) and the Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami (HuJI).
The Samjhauta Express blasts, for instance, were described as a macabre attack by the LeT. This line of investigation and the projections made on that basis found such widespread currency that this was highlighted even in international forums such as the United Nations. The U.N.'s listing of the LeT as a terror outfit in its international watch list made a specific mention of the Samjhauta Express blasts. Similarly, it was widely propagated that the Mecca Masjid blasts were planned and executed by the HuJI. Hundreds of people from different parts of the country were arrested in these cases as part of the investigation, which has now been exposed as fallacious, and kept either in custody or in jail for long periods of time.
For example, as many as 60 persons were arrested immediately after the Mecca Masjid blasts following the HuJI attack theory. The line of investigation advanced at that time by the Hyderabad police and broadly supported by Central investigating agencies was as follows: Shahid Bilal, a resident of Moosrambagh in the old city of Hyderabad had carried out these blasts in order to create communal tension. There were two first information reports (FIRs) in this case, one dealing with the blasts and the other dealing with the recovery of unexploded explosives.
Charges ranging from involvement in seditious activity to conspiracy were brought against all the 60. The viewing of recordings of the demolition of the Babri Masjid was held to be an act that spurred the suspects into indulging in terrorist acts.
The investigation into the Samjhauta Express blasts has also been nothing short of a roller coaster ride. The attack on the train named after the Urdu and Hindi word for accord or compromise was perceived as an attack on the efforts to strengthen India-Pakistan cooperation. The train connects New Delhi to Lahore and passes through the India-Pakistan border in Punjab at Attari.
On the basis of the perception that the blasts were perpetrated by those who wanted to scuttle or at least impair India-Pakistan cooperation, both the Indian and Pakistan governments condemned the attack. A day after the bombings, Indian investigating agencies said it was a suitcase bomb attack carried out by five people associated with the LeT. The agencies even released sketches of two suspects. Later, some people who allegedly sold the suitcases to the alleged attackers were arrested from Indore. But that was about all in terms of concrete progress.
R.V. MOORTHY
THE DEADLIEST ATTACK by Aseemanand and his associates, according to his confession, was on the Samjhauta Express in February 2007, in which 68 persons were killed. Here, an NSG commando inspects a bombed out coach of the train near Panipat station, 80 km from New Delhi.
Things started to unfold differently in November 2008 when the interrogation of Lt Col Purohit revealed that there could be a Hindutva terror dimension to the attack. This aspect gained momentum in October 2010 when the charge sheet prepared by the Rajasthan anti-terrorism squad stated that a meeting of Hindutva bomb makers in February 2006 discussed the Samjhauta Express as a potential target for attack. In yet another development, WikiLeaks linked David Headley, the suspected brain behind the Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008, to the bombing. Aseemanand's confessions have come as the latest twist in this series of events.
The Sangh Parivar as a whole, and specifically the RSS and its political arm the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have pointed to the changing facets in the investigations to claim that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre is using various agencies to prop up a “misnomer” called “Hindu terror”. According to an editorial in Organiser, the journal of the RSS, Aseemanand's confessions are nothing but the concoctions of the investigating agencies to suit the political needs of the Congress.
The editorial stated: “So far there has been no instance of any Hindu organisation boasting credit for a terror strike anywhere in the world. So far no outfit has claimed to work underground to advance a Hindu agenda through arbitrary force, undemocratic means or through intimidation. Normally gangs resort to such methods when they are in a miserable minority and have no hope of achieving their goal through democratic, constitutional methods. Or when they are not confident of the support they enjoy in society. In any case, even home-grown terrorism cannot sustain without technical and logistic support and funds from outside the country. By general consensus there is no religion or colour for terrorism. But the jihadi outfits do not make any secret of the religious agenda they want to enforce. By all these parameters Hindu terror is a misnomer.”
It also wondered why “only the persons named in alleged Hindu radicalism seem to be making ‘confessions'” and why “we have not heard of a [Ajmal] Kasab, [Mohammad] Afzal [a.k.a Afzal Guru] or Geelani or such other jihadi terrorists making any confession”. The Sangh Parivar leaders, including BJP president Nitin Gadkari, have made bold to absolve RSS national executive committee member Indresh Kumar of all culpability and have appeared along with him in several public functions.
Notwithstanding such protestations, there is enough evidence to show that Hindutva terror groups have time and again received overt or covert support from mainstream Hindutva organisations. Not only the cases cited by Aseemanand but also a number of untoward happenings in Maharashtra underscore this point. Independent civil society investigations into the blast in the house of an RSS worker in Nanded, which resulted in the death of two Sangh Parivar activists, and the attacks later in Pabhani, Beed and Jalna have underscored the collusion between leaders and activists of mainstream Hindutva organisations and peripheral Hindutva terror units.
Incidentally, Aseemanand himself came into prominence within the Hindutva fold when he organised a massive Hindutva-oriented conference in the tribal-dominated Dangs district of Gujarat in 2006. That conference, where plans were made for the coming decades, was perceived by Sangh Parivar observers as a milestone event. Aseemanand worked closely with the BJP's Hindutva icon, Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and his ministerial colleagues in convening the conference. A similar meeting is being organised in 2011, obviously without the presence of Aseemanand, but of course with the blessings of Narendra Modi. Clearly, these connections and the push they give to fringe Hindutva groups cannot be wished away.
According to the Lucknow-based political observer Indra Bhushan Singh, who is also a senior lawyer in the Lucknow High Court, the trajectory of terrorism of different hues can be distilled and identified properly only if such organisational activity, too, is monitored properly.
He said: “Only such scrutiny will lead to correct investigations and correct conclusions. Unfortunately, our investigating agencies seem to be perennially in reaction mode and not in a proactive mode. That is why we have spectacles such as the investigation into the 2006 Varanasi blasts, where a man was arrested and even convicted but a couple of years later new accused were discovered and paraded from different parts of the country. Clearly, this is an issue involving basic human rights and demands serious attention and concrete action from different sections of society, including lawmakers. “
Indra Bhushan Singh's contention has special relevance in the context of Aseemanand's confessions and the effect it will have on people linked to the several attacks he has mentioned. However, given the track record of the investigating agencies and their political bosses, it may be too much to expect concrete measures to correct the flip-flop methods that drive terror investigations.
SC changes controversial paras in ruling on Staines' killings
Source: The Times of India
PTI, Jan 25, 2011, 05.01pm IST
NEW DELHI: In wake of the criticism over its remarks on conversion, the Supreme Court today expunged its two controversial observations in its judgement on the killing of Australian missionary Graham Staines.
A bench of justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan, which had given the verdict in the Staines case on Friday, replaced the original remarks in two different paragraphs with new sentences.
The new sentence, replacing one paragraph, said, "However, more than 12 years have elapsed since the act was committed, we are of the opinion that the life sentence awarded by the High Court need not be enhanced in view of the factual position discussed in the earlier paras."
The original para in this context had read: "In the case on hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity."
The other replaced para read, "There is no justification for interfering in someone's religious belief by any means."
The original paragraph in this context had read, "It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone's belief by way of use of force, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other."
The court's rare action of expunging its own remarks, which it called a clarification, came in the wake of criticism in the media and by Christian organisations against reference to conversion.
Dara Singh and his accomplice Mahendra Hembram, convicted for burning alive the Australian missionary and his two minor sons in January 1999, had on January 21 escaped death penalty with the Supreme Court ruling that the crime was not "rarest of rare" and upheld the life sentence awarded to the duo by the Orissa High Court.
PTI, Jan 25, 2011, 05.01pm IST
NEW DELHI: In wake of the criticism over its remarks on conversion, the Supreme Court today expunged its two controversial observations in its judgement on the killing of Australian missionary Graham Staines.
A bench of justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan, which had given the verdict in the Staines case on Friday, replaced the original remarks in two different paragraphs with new sentences.
The new sentence, replacing one paragraph, said, "However, more than 12 years have elapsed since the act was committed, we are of the opinion that the life sentence awarded by the High Court need not be enhanced in view of the factual position discussed in the earlier paras."
The original para in this context had read: "In the case on hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity."
The other replaced para read, "There is no justification for interfering in someone's religious belief by any means."
The original paragraph in this context had read, "It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone's belief by way of use of force, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other."
The court's rare action of expunging its own remarks, which it called a clarification, came in the wake of criticism in the media and by Christian organisations against reference to conversion.
Dara Singh and his accomplice Mahendra Hembram, convicted for burning alive the Australian missionary and his two minor sons in January 1999, had on January 21 escaped death penalty with the Supreme Court ruling that the crime was not "rarest of rare" and upheld the life sentence awarded to the duo by the Orissa High Court.
RSS's Saffron Flag vs The Tricolour India's National Flag
TIRANGA FOR MUSLIMS AND SAFFRON FOR HINDUS
By Shamsul Islam
The RSS/BJP gang is once again on to its old pastime of whipping up frenzy against Muslims. They plan to unfurl, Tricolour, the Indian National Flag in Srinagar on January 26, 2011. It may not be out of context to know that BJP and its RSS mentors who are so zealous about hoisting Tricolour in Srinagar have least respect for Tricolour as we will see from the following documentary evidences available in the RSS archives..
Organiser, the RSS English organ in its third issue (July 17, 1947) disturbed by the Constituent Assembly’s decision to select the Tricolour as the National Flag, carried an editorial titled 'National Flag', demanding that the saffron flag be chosen instead.
The same demand continued to be raised in editorials on the eve of Independence of India (July 31 editorial titled 'Hindusthan' and August 14 editorial titled 'Whither') simultaneously rejecting the whole concept of a composite nation. The August 14 issue also carried 'Mystery behind the Bhagwa Dhawaj' (saffron flag) which while demanding hoisting of saffron flag at the ramparts of Red Fort in Delhi, openly denigrated the choice of the Tri-colour as the National Flag in the following words: "THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE COME TO POWER BY THE KICK OF FATE MAY GIVE IN OUR HANDS THE TRICOLOUR BUT IT NEVER BE RESPECTED AND OWNED BY HINDUS. THE WORD THREE IS IN ITSELF AN EVIL, AND A FLAG HAVING THREE COLOURS WILL CERTAINLY PRODUCE A VERY BAD PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT AND IS INJURIOUS TO A COUNTRY."
Golwalkar, second chief of the RSS and the most prominent ideologue of the organization till date, while addressing a gathering in Nagpur on July 14, 1946, stated that it was the saffron flag which in totality represented their great culture. It was the embodiment of God: "We firmly believe that in the end the whole nation will bow before this saffron flag".
Even after independence when the Tricolour became the National Flag, it was the RSS which refused to accept it as the National Flag. Golwalkar, while discussing the issue of the National Flag in an essay entitled 'Drifting and Drifting' in the book ‘Bunch of Thoughts’, an RSS publication and collection of writings of Golwalkar (treated as Bible for the RSS cadres), has the following to say: "Our leaders have set up a new flag for our country. Why did they do so? It is just a case of drifting and imitating. Ours is an ancient and great nation with a glorious past. Then, had we no flag of our own? Had we no national emblem at all these thousands of years? Undoubtedly we had. Then why this utter void, this utter vacuum in our minds?"
Importantly, nowhere in the functioning of the RSS is the Tricolour or National Flag used even today. The RSS headquarters at Reshambaugh, Nagpur does not fly it nor do the RSS shakhas display it in daily parades. It seems the National Flag is meant only to whip up frenzy against Muslims. In 1991(Ekta Yatra) it was Murli Manohar Joshi, another favourite in the RSS hierarchy, who went to unfurl the Tricolour at Lal Chowk of Srinagar, Kashmir. Uma Bharti carried a Tri-colour because it was an Idgah which was being targeted by Hindutva. On the other hand, it is important to note that the Hindutva cadres who went to demolish Babri mosque in 1992 did not carry the Tricolour. They carried only saffron flags which were subsequently hoisted there. The RSS is faced with a peculiar dilemma. For Hindus it has saffron flag and for Muslims Tricolour. This selective use of the national symbols is bound to boomerang and further expose the Hindutva camp's real designs. But one thing is sure that ‘Muslim Bashing’ remains the favourite pastime of the Hindutva gang.
Shamsul Islam
notoinjustice@gmail.com
By Shamsul Islam
The RSS/BJP gang is once again on to its old pastime of whipping up frenzy against Muslims. They plan to unfurl, Tricolour, the Indian National Flag in Srinagar on January 26, 2011. It may not be out of context to know that BJP and its RSS mentors who are so zealous about hoisting Tricolour in Srinagar have least respect for Tricolour as we will see from the following documentary evidences available in the RSS archives..
Organiser, the RSS English organ in its third issue (July 17, 1947) disturbed by the Constituent Assembly’s decision to select the Tricolour as the National Flag, carried an editorial titled 'National Flag', demanding that the saffron flag be chosen instead.
The same demand continued to be raised in editorials on the eve of Independence of India (July 31 editorial titled 'Hindusthan' and August 14 editorial titled 'Whither') simultaneously rejecting the whole concept of a composite nation. The August 14 issue also carried 'Mystery behind the Bhagwa Dhawaj' (saffron flag) which while demanding hoisting of saffron flag at the ramparts of Red Fort in Delhi, openly denigrated the choice of the Tri-colour as the National Flag in the following words: "THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE COME TO POWER BY THE KICK OF FATE MAY GIVE IN OUR HANDS THE TRICOLOUR BUT IT NEVER BE RESPECTED AND OWNED BY HINDUS. THE WORD THREE IS IN ITSELF AN EVIL, AND A FLAG HAVING THREE COLOURS WILL CERTAINLY PRODUCE A VERY BAD PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT AND IS INJURIOUS TO A COUNTRY."
Golwalkar, second chief of the RSS and the most prominent ideologue of the organization till date, while addressing a gathering in Nagpur on July 14, 1946, stated that it was the saffron flag which in totality represented their great culture. It was the embodiment of God: "We firmly believe that in the end the whole nation will bow before this saffron flag".
Even after independence when the Tricolour became the National Flag, it was the RSS which refused to accept it as the National Flag. Golwalkar, while discussing the issue of the National Flag in an essay entitled 'Drifting and Drifting' in the book ‘Bunch of Thoughts’, an RSS publication and collection of writings of Golwalkar (treated as Bible for the RSS cadres), has the following to say: "Our leaders have set up a new flag for our country. Why did they do so? It is just a case of drifting and imitating. Ours is an ancient and great nation with a glorious past. Then, had we no flag of our own? Had we no national emblem at all these thousands of years? Undoubtedly we had. Then why this utter void, this utter vacuum in our minds?"
Importantly, nowhere in the functioning of the RSS is the Tricolour or National Flag used even today. The RSS headquarters at Reshambaugh, Nagpur does not fly it nor do the RSS shakhas display it in daily parades. It seems the National Flag is meant only to whip up frenzy against Muslims. In 1991(Ekta Yatra) it was Murli Manohar Joshi, another favourite in the RSS hierarchy, who went to unfurl the Tricolour at Lal Chowk of Srinagar, Kashmir. Uma Bharti carried a Tri-colour because it was an Idgah which was being targeted by Hindutva. On the other hand, it is important to note that the Hindutva cadres who went to demolish Babri mosque in 1992 did not carry the Tricolour. They carried only saffron flags which were subsequently hoisted there. The RSS is faced with a peculiar dilemma. For Hindus it has saffron flag and for Muslims Tricolour. This selective use of the national symbols is bound to boomerang and further expose the Hindutva camp's real designs. But one thing is sure that ‘Muslim Bashing’ remains the favourite pastime of the Hindutva gang.
Shamsul Islam
notoinjustice@gmail.com
January 24, 2011
Illegal religious structures spread through India
Los Angeles Times
Mosques and temples encroach on sidewalks, schools and roads, despite court orders to stop them. Devotees help ensure the structures are hard to tear down once they are built.
New Delhi mosque
Muslims offer Friday prayers at the site of a mosque demolished by authorities in New Delhi. With land at a premium and donations sizable, activists in India say religion is good business. (Adnan Abidi, Reuters / January 13, 2011)
By Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times
January 24, 2011
Reporting from New Delhi —
They struck shortly after dawn on a weekday morning this month, taking bulldozers, backhoes and sledgehammers to the Noor Masjid mosque. But the stealth tactics by municipal workers fell short: Well before they finished razing the building, 1,000 Muslim protesters had gathered, and things got ugly.
Across town a few hours later, the city's public works department was busy again, this time leveling the Hindu Pushp Vihar temple. Followers clashed with police, devotees sang to the gods and protesters blocked a main road, sparking massive traffic jams.
Illegal religious structures are mushrooming across India, eating into sidewalks, schools, roads, even prisons, despite numerous court orders to check their spread.
Once built, they're tough to remove in a country with strong religious passions and a history of communal riots.
"Governments find it difficult to touch anything to do with religion," said Gautam Bhatia, an architect and author.
For days after the mosque razing, protests raged. The most intense confrontation came during Friday prayers when thousands of young Muslims sporting skullcaps battered down police barricades, yelling, "God is great!"
"If we don't stand up, they'll walk all over us," Bashir Ahmed said. "They have no right to demolish our mosques."
Faced with protracted opposition, city officials eventually announced that they'd consider rebuilding the mosque.
The exact number of illegal religious structures in India is unknown, but an estimated 60,000 exist in New Delhi, up from 560 in 1980, while a recent survey found 250,000 more in five of India's 28 states. Built on public land without permission, building permits or much thought to traffic safety or crowd control, they range from makeshift to the decidedly elaborate.
Most start small. An illegal shrine may begin its life as a few ornaments and a candle in a tree. Then a bench is added. Then concrete floors, a roof, a sleeping alcove.
New Delhi's "ancient" Shiv Shakti Mochan Temple near Parliament is a case in point. Dedicated to Lord Shiva, it started in 1968 as a bird-house-sized structure, said longtime neighbor Tara Singh, pointing out a backlit box wedged into the adjoining banyan tree.
In defiance of a Supreme Court order against expansion, it's now 20 feet by 60 feet with walls, columns, marble floors, twinkling lights, a sink and life-size statues in glass cases, completely blocking the sidewalk. Each time city workers try to raze it, supporters quickly mobilize to fend them off, alerted by a subaltern keeping watch 24/7.
Its keepers say it's only growing as fast as the banyan tree, the manifestation, they say, of a sacred mythical snake that fights evil.
"The power of this blessed tree will defeat any bulldozer," said the priest, identified as Panderji, as several pedestrians handed him donations. "A few months back, they wanted to tear us down and restore the sidewalk. They're always trying something."
Many of the buildings are inspired by strong religious beliefs in a country with the world's third-largest Muslim population and where divinities of the majority Hindu religion are plaintiffs in court cases.
But with land at a premium and religious donations sizable, activists cite another reason. "Religion is good business," said a Hindustan Times editorial condemning encroachments. "Like any other business, there are legit as well as not-so-legit practitioners."
"People in India who are religious-minded see gods in the stones, in flower pots, anywhere," said Bhagwanji Raiyani, whose public-interest filing in a Mumbai court led to the razing of 1,300 illegal structures. "Unscrupulous people who don't want to work hard just put a sign up and people pray and give them money. Sometimes 'temples' then turn into telecom shops."
Although Raiyani achieved a rare victory, the battle to take back the streets is complicated by public apathy, a creaky legal system, corruption, poor land records and politicians who back encroachers for votes.
"People think twice about giving to a beggar," said Nira Punj, founder of Mumbai's Citispace civic group dedicated to protecting public spaces. "They don't to a shrine. This encroachment, it's like terror tactics."
Nor are people above using unorthodox construction to manipulate policy, frustrate rivals or divert projects.
Labor leader Shashi Bhushan Pandit says his neighbor in Jogta, central Bihar state, didn't want a road through his property so he built a temple on it, which worked like a charm. "The government rerouted the road," he said.
Adding to the inertia is a public tendency to believe a building's been there much longer than it has.
"It's been here 50 to 100 years," demonstrator Kamal Hassan said of the razed Noor Masjid mosque, although in fact it was only 11 years old. "They pick on Muslims more than Hindus."
Such misconceptions are easily fueled by politicians and religious leaders making political hay, said Monu Chadha, head of the neighborhood group that sued to raze the mosque.
Even when government bulldozers prevail, there's no guarantee that the land will remain temple- or mosque-free.
In 2003, Mumbai demolished 1,100 illegal shrines, temples, mosques and churches. But a survey last year discovered that 200 had reappeared and 1,500 new ones had been built.
mark.magnier@latimes.com
Anshul Rana in The Times' New Delhi Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
Mosques and temples encroach on sidewalks, schools and roads, despite court orders to stop them. Devotees help ensure the structures are hard to tear down once they are built.
New Delhi mosque
Muslims offer Friday prayers at the site of a mosque demolished by authorities in New Delhi. With land at a premium and donations sizable, activists in India say religion is good business. (Adnan Abidi, Reuters / January 13, 2011)
By Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times
January 24, 2011
Reporting from New Delhi —
They struck shortly after dawn on a weekday morning this month, taking bulldozers, backhoes and sledgehammers to the Noor Masjid mosque. But the stealth tactics by municipal workers fell short: Well before they finished razing the building, 1,000 Muslim protesters had gathered, and things got ugly.
Across town a few hours later, the city's public works department was busy again, this time leveling the Hindu Pushp Vihar temple. Followers clashed with police, devotees sang to the gods and protesters blocked a main road, sparking massive traffic jams.
Illegal religious structures are mushrooming across India, eating into sidewalks, schools, roads, even prisons, despite numerous court orders to check their spread.
Once built, they're tough to remove in a country with strong religious passions and a history of communal riots.
"Governments find it difficult to touch anything to do with religion," said Gautam Bhatia, an architect and author.
For days after the mosque razing, protests raged. The most intense confrontation came during Friday prayers when thousands of young Muslims sporting skullcaps battered down police barricades, yelling, "God is great!"
"If we don't stand up, they'll walk all over us," Bashir Ahmed said. "They have no right to demolish our mosques."
Faced with protracted opposition, city officials eventually announced that they'd consider rebuilding the mosque.
The exact number of illegal religious structures in India is unknown, but an estimated 60,000 exist in New Delhi, up from 560 in 1980, while a recent survey found 250,000 more in five of India's 28 states. Built on public land without permission, building permits or much thought to traffic safety or crowd control, they range from makeshift to the decidedly elaborate.
Most start small. An illegal shrine may begin its life as a few ornaments and a candle in a tree. Then a bench is added. Then concrete floors, a roof, a sleeping alcove.
New Delhi's "ancient" Shiv Shakti Mochan Temple near Parliament is a case in point. Dedicated to Lord Shiva, it started in 1968 as a bird-house-sized structure, said longtime neighbor Tara Singh, pointing out a backlit box wedged into the adjoining banyan tree.
In defiance of a Supreme Court order against expansion, it's now 20 feet by 60 feet with walls, columns, marble floors, twinkling lights, a sink and life-size statues in glass cases, completely blocking the sidewalk. Each time city workers try to raze it, supporters quickly mobilize to fend them off, alerted by a subaltern keeping watch 24/7.
Its keepers say it's only growing as fast as the banyan tree, the manifestation, they say, of a sacred mythical snake that fights evil.
"The power of this blessed tree will defeat any bulldozer," said the priest, identified as Panderji, as several pedestrians handed him donations. "A few months back, they wanted to tear us down and restore the sidewalk. They're always trying something."
Many of the buildings are inspired by strong religious beliefs in a country with the world's third-largest Muslim population and where divinities of the majority Hindu religion are plaintiffs in court cases.
But with land at a premium and religious donations sizable, activists cite another reason. "Religion is good business," said a Hindustan Times editorial condemning encroachments. "Like any other business, there are legit as well as not-so-legit practitioners."
"People in India who are religious-minded see gods in the stones, in flower pots, anywhere," said Bhagwanji Raiyani, whose public-interest filing in a Mumbai court led to the razing of 1,300 illegal structures. "Unscrupulous people who don't want to work hard just put a sign up and people pray and give them money. Sometimes 'temples' then turn into telecom shops."
Although Raiyani achieved a rare victory, the battle to take back the streets is complicated by public apathy, a creaky legal system, corruption, poor land records and politicians who back encroachers for votes.
"People think twice about giving to a beggar," said Nira Punj, founder of Mumbai's Citispace civic group dedicated to protecting public spaces. "They don't to a shrine. This encroachment, it's like terror tactics."
Nor are people above using unorthodox construction to manipulate policy, frustrate rivals or divert projects.
Labor leader Shashi Bhushan Pandit says his neighbor in Jogta, central Bihar state, didn't want a road through his property so he built a temple on it, which worked like a charm. "The government rerouted the road," he said.
Adding to the inertia is a public tendency to believe a building's been there much longer than it has.
"It's been here 50 to 100 years," demonstrator Kamal Hassan said of the razed Noor Masjid mosque, although in fact it was only 11 years old. "They pick on Muslims more than Hindus."
Such misconceptions are easily fueled by politicians and religious leaders making political hay, said Monu Chadha, head of the neighborhood group that sued to raze the mosque.
Even when government bulldozers prevail, there's no guarantee that the land will remain temple- or mosque-free.
In 2003, Mumbai demolished 1,100 illegal shrines, temples, mosques and churches. But a survey last year discovered that 200 had reappeared and 1,500 new ones had been built.
mark.magnier@latimes.com
Anshul Rana in The Times' New Delhi Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
January 23, 2011
Announcement: National Meet Tracing Sangh Terror Trail and Stories of Innocent Muslim Boys (Jan 28, N Delhi)
January 28, 2011
10am to 6pm
Constitution Club of India, Rafi Marg, New Delhi
Release : ' What it Means to be a Muslim in India Today?"
12 noon, compilation of real life stories of torture, discrimination, hate, violence, aliniation...
Speakers
AMIT SENGUPTA, ASHISH KHAITAN, CHITARANJAN SINGH, DIGVIJAY SINGH, FARAH NAQVI, IFTIKHAR GILANI, MANISHA SETHY , PRASHANT BHUSHAN, RAMVILAS PASWAN, SATYA SIVARAMAN, SEEMA MUSTAFA, SITARAM YECHURY, SUBHASH GATADE, SURESH KHAIRNAR, TARUN TEJPAL, VRINDA GROVER & SURVIVORS
Organized by
ANHAD
Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan
Foundation for Civil Liberties, Jaipur
INSAF
Jamia Teacher’s Solidarity Association, Delhi
SANDARBH, Indore
SIASAT, Hyderabad
RSS boss Illustrated by Sorit in Outlook
Illustration by Sorit in Outlook Magazine, January 31, 2011 accompanying the article
"That Old Psychotic Path : Cornered on terror, the RSS unsheaths its persecution complex" by Neelabh Mishra
Gujarat officially welcomed Hindutva far right HJS
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Modi lauds radical right
Gujarat CM let an outfit chargesheeted for terror attacks hold a meeting in his constituency, reports RANA AYYUB
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ON 16 November 2008, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi wrote to the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) praising its initiative in organising programmes in Maninagar, the CM’s constituency, as well as assuring cooperation in future endeavours. TEHELKA has this letter as well as pictures of the function held in Gujarat.
At that juncture, the HJS and Sanatan Sanstha, which works under its banner, had been chargesheeted for their role in the Thane theatre blasts of June 2008. The theatre was targeted as it was screening the period film Jodhaa Akbar, which shows Emperor Akbar marrying a Hindu girl, which many right wing organisations had protested against. It was also the organisation that was later chargesheeted for its role in the 2009 Madgaon blast in Goa.
Modi is seen inviting and thanking the same organisation, which the then Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare had urged the home department to ban. It has also been confirmed that Karkare had sent a proposal in August 2008 to ban the HJS and Sanatan Sanstha just months before he was killed in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, as reported earlier by TEHELKA.
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This letter, written in Gujarati and signed by Modi (see above) reads, “The time is ripe to make coordinated efforts by nationalist saints and nationalists leaders. To defeat divisive forces like terrorism, we have to strengthen determination and respect towards the nation. Activities like Jan Jagran rally, dharmasabhas are being organised by the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, Thane, in Ahmedabad. In order to make consolidated efforts against terrorism, on 16 November 2008, a Dharma Jagruti Sabha is being organised in Maninagar area.
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“There is no religion for terrorists. Terrorism is an act against humanity. It is a welcome effort of your institution to awaken people against such forces. I wish all success to special publication on this dharma sabha and organisation of programmes.”
In its investigation of the Madgaon blast, TEHELKA had pointed to the growing fundamentalist activities of the Sanatan Sanstha and the HJS, which had its headquarters in Navi Mumbai and Goa. While many pointed to the patronage received by Swami Asimananda at Dangs and the people who sheltered him, this letter sent by the CM’s office raises serious questions.
It is noteworthy that this was the meeting that first struck a discordant note among various right wing organisations in Gujarat and altered Modi’s equations within the Sangh Parivar.
A senior RSS member, holding a significant post in Gujarat, revealed that this function had the VHP and the RSS — both rivals of the HJS — coming together to protest against the permission given to hold the function in Maninagar. Both the RSS and the VHP made attempts to scuttle the meeting, he told TEHELKA on condition of anonymity.
However, the most pertinent question is: how could the chief minister — who for the past 10 years has been claiming that his state has been the target of the most terror attacks — allow an organisation that had been chargesheeted for terror attacks, to hold meetings in his constituency?
rana@tehelka.com
AICC statement on court verdict for Killers of Graham Staines
All India Christian Council
61, Palam Vihar, Sector 6, Dwarka, New Delhi 110075,
Email aiccdelhi@gmail.com, www.indianchristians.in
For more information, contact:
Dr. John Dayal, Secretary General
john.dayal@gmail.com
+91-9811021072
For immediate release
Christian Council Satisfied with Verdict for Killers of Graham Staines
Expresses Concern about Affect of Judges' Comments about Conversion on Cases of Communal Violence
NEW DELHI - January 22, 2011 - Yesterday, a bench of India's Supreme Court's issued a judgment upholding the life-imprisonment of Dara Singh for killing Graham Staines and his two young sons in January 1999. Singh's accomplice, Mahendra Hembram, was also sentenced to life in prison.
Dr. Joseph D'souza, President of the All India Christian Council (aicc), said, "We are satisfied with the Supreme Court's decision upholding the 2005 Orissa High Court's verdict which commuted a death sentence for Dara Singh to life imprisonment for killing Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in Orissa in 1999. In dismissing Dara Singh's petition for dropping of the case against him, the Apex Court clearly denounced the heinous hate crime perpetrated by communal forces."
Dr. John Dayal, aicc Secretary General, said, "Most Indian Christians oppose the death penalty both on moral and theological grounds, as much as we oppose abortion and taking away life at any stage. Of course, as Christians, we want the State and Central government to uphold the rule of law."
In the conclusion of the ruling on Criminal Appeal No 1366 of 2005, "Rabindra Kumar Pal @ Dara Singh Vs. Republic of India", the judges wrote, "It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone's belief by way of 'use of force', provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other." Some media reports insinuated this meant 'conversions' are illegal or the root cause of the violent attack.
Dayal said, "Although we are yet to analyse the full judgment of the Supreme Court, we are disturbed by the parts carried by the media, mentioning terms like fraud and forcible and conversion. The Court must comment on Hindu conversions, termed Ghar Wapsi. But more than anything, we fear such remarks may negatively impact trials in Kandhamal, Orissa and future challenges to so-called 'freedom of religion laws' in various states."
Inquiries by the National Commission for Minorities, Right To Information (RTI) requests, and other investigations have proven repeatedly there have been no fraudulent or forceful conversions by Christians in India anywhere, anytime. After analysing the Supreme Court reference to conversions, the aicc might move Supreme Court to revise the reference at an appropriate time.
Dayal said, "We do not want any court to pre-judge the matter of conversions and violence. The real root cause of strife in which Staines lost his life with his two kids was a misunderstanding of conversion. We have seen communal violence not only against Christians, but also on Muslims and Sikhs since India's Independence. It is unfortunate that Hindutva forces look for an excuse to attack Christians and others because they believe that India is for Hindus only. This goes against India's spirit of secularism."
The All India Christian Council (www.christiancouncil.in), birthed in 1998, exists to protect and serve the Christian community, minorities, and the oppressed castes. The aicc is a coalition of thousands of Indian denominations, organizations, and lay leaders.
Released by
Madhu Chandra
Regional Secretary
61, Palam Vihar, Sector 6, Dwarka, New Delhi 110075,
Email aiccdelhi@gmail.com, www.indianchristians.in
For more information, contact:
Dr. John Dayal, Secretary General
john.dayal@gmail.com
+91-9811021072
For immediate release
Christian Council Satisfied with Verdict for Killers of Graham Staines
Expresses Concern about Affect of Judges' Comments about Conversion on Cases of Communal Violence
NEW DELHI - January 22, 2011 - Yesterday, a bench of India's Supreme Court's issued a judgment upholding the life-imprisonment of Dara Singh for killing Graham Staines and his two young sons in January 1999. Singh's accomplice, Mahendra Hembram, was also sentenced to life in prison.
Dr. Joseph D'souza, President of the All India Christian Council (aicc), said, "We are satisfied with the Supreme Court's decision upholding the 2005 Orissa High Court's verdict which commuted a death sentence for Dara Singh to life imprisonment for killing Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in Orissa in 1999. In dismissing Dara Singh's petition for dropping of the case against him, the Apex Court clearly denounced the heinous hate crime perpetrated by communal forces."
Dr. John Dayal, aicc Secretary General, said, "Most Indian Christians oppose the death penalty both on moral and theological grounds, as much as we oppose abortion and taking away life at any stage. Of course, as Christians, we want the State and Central government to uphold the rule of law."
In the conclusion of the ruling on Criminal Appeal No 1366 of 2005, "Rabindra Kumar Pal @ Dara Singh Vs. Republic of India", the judges wrote, "It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone's belief by way of 'use of force', provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other." Some media reports insinuated this meant 'conversions' are illegal or the root cause of the violent attack.
Dayal said, "Although we are yet to analyse the full judgment of the Supreme Court, we are disturbed by the parts carried by the media, mentioning terms like fraud and forcible and conversion. The Court must comment on Hindu conversions, termed Ghar Wapsi. But more than anything, we fear such remarks may negatively impact trials in Kandhamal, Orissa and future challenges to so-called 'freedom of religion laws' in various states."
Inquiries by the National Commission for Minorities, Right To Information (RTI) requests, and other investigations have proven repeatedly there have been no fraudulent or forceful conversions by Christians in India anywhere, anytime. After analysing the Supreme Court reference to conversions, the aicc might move Supreme Court to revise the reference at an appropriate time.
Dayal said, "We do not want any court to pre-judge the matter of conversions and violence. The real root cause of strife in which Staines lost his life with his two kids was a misunderstanding of conversion. We have seen communal violence not only against Christians, but also on Muslims and Sikhs since India's Independence. It is unfortunate that Hindutva forces look for an excuse to attack Christians and others because they believe that India is for Hindus only. This goes against India's spirit of secularism."
The All India Christian Council (www.christiancouncil.in), birthed in 1998, exists to protect and serve the Christian community, minorities, and the oppressed castes. The aicc is a coalition of thousands of Indian denominations, organizations, and lay leaders.
Released by
Madhu Chandra
Regional Secretary
Shocking remarks against Graham Staines in court ruling on Dara Singh
The Hindu, January 23, 2011
Expunge remarks against Graham Staines: Supreme Court's remarks “gratuitous” and “unconstitutional”
New Delhi: Leading editors, media groups and civil society members from across the country have signed a statement taking strong exception to the Supreme Court's observation that the killers of Graham Staines and his two minor children intended to teach the Australian missionary a lesson for preaching and practising conversion.
While upholding the life sentence awarded to Bajrang Dal activist Dara Singh for the 1999 killings, a Bench said on Friday: “In the case on hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manhoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity.”
The Bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan went on to add: “It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone's belief by way of ‘use of force', provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other. It strikes at the very root of the orderly society, which the founding fathers of our Constitution dreamt of.”
Arguing that the remarks were “gratuitous,” “unconstitutional” and went against the “freedom of faith” guaranteed by the Constitution, the signatories asked that they be expunged. “Did the SC [Supreme Court] ever take into consideration the report of the Wadhwa Commission which was set up to probe the murder of Graham Staines and which had observed, ‘There has been no extraordinary increase in the Christian population in Keonjhar district between 1991 and 1998. The population had increased by 595 during this period and this could have been caused by natural growth'. The SC ruling may in fact send the wrong signals to courts trying cases of religious violence in Kandhamal, for instance, and in other places. It also tends to pre-empt possible challenges to the black laws enacted by many States in the guise of Freedom of Religion Bills.”
The signatories said the Supreme Court and other judicial forums were secular India's last hope to preserve constitutional guarantees given to religious minorities and other marginalised groups. “Judgments such as this one” and the Ayodhya verdict delivered by the Allahabad High Court were disturbing because they could be interpreted as “supporting the bigoted point of view of right wing fundamentalists such as the Sangh Parivar.”
Further, “the state cannot abrogate its responsibilities” towards preserving the secular fabric of the country. “We expect the government to ask the SC to expunge the unnecessary, uncalled for and unconstitutional remarks.”
signed by Anand Patwardhan, Fr. Dominic Emanuel, Harsh Mander, John Dayal, Navaid Hamid, H.L. Hardenia, Praful Bidwai, Ram Puniyani, Shabnam Hashmi, Shahid Siddiqui, and Seema Mustafa.
Expunge remarks against Graham Staines: Supreme Court's remarks “gratuitous” and “unconstitutional”
New Delhi: Leading editors, media groups and civil society members from across the country have signed a statement taking strong exception to the Supreme Court's observation that the killers of Graham Staines and his two minor children intended to teach the Australian missionary a lesson for preaching and practising conversion.
While upholding the life sentence awarded to Bajrang Dal activist Dara Singh for the 1999 killings, a Bench said on Friday: “In the case on hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manhoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity.”
The Bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan went on to add: “It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone's belief by way of ‘use of force', provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other. It strikes at the very root of the orderly society, which the founding fathers of our Constitution dreamt of.”
Arguing that the remarks were “gratuitous,” “unconstitutional” and went against the “freedom of faith” guaranteed by the Constitution, the signatories asked that they be expunged. “Did the SC [Supreme Court] ever take into consideration the report of the Wadhwa Commission which was set up to probe the murder of Graham Staines and which had observed, ‘There has been no extraordinary increase in the Christian population in Keonjhar district between 1991 and 1998. The population had increased by 595 during this period and this could have been caused by natural growth'. The SC ruling may in fact send the wrong signals to courts trying cases of religious violence in Kandhamal, for instance, and in other places. It also tends to pre-empt possible challenges to the black laws enacted by many States in the guise of Freedom of Religion Bills.”
The signatories said the Supreme Court and other judicial forums were secular India's last hope to preserve constitutional guarantees given to religious minorities and other marginalised groups. “Judgments such as this one” and the Ayodhya verdict delivered by the Allahabad High Court were disturbing because they could be interpreted as “supporting the bigoted point of view of right wing fundamentalists such as the Sangh Parivar.”
Further, “the state cannot abrogate its responsibilities” towards preserving the secular fabric of the country. “We expect the government to ask the SC to expunge the unnecessary, uncalled for and unconstitutional remarks.”
signed by Anand Patwardhan, Fr. Dominic Emanuel, Harsh Mander, John Dayal, Navaid Hamid, H.L. Hardenia, Praful Bidwai, Ram Puniyani, Shabnam Hashmi, Shahid Siddiqui, and Seema Mustafa.
January 22, 2011
The Swami And His Confessions
Jan 22 2011
by Irfan Engineer
Much has been reported in the media about the confession of Swami Aseemanand regarding the role of certain individuals associated with RSS and Abhinav Bharat in terrorism and bomb blasts in Malegaon in 2006, in Ajmer, Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad and other places. However, the more serious implications of the terror activities of the groups and individuals involved have not yet been put in the public domain. Swami Aseemanand’s confessions before a Judicial Magistrate (which is admissible as evidence) only reveals partial facts at best. Kaleemuddin’s love for the Swami could not transform him completely after all. Let us have a brief recall of what the Swami has disclosed after he was informed in open court of the grave implications of his disclosure by the Judicial Magistrate and was made to go back to his cell and reflect on the implications. The Swami has only given a sketchy account of what Sunil Joshi, who was a RSS functionary, told the Swami about his (Joshi’s) or his men’s involvement in the terror attacks. The Swami then confesses that he gave twenty five thousand rupees to Sunil Joshi on his claims. The Swami does not appear to be a star witness to the offence of terror attacks. He is only witness to what Sunil Joshi claimed before him. One or two more individuals are named who had conversations with him. The Swami may be aware that at the most such confession even though before a Judicial Magistrate may be treated as hear say evidence implicating a dead man. Swami’s confessions may at the most be useful to secure bail for the Muslim youth who have been implicated in the Malegaon and other terror attacks.
Let us now have a peep into what the Swami is highly likely to have known and whose material particulars have been with held by him. The Swami settled in the Dangs District sometime in late nineties and was closely linked with the Sangh Parivar and Vishwa Hindu Parishad. In 1998 there was attack on Churches and Christian institutions in the Dangs District, to be precise on 24th December in that year. Could the Swami have been ignorant on the motives the organization/s and individual/s involved in the attack in a small District with less than one and a half lakh population where he settled down chosing it to be his karmabhoomi? Whom is the Swami saving? Himself? The Swami was well connected at the highest political level in Gujarat and therefore in spite of attack on Christians and his provocative statements full of hatred against Christians and Muslims, he was given permission to organize Shabri Kumbh Mela in Dang and who’s who of the Sangh Parivar was in attendance at the Shabri Kumbh. Just as the Swami revealed the role of a dead man in the terror attacks, he could have revealed the information he was privy to about the 2002 genocide and the people he was involved. After all he had access to highest political offices in Gujarat and has often been pictured to be sitting in their company. May be he was not asked by the investigators to reveal information as they were investigating just bomb blasts in few places.
The Swami could have given much better material particulars about the meetings, the individuals involved, the proceedings at the planning meetings about the ultimate objectives of the blasts which was not to take revenge for the bomb attacks in temples and other places targeting Hindus, and which in turn were to take revenge for various communal riots targeting Muslims. The investigators have recovered from the computers belonging to Dayanand Pandey, Col. Purohit and others files recording the minutes of the meetings of Abhinav Bharat which reveal their real objectives. Christopher Jafferlot, a academic of repute, has reproduced some of the conversations in the meetings of Abhinav Bharat in his article in the Economic and Political Weekly. From these conversations it is clear that Col. Purohit and other members of Abhinav Bharat were in fact trying to overthrow the Indian state that has been established by law. Christopher Jafferlots article in the EPW quotes the report of Col. Purohit in one of the meetings that they have been able to establish links with the Israeli Military establishment which has agreed to train 400 soldiers every year for Abhinav Bharat’s war and that he has sufficient equipments and resources. All Col. Purohit wanted from others in the meeting was proper selection of targets for maximum impact. The terror attacks were testing the military strength and capability of the group and keeping them fighting fit, Muslims being soft targets. How realistic were the objectives and how far they were is another issue but the group had a proper road map to their destination – Akhand Bharat – a militarized authoritarian state structure subsuming Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tibet, Myanmar. They were hopeful of support from the Buddhist Majority countries in South East Asia and Israel. The more the supporters of Hindu Rashtra stigmatize Islam and Muslims, the more they emulate them and they emulate the worst amongst them – the so called Jihadis. The priorities of the BJP Governments in Chhattisgarh and MP are warped. While state used its entire might against Binayak Sen, the groups like Abhinav Bharat were allowed to flourish.
by Irfan Engineer
Much has been reported in the media about the confession of Swami Aseemanand regarding the role of certain individuals associated with RSS and Abhinav Bharat in terrorism and bomb blasts in Malegaon in 2006, in Ajmer, Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad and other places. However, the more serious implications of the terror activities of the groups and individuals involved have not yet been put in the public domain. Swami Aseemanand’s confessions before a Judicial Magistrate (which is admissible as evidence) only reveals partial facts at best. Kaleemuddin’s love for the Swami could not transform him completely after all. Let us have a brief recall of what the Swami has disclosed after he was informed in open court of the grave implications of his disclosure by the Judicial Magistrate and was made to go back to his cell and reflect on the implications. The Swami has only given a sketchy account of what Sunil Joshi, who was a RSS functionary, told the Swami about his (Joshi’s) or his men’s involvement in the terror attacks. The Swami then confesses that he gave twenty five thousand rupees to Sunil Joshi on his claims. The Swami does not appear to be a star witness to the offence of terror attacks. He is only witness to what Sunil Joshi claimed before him. One or two more individuals are named who had conversations with him. The Swami may be aware that at the most such confession even though before a Judicial Magistrate may be treated as hear say evidence implicating a dead man. Swami’s confessions may at the most be useful to secure bail for the Muslim youth who have been implicated in the Malegaon and other terror attacks.
Let us now have a peep into what the Swami is highly likely to have known and whose material particulars have been with held by him. The Swami settled in the Dangs District sometime in late nineties and was closely linked with the Sangh Parivar and Vishwa Hindu Parishad. In 1998 there was attack on Churches and Christian institutions in the Dangs District, to be precise on 24th December in that year. Could the Swami have been ignorant on the motives the organization/s and individual/s involved in the attack in a small District with less than one and a half lakh population where he settled down chosing it to be his karmabhoomi? Whom is the Swami saving? Himself? The Swami was well connected at the highest political level in Gujarat and therefore in spite of attack on Christians and his provocative statements full of hatred against Christians and Muslims, he was given permission to organize Shabri Kumbh Mela in Dang and who’s who of the Sangh Parivar was in attendance at the Shabri Kumbh. Just as the Swami revealed the role of a dead man in the terror attacks, he could have revealed the information he was privy to about the 2002 genocide and the people he was involved. After all he had access to highest political offices in Gujarat and has often been pictured to be sitting in their company. May be he was not asked by the investigators to reveal information as they were investigating just bomb blasts in few places.
The Swami could have given much better material particulars about the meetings, the individuals involved, the proceedings at the planning meetings about the ultimate objectives of the blasts which was not to take revenge for the bomb attacks in temples and other places targeting Hindus, and which in turn were to take revenge for various communal riots targeting Muslims. The investigators have recovered from the computers belonging to Dayanand Pandey, Col. Purohit and others files recording the minutes of the meetings of Abhinav Bharat which reveal their real objectives. Christopher Jafferlot, a academic of repute, has reproduced some of the conversations in the meetings of Abhinav Bharat in his article in the Economic and Political Weekly. From these conversations it is clear that Col. Purohit and other members of Abhinav Bharat were in fact trying to overthrow the Indian state that has been established by law. Christopher Jafferlots article in the EPW quotes the report of Col. Purohit in one of the meetings that they have been able to establish links with the Israeli Military establishment which has agreed to train 400 soldiers every year for Abhinav Bharat’s war and that he has sufficient equipments and resources. All Col. Purohit wanted from others in the meeting was proper selection of targets for maximum impact. The terror attacks were testing the military strength and capability of the group and keeping them fighting fit, Muslims being soft targets. How realistic were the objectives and how far they were is another issue but the group had a proper road map to their destination – Akhand Bharat – a militarized authoritarian state structure subsuming Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tibet, Myanmar. They were hopeful of support from the Buddhist Majority countries in South East Asia and Israel. The more the supporters of Hindu Rashtra stigmatize Islam and Muslims, the more they emulate them and they emulate the worst amongst them – the so called Jihadis. The priorities of the BJP Governments in Chhattisgarh and MP are warped. While state used its entire might against Binayak Sen, the groups like Abhinav Bharat were allowed to flourish.
RSS Wary of Terrorist Tag
Mail Today, 22 January 2011
by Bharat Bhushan
With the revelations about the involvement of its past and present cadre in terrorist activities, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) has suddenly sharpened its attack on the Congress. As the mother organisation of the main Opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), this would normally not be considered exceptional.
However the virulently personal attack on Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul, is unusual. The political resolution drafted by the BJP at its national executive meeting at Guwahati earlier this month, played it down, but that does not explain why the RSS wants the BJP to go on the front foot against Sonia and Rahul.
Ban
In the eyes of the RSS, Rahul Gandhi is guilty of comparing its brand of Hindu radicalism with terrorism. He has publicly equated the RSS with the banned Students Islamic Movement of India, calling both fanatical. According to the Wikileaks cables from the US embassy in New Delhi, he told the US Ambassador to India that while there was some support for the Lashkar- e- Tayyeba among Indian Muslims the bigger threat to the nation could be “ the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community.” The statements of Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh about Hindu terror are seen by the RSS as emanating directly from Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.
The RSS is increasingly convinced that there is a move afoot to ban it. RSS ideologue M G Vaidya wrote in a recent article: “ The present Congress, under the leadership of the new Mrs. Gandhi, needs a ban on the RSS — not to finish the RSS but to placate its Muslim vote bank.
The Congress party has come to the conclusion that its very existence is in jeopardy. And only en bloc Muslim vote can enliven it.
So they have carefully calibrated a policy to target Hindus. And to do so, condemning the RSS is the easiest thing” ( Open magazine, January 24).
Although some political parties have demanded a ban, the Congress apparently is divided over the issue. There is a fear of alienating “ Hindu voters” and apprehension that the RSS could emerge stronger as some believe it did from past instances of ban.
The RSS was first banned on February 4, 1948 after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
Although it was not charged directly as a party to the conspiracy, the then home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel acted against the RSS because he believed that its activities contributed to the atmosphere in the country which made the assassination of Gandhi possible.
The ban was only lifted on July 11, 1949 after M S Golwalkar, the RSS head, wrote letters to Prime Minister Nehru and Home Minister Patel swearing allegiance to the Constitution of India, secularism, the national flag and promising that the organisation would abjure violence and secrecy. The RSS was banned a second time on July 4, 1975, nine days after the state of Emergency was declared and its chief, Balasaheb Deoras, was arrested earlier on June 30.
Deoras immediately wrote cringing letters to India Gandhi.
He first congratulated her in a letter dated August 25, on her Independence Day speech describing it as level- headed and befitting the occasion. In another letter on November 10, Deoras made an abject surrender proposing that the RSS could be used for the development being undertaken by the government. He also appealed to the Home Minister S B Chavan to release him on parole so that he could clarify certain issues personally to him.
Fear
The third ban came after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 which was lifted in June 1993. The banning of the organisation itself is not the issue today. Past experience has shown that it can propagate itself amoeba- like into different organisations that share the same DNA. What worries the RSS much more is the prospect of being declared a terrorist organisation in the changed international environment.
It is mortally afraid that the confessions, statements and trials in the Malegaon, Mecca Masjid, Ajmer Sharif and Samjhauta Express terrorist attacks could lead to its door.
Indeed this could happen with the exposure of RSS links with those it has ostensibly disowned — such as former functionary Devender Gupta, the murdered terrorist leader Sunil Joshi, Pragya Singh Thakur and the seven or eight unnamed full time functionaries that the RSS claims it has sacked for their extremism. The same danger emanates from those it still claims as its own, like Indresh Kumar, one of the eleven band of brothers who run the RSS. Should the investigating agencies be able to prove that the RSS was involved in sponsoring terrorism either ideologically or directly, the Indian state does not need to do much else. Such outfits get listed as terrorist organisations by various countries including the US, UK and France. That would mean seizure of bank accounts and an inability to collect donations abroad and at home. In short, the organisation would be economically choked and publicly blacklisted.
The RSS can ill afford this given its present organisational disarray.
The membership of the RSS is dwindling and the average age of its members going up. The success of the RSS lay in attracting youngsters at the fringes of middle class society who felt threatened by western mores and handicapped by their inability to engage with the world which conversed in English, the language of upward mobility.
If a youngster today has to go to coaching class to be competitive, learn computing, be on the internet and an ever burgeoning social media network, listen to music on cheap digital devices or cell phones, or spend an evening SMSing the girl he is wooing, where would he have time to go to a “ shakha” ( branch meeting) of the RSS and follow drill instructions in Sanskrit like “ Dakshah” ( Attention!), “ Vishramah” ( At ease!) or “ Uttishtha” ( Stand up!)? The youth of today sees no point in being part of a private flash militia which is part of someone else’s millennial dream. The world- wide web and the legitimate aspiration for upward mobility will eventually finish the RSS as a somewhat mainstream organisation of small town and urbanising India.
Option
Under these circumstances, a terrorist tag would be extremely damaging. Already graying, the marginalisation of the RSS would be accelerated. Funds from abroad will dry up, and domestic accounts of all associated organisations would be frozen. People would be wary of associating with it. Parents would advise their children to keep away from it. This is what the RSS is really worried about.
What is curious is that for preventing this predicament, its leaders do not blame their poisonous ideology which is essentially militaristic, demonises people of other religions and takes it upon itself to protect an exclusivist Indian nationalism. If the gray eminences of the RSS had any sense, they would distance themselves from the likes of Indresh Kumar. However, if the fire has already engulfed the outhouses and reached their door- step, they may find that there is no escape route left.
They will blame their favourite hate figures, the Nehru- Gandhi family for their predicament.
The RSS needs to dissolve itself. India needs no protection from self- styled militias. It has a state structure and judiciary capable of handling criminals and terrorists of various hues. It does not need religious vigilante groups to take revenge for jihadi terror or to save Hinduism, which has thrived for centuries without knobbly- kneed men in khaki shorts and black caps, bamboo staff in hand, taking part in an elaborate costume drama.
by Bharat Bhushan
With the revelations about the involvement of its past and present cadre in terrorist activities, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) has suddenly sharpened its attack on the Congress. As the mother organisation of the main Opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), this would normally not be considered exceptional.
However the virulently personal attack on Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul, is unusual. The political resolution drafted by the BJP at its national executive meeting at Guwahati earlier this month, played it down, but that does not explain why the RSS wants the BJP to go on the front foot against Sonia and Rahul.
Ban
In the eyes of the RSS, Rahul Gandhi is guilty of comparing its brand of Hindu radicalism with terrorism. He has publicly equated the RSS with the banned Students Islamic Movement of India, calling both fanatical. According to the Wikileaks cables from the US embassy in New Delhi, he told the US Ambassador to India that while there was some support for the Lashkar- e- Tayyeba among Indian Muslims the bigger threat to the nation could be “ the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community.” The statements of Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh about Hindu terror are seen by the RSS as emanating directly from Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.
The RSS is increasingly convinced that there is a move afoot to ban it. RSS ideologue M G Vaidya wrote in a recent article: “ The present Congress, under the leadership of the new Mrs. Gandhi, needs a ban on the RSS — not to finish the RSS but to placate its Muslim vote bank.
The Congress party has come to the conclusion that its very existence is in jeopardy. And only en bloc Muslim vote can enliven it.
So they have carefully calibrated a policy to target Hindus. And to do so, condemning the RSS is the easiest thing” ( Open magazine, January 24).
Although some political parties have demanded a ban, the Congress apparently is divided over the issue. There is a fear of alienating “ Hindu voters” and apprehension that the RSS could emerge stronger as some believe it did from past instances of ban.
The RSS was first banned on February 4, 1948 after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
Although it was not charged directly as a party to the conspiracy, the then home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel acted against the RSS because he believed that its activities contributed to the atmosphere in the country which made the assassination of Gandhi possible.
The ban was only lifted on July 11, 1949 after M S Golwalkar, the RSS head, wrote letters to Prime Minister Nehru and Home Minister Patel swearing allegiance to the Constitution of India, secularism, the national flag and promising that the organisation would abjure violence and secrecy. The RSS was banned a second time on July 4, 1975, nine days after the state of Emergency was declared and its chief, Balasaheb Deoras, was arrested earlier on June 30.
Deoras immediately wrote cringing letters to India Gandhi.
He first congratulated her in a letter dated August 25, on her Independence Day speech describing it as level- headed and befitting the occasion. In another letter on November 10, Deoras made an abject surrender proposing that the RSS could be used for the development being undertaken by the government. He also appealed to the Home Minister S B Chavan to release him on parole so that he could clarify certain issues personally to him.
Fear
The third ban came after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 which was lifted in June 1993. The banning of the organisation itself is not the issue today. Past experience has shown that it can propagate itself amoeba- like into different organisations that share the same DNA. What worries the RSS much more is the prospect of being declared a terrorist organisation in the changed international environment.
It is mortally afraid that the confessions, statements and trials in the Malegaon, Mecca Masjid, Ajmer Sharif and Samjhauta Express terrorist attacks could lead to its door.
Indeed this could happen with the exposure of RSS links with those it has ostensibly disowned — such as former functionary Devender Gupta, the murdered terrorist leader Sunil Joshi, Pragya Singh Thakur and the seven or eight unnamed full time functionaries that the RSS claims it has sacked for their extremism. The same danger emanates from those it still claims as its own, like Indresh Kumar, one of the eleven band of brothers who run the RSS. Should the investigating agencies be able to prove that the RSS was involved in sponsoring terrorism either ideologically or directly, the Indian state does not need to do much else. Such outfits get listed as terrorist organisations by various countries including the US, UK and France. That would mean seizure of bank accounts and an inability to collect donations abroad and at home. In short, the organisation would be economically choked and publicly blacklisted.
The RSS can ill afford this given its present organisational disarray.
The membership of the RSS is dwindling and the average age of its members going up. The success of the RSS lay in attracting youngsters at the fringes of middle class society who felt threatened by western mores and handicapped by their inability to engage with the world which conversed in English, the language of upward mobility.
If a youngster today has to go to coaching class to be competitive, learn computing, be on the internet and an ever burgeoning social media network, listen to music on cheap digital devices or cell phones, or spend an evening SMSing the girl he is wooing, where would he have time to go to a “ shakha” ( branch meeting) of the RSS and follow drill instructions in Sanskrit like “ Dakshah” ( Attention!), “ Vishramah” ( At ease!) or “ Uttishtha” ( Stand up!)? The youth of today sees no point in being part of a private flash militia which is part of someone else’s millennial dream. The world- wide web and the legitimate aspiration for upward mobility will eventually finish the RSS as a somewhat mainstream organisation of small town and urbanising India.
Option
Under these circumstances, a terrorist tag would be extremely damaging. Already graying, the marginalisation of the RSS would be accelerated. Funds from abroad will dry up, and domestic accounts of all associated organisations would be frozen. People would be wary of associating with it. Parents would advise their children to keep away from it. This is what the RSS is really worried about.
What is curious is that for preventing this predicament, its leaders do not blame their poisonous ideology which is essentially militaristic, demonises people of other religions and takes it upon itself to protect an exclusivist Indian nationalism. If the gray eminences of the RSS had any sense, they would distance themselves from the likes of Indresh Kumar. However, if the fire has already engulfed the outhouses and reached their door- step, they may find that there is no escape route left.
They will blame their favourite hate figures, the Nehru- Gandhi family for their predicament.
The RSS needs to dissolve itself. India needs no protection from self- styled militias. It has a state structure and judiciary capable of handling criminals and terrorists of various hues. It does not need religious vigilante groups to take revenge for jihadi terror or to save Hinduism, which has thrived for centuries without knobbly- kneed men in khaki shorts and black caps, bamboo staff in hand, taking part in an elaborate costume drama.
CPI(ML) Statement re SC Comments on Conversion (Staines massacre case)
Supreme Court Comments on Conversion Are Unconstitutional
A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in upholding a high court verdict regarding the gruesome murder of Graham Staines and his two small sons, has chosen to pass gratuitous and ideological comments against religious conversion. The Court has upheld the high court’s reasoning that though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, “the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity.” The Court has in effect delegitimized the constitutionally guaranteed right to propagate one’s religion by declaring that “It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone's belief by way of ‘use of force,' provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other.”
In punishing the act of murder of Staines, the SC has effectively justified and upheld the purported motive of the murder. It is disturbing and dangerous that the apex court should appear to reinforce the prejudices against conversion propagated by communal outfits and legitimise the notion that Christian missionaries need to be ‘taught a lesson.’ In Odisha and other parts of the country, the SC’s observations are bound to embolden the Sangh Parivar outfits which are justifying large scale organised violence against the Christian minorities as a ‘reaction’ to the ‘provocation’ of conversion.
(Prabhat Kumar)
For Central Committee
CPI(ML)
A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in upholding a high court verdict regarding the gruesome murder of Graham Staines and his two small sons, has chosen to pass gratuitous and ideological comments against religious conversion. The Court has upheld the high court’s reasoning that though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, “the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity.” The Court has in effect delegitimized the constitutionally guaranteed right to propagate one’s religion by declaring that “It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone's belief by way of ‘use of force,' provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other.”
In punishing the act of murder of Staines, the SC has effectively justified and upheld the purported motive of the murder. It is disturbing and dangerous that the apex court should appear to reinforce the prejudices against conversion propagated by communal outfits and legitimise the notion that Christian missionaries need to be ‘taught a lesson.’ In Odisha and other parts of the country, the SC’s observations are bound to embolden the Sangh Parivar outfits which are justifying large scale organised violence against the Christian minorities as a ‘reaction’ to the ‘provocation’ of conversion.
(Prabhat Kumar)
For Central Committee
CPI(ML)
January 21, 2011
Missionary killer is spared death
BBC News, 21 January 2011
India court backs life term for Graham Staines murderer
This November 23, 1999 file photo shows people carrying a portrait of Graham Staines, the Australian missionary who was murdered along with his two sons Mr Staines and his sons were burned alive
The Indian Supreme Court has upheld the life sentence of a man convicted of killing Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons in 1999.
Prosecutors had argued that Dara Singh should face death - the sentence originally awarded by a lower court.
Australian Graham Staines and his sons were burned alive by a mob in 1999 in a village in the eastern state of Orissa, where he worked with leprosy patients.
Hardline Hindu groups had accused him of forcibly converting poor Hindus.
The two-judge Supreme Court bench turned down federal prosecutors' demands for the death sentence, saying the case of Dara Singh was not "the rarest of the rare" - the only justification for handing down the death penalty in India.
"We hope Mahatma Gandhi's vision of religion playing a positive development integrating into a prosperous nation will be realised," the judges said.
"There is no justification for interfering in someone's belief through force, conversion or false premise that one religion is better than the other."
Mr Staines had spent 30 years working with leprosy patients in Orissa. His sons were aged eight and 10 at the time of their murder.
Christian community leaders accused a militant Hindu group, the Bajrang Dal, over the killings, but an official inquiry found no evidence that any one group was behind the attack.
After a lengthy trial Singh and 12 others were convicted in 2003. But the High Court in Orissa commuted his death sentence two years later.
It also freed 11 others given life terms in prison, saying there was not enough evidence to support their convictions.
India court backs life term for Graham Staines murderer
This November 23, 1999 file photo shows people carrying a portrait of Graham Staines, the Australian missionary who was murdered along with his two sons Mr Staines and his sons were burned alive
The Indian Supreme Court has upheld the life sentence of a man convicted of killing Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons in 1999.
Prosecutors had argued that Dara Singh should face death - the sentence originally awarded by a lower court.
Australian Graham Staines and his sons were burned alive by a mob in 1999 in a village in the eastern state of Orissa, where he worked with leprosy patients.
Hardline Hindu groups had accused him of forcibly converting poor Hindus.
The two-judge Supreme Court bench turned down federal prosecutors' demands for the death sentence, saying the case of Dara Singh was not "the rarest of the rare" - the only justification for handing down the death penalty in India.
"We hope Mahatma Gandhi's vision of religion playing a positive development integrating into a prosperous nation will be realised," the judges said.
"There is no justification for interfering in someone's belief through force, conversion or false premise that one religion is better than the other."
Mr Staines had spent 30 years working with leprosy patients in Orissa. His sons were aged eight and 10 at the time of their murder.
Christian community leaders accused a militant Hindu group, the Bajrang Dal, over the killings, but an official inquiry found no evidence that any one group was behind the attack.
After a lengthy trial Singh and 12 others were convicted in 2003. But the High Court in Orissa commuted his death sentence two years later.
It also freed 11 others given life terms in prison, saying there was not enough evidence to support their convictions.
January 20, 2011
Seeking unlimited happiness
Jared Lee Loughner killed six Americans and left Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords fighting for her life in Tucson. His motives are variously given as drug-related lunacy and links with America’s Christian Right, of which Republican politician Sarah Palin is deemed an icon. A copy of Mein Kampf was recovered from his belongings. Malik Mumtaz Qadri killed Pakistan politician Salman Taseer in a similarly unequal contest between a liberal worldview and zealotry that claims a divine alibi. In India, Swami Asimanand, a self-confessed guru of Hindutva terrorists that wreaked havoc across the country and blamed it on Muslims, is in jail.
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Full text Here
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Full text Here
India must act aginst Hindu terrorism
The Guardian, 19 January 2011
India must face up to Hindu terrorism
India's anti-minorities bias is so strong that it has failed to acknowledge the threat posed by Hindu radicalism
by Kapil Komireddi
For far too long, the enduring response of the Indian establishment to Hindu nationalists has rarely surpassed mild scorn. Their organised violent eruptions across the country – slaughtering Muslims and Christians, destroying their places of worship, cutting open pregnant wombs – never seemed sufficient enough to the state to cast them as a meaningful threat to India's national security.
But the recently leaked confession of a repentant Hindu priest, Swami Aseemanand, confirms what India's security establishment should have uncovered: a series of blasts between 2006 and 2008 were carried out by Hindu outfits. The attacks targeted a predominantly Muslim town and places of Muslim worship elsewhere. Their victims were primarily Muslim. Yet the reflexive reaction of the police was to round up young Muslim men, torture them, extract confessions and declare the cases solved.
Pundits now conduct cautious enquiries on television. Does this revelation mean India is now under attack by "Hindu terrorism"? But to treat this as a new phenomenon is to overlook the bulky corpus of terrorist violence in India that has its roots in explicitly Hindu-political grievances. Why is the attack on a Jewish centre in Mumbai by Pakistani gunmen an example of "Islamic terrorism", but the slaughter of a thousand Muslims by sword-wielding Hindus in Gujarat in 2002 not proof of "Hindu terrorism", particularly when the purpose of the violence was to establish an Hindu state in India? How do we describe attacks on churches, the kidnappings of pastors, the burning to death of a missionary? What do we make of the war-cry pehle kasai, phir isai: first the butchers (Muslims), then the Christians? What has prompted this debate over "Hindu terrorism" is not Aseemanand's confession: it is the fact that, in carrying out their violence, his accomplices appropriated methods which, in popular imagination, have become associated exclusively with Islamic terrorism. Detonating bombs in crowded areas: isn't that what Muslims do?
It is when you look at the reactions to non-Hindu extremism that you absorb how strongly majoritarian assumptions inform the state and society's conduct in India. In 2002, the Indian government banned the radical Muslim group Simi (Students' Islamic Movement of India) citing the group's charter, which seeks to establish sharia rule in India, and the terror charges some of its members were facing. But the Hindu radical outfit RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or the National Volunteer Corps) remains open for business – even though it campaigns, very openly, for a Hindu state in India, and its members incite and perpetrate violence against Muslim and Christian minorities. Mahatma Gandhi's assassin was a member of the RSS, as are Aseemanand and his confreres. To get an idea of which of the two groups poses a more immediate threat to India, consider this: the government that banned Simi was headed by the BJP, the political wing of the RSS.
The principal cause of Hindu radicalism, much like its Muslim counterpart in Pakistan, is the partition of India in 1947. The departing British hacked India apart to accommodate the Muslim League's demand for an exclusive homeland for the subcontinent's Muslims – and so, the Hindu nationalist logic runs, the territory that remained should logically be identified as the land of Hindus. If Pakistan's Muslim majoritarianism crystallised around the bogey of "Hindu raj", the Hindu nationalist project thrives by casting the burden of partition on India's Muslim minorities – fifth columnists whose coreligionists tore India apart by claiming, in spite of a millennium-long sojourn in India, to be foreigners by virtue of their faith.
For all the saffron calumny, it is impossible to find a community more emphatically committed to India than its Muslims. India's Hindus never had to make a choice. The Muslims did. Consider what an ordinary Muslim family in 1947 would have had to deal with: terrified by the violence that the partition had unleashed, their coreligionists were fleeing in the millions to Pakistan; Hindu and Sikh fanatics were actively seeking out Muslims for slaughter and rape; the possibility of being betrayed by neighbours and friends was far from remote. Sardar Patel, the second most powerful functionary in the Indian government, was openly hostile to Muslims – hostility which no doubt would have been seen by many Hindus as tacit endorsement of their actions. Amidst all this, the sole authoritative source of reassurance would have been the distant pledges of a better tomorrow by Jawaharlal Nehru. The Muslims who remained, who refused to vacate the hell that was India despite the blandishments of paradise next door in Pakistan, affirmed their faith in India with their lives.
After all this, it is staggering that the Hindu right gets away so easily by routinely humiliating Indian Muslims. From demographics to diet, personal laws to places of worship, Muslims are suspect in everything they do. Adding a dash of foreign authority, glamour and fuel to this unbridled bigotry is the lavatorial "scholarship" of frustrated European converts to Hinduism such as François Gautier and Koenraad Elst. Misfits in their own societies, they have flourished by exploiting communal tensions in a miserably poor country. What the Muslims did to Hindus was worse than the Jewish Holocaust explains one, while the other warns Hindus that they are being outbred by Muslims. The JNU historian Tanika Sarkar was perhaps right in identifying "penis envy and anxiety about emasculation" among the principal reasons for anti-Muslim bigotry.
The Indian state has failed appallingly in its obligations to Muslim citizens. There are 150 million Muslims in India, but as the government's own figures show, only 4% are graduates, 5% have public employment, an overwhelming majority remain locked out of public institutions, and their access to government loans and education is severely restricted. If this institutional exclusion should breed resentment, and the resentment produce violence, no one will hesitate to call it another instance of Islamic terrorism. But when self-pitying Hindus massacre minorities and detonate bombs in the midst of Muslim crowds, we are expected to be polite. No, let us call it what it actually is: Hindu terrorism.
India must face up to Hindu terrorism
India's anti-minorities bias is so strong that it has failed to acknowledge the threat posed by Hindu radicalism
by Kapil Komireddi
For far too long, the enduring response of the Indian establishment to Hindu nationalists has rarely surpassed mild scorn. Their organised violent eruptions across the country – slaughtering Muslims and Christians, destroying their places of worship, cutting open pregnant wombs – never seemed sufficient enough to the state to cast them as a meaningful threat to India's national security.
But the recently leaked confession of a repentant Hindu priest, Swami Aseemanand, confirms what India's security establishment should have uncovered: a series of blasts between 2006 and 2008 were carried out by Hindu outfits. The attacks targeted a predominantly Muslim town and places of Muslim worship elsewhere. Their victims were primarily Muslim. Yet the reflexive reaction of the police was to round up young Muslim men, torture them, extract confessions and declare the cases solved.
Pundits now conduct cautious enquiries on television. Does this revelation mean India is now under attack by "Hindu terrorism"? But to treat this as a new phenomenon is to overlook the bulky corpus of terrorist violence in India that has its roots in explicitly Hindu-political grievances. Why is the attack on a Jewish centre in Mumbai by Pakistani gunmen an example of "Islamic terrorism", but the slaughter of a thousand Muslims by sword-wielding Hindus in Gujarat in 2002 not proof of "Hindu terrorism", particularly when the purpose of the violence was to establish an Hindu state in India? How do we describe attacks on churches, the kidnappings of pastors, the burning to death of a missionary? What do we make of the war-cry pehle kasai, phir isai: first the butchers (Muslims), then the Christians? What has prompted this debate over "Hindu terrorism" is not Aseemanand's confession: it is the fact that, in carrying out their violence, his accomplices appropriated methods which, in popular imagination, have become associated exclusively with Islamic terrorism. Detonating bombs in crowded areas: isn't that what Muslims do?
It is when you look at the reactions to non-Hindu extremism that you absorb how strongly majoritarian assumptions inform the state and society's conduct in India. In 2002, the Indian government banned the radical Muslim group Simi (Students' Islamic Movement of India) citing the group's charter, which seeks to establish sharia rule in India, and the terror charges some of its members were facing. But the Hindu radical outfit RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or the National Volunteer Corps) remains open for business – even though it campaigns, very openly, for a Hindu state in India, and its members incite and perpetrate violence against Muslim and Christian minorities. Mahatma Gandhi's assassin was a member of the RSS, as are Aseemanand and his confreres. To get an idea of which of the two groups poses a more immediate threat to India, consider this: the government that banned Simi was headed by the BJP, the political wing of the RSS.
The principal cause of Hindu radicalism, much like its Muslim counterpart in Pakistan, is the partition of India in 1947. The departing British hacked India apart to accommodate the Muslim League's demand for an exclusive homeland for the subcontinent's Muslims – and so, the Hindu nationalist logic runs, the territory that remained should logically be identified as the land of Hindus. If Pakistan's Muslim majoritarianism crystallised around the bogey of "Hindu raj", the Hindu nationalist project thrives by casting the burden of partition on India's Muslim minorities – fifth columnists whose coreligionists tore India apart by claiming, in spite of a millennium-long sojourn in India, to be foreigners by virtue of their faith.
For all the saffron calumny, it is impossible to find a community more emphatically committed to India than its Muslims. India's Hindus never had to make a choice. The Muslims did. Consider what an ordinary Muslim family in 1947 would have had to deal with: terrified by the violence that the partition had unleashed, their coreligionists were fleeing in the millions to Pakistan; Hindu and Sikh fanatics were actively seeking out Muslims for slaughter and rape; the possibility of being betrayed by neighbours and friends was far from remote. Sardar Patel, the second most powerful functionary in the Indian government, was openly hostile to Muslims – hostility which no doubt would have been seen by many Hindus as tacit endorsement of their actions. Amidst all this, the sole authoritative source of reassurance would have been the distant pledges of a better tomorrow by Jawaharlal Nehru. The Muslims who remained, who refused to vacate the hell that was India despite the blandishments of paradise next door in Pakistan, affirmed their faith in India with their lives.
After all this, it is staggering that the Hindu right gets away so easily by routinely humiliating Indian Muslims. From demographics to diet, personal laws to places of worship, Muslims are suspect in everything they do. Adding a dash of foreign authority, glamour and fuel to this unbridled bigotry is the lavatorial "scholarship" of frustrated European converts to Hinduism such as François Gautier and Koenraad Elst. Misfits in their own societies, they have flourished by exploiting communal tensions in a miserably poor country. What the Muslims did to Hindus was worse than the Jewish Holocaust explains one, while the other warns Hindus that they are being outbred by Muslims. The JNU historian Tanika Sarkar was perhaps right in identifying "penis envy and anxiety about emasculation" among the principal reasons for anti-Muslim bigotry.
The Indian state has failed appallingly in its obligations to Muslim citizens. There are 150 million Muslims in India, but as the government's own figures show, only 4% are graduates, 5% have public employment, an overwhelming majority remain locked out of public institutions, and their access to government loans and education is severely restricted. If this institutional exclusion should breed resentment, and the resentment produce violence, no one will hesitate to call it another instance of Islamic terrorism. But when self-pitying Hindus massacre minorities and detonate bombs in the midst of Muslim crowds, we are expected to be polite. No, let us call it what it actually is: Hindu terrorism.
Critical Hearing in the Supreme Court on Gujarat Genocide
20th January 2011
Background
The major issue that the Supreme Court will decide on January 20 2011 is the
issue of the complaint against chief minister N Modi and 61 others sent,
with over 2,000 pages of official documents to be registered as an FIR by
Smt Zakia Ahsan Jafri to the Gujarat Director General of Police on 8.6.2006.
When no steps were taken to register the offence, the complainant with
Citizens for Justice and Peace approached the Gujarat High Court with a
prayer for registration of an FIR. (Details of the complaint ad offences
against all accused can be had from www.cjponline.org and
www.gujarat-riots.com)
The evidence that forms the basis for the initial complaint are over three
dozen affidavits filed by policemen from the Gujarat police on the carnage
including former Director general of Police RB Sreekumar and SP Bhavnagar
Rahul Sharma. Subsequently detailed analysis of Phone Call records and
Police Control Room records obtained by CJP and submitted before the
investigating agencies and the courts have provided further decisive
evidence.
After three benches declined to hear the matter in the Gujarat High Court,
a single Judge MR Shah, after hearing extensive arguments made by the
petitioner in 2007 dismissed the petition in November 2007. (Tehelka had, in
October 2007, exposed through Operation Kalank the extra judicial
confessions of many accused, CJP tried to get first the Gujarat HC and then
the SC to order investigation into the Tapes which was declined; thereafter
NHRC ordered CBI to authenticate the tapes which was done though 2008).
In appeal, Smt Zakia Ahsan Jafri and CJP filed an SLP 1088 of 2008 on which
the SC on 3.3.2008 issued notice and then, on 27.4.2009 directed the SIT
appointed by it a year earlier to probe the complaint. Shri Prashant Bhushan
was appointed amicus curiae by the Supreme Court.
(By August 2009 the SIT investigation into eight trials has been exposed foe
being superficial and worse non critical of the role of powerful accused
–this was revealed in the charge sheets filed in eight trials).
Now, these major trials are nearing completion, some rectification of
investigations have been done though in our view the investigations by SIT
continue to have glaring lacunae of deliberately ignoring investigations
into the roles of powerful politicians and policemen –despite the available
evidence of phone records and police control room records the SIT has
consciously turned a blind eye to them. For details on the struggle for
justice do visit www.cjponline.org and www.gujarat-riots.com
In the parallel investigation, SIT submitted its report on the Zakia Jafri
Complaint on May 14 2010. Thereafter former minister for home Govardhan
Zadaphiya offered to turn approver and every effort was made by the state
and the accused to derail the ongoing trials and especially influence the
course of the Zakia Jafri + CJP complaint in various ways including
slandering the groups and activists supporting the victim survivors. This
campaign was spearheaded by Pioneer (Chandan Mitra) and India Today (Uday
Mahapurkar) since September 2010. Affidavits filed by the victim survivors
in the SC, that have been accepted by them in the depositions before the
Court – while some factual aspects have been clarified – are being singled
out to create utterly false canards against us of “doctoring evidence”. (see
details below on Allegations)
On October 26, 2010 when Amicus Prashant Bhushan was scheduled to give his
opinion on what should further be done with the Zakia Jafri + CJP complaint,
he was confronted by a belated application from the state of Gujarat
expressing doubts about his ability to function independently as an amicus
when he had freely expressed opinions on the Gujarat 2002 carnage including
the role of the chief minister. On the day of the hearing, when asked by the
Court what he (Shri Bhushan) would choose to do under the circumstances,
Shri Bhushan recused himself after which the Court appointed a new Amicus.
Shri Rohinton Nariman declined the Court’s request after which Shri Raju
Ramachandran and Shri Gaurav Agarwal have been appointed. Tomorrow, i.e.
June 20 2011 they are expected to advise the Court on the next course of
action.
In the interim period, efforts are clearly afoot through the media, to
pre-empt the process on within the Supreme Court. On December 3, 2010 a
report in all editions of a national daily stated “SIT had given a clean
chit to Modi.” Nothing that had transpired in the SC the day before, pointed
to this, it appeared nothing short of a brazen bid to influence public
opinion, possibly even the Court. Today that is January 19, 2011, the day
before the critical hearing tomorrow, all editions of the Times of India
have carried a “lead story” on how a Deoband cleric says that there is “No
Discrimination Against Muslims in Gujarat.” That is not the issue under
consideration in the Zakia + CJP complaint. The issue is whether a grisly
conspiracy into mass murder, criminal conspiracy to take lives brutally,
commit rapes, destroy evidence and subvert the criminal justice system was
afoot in 2002 and continued to this day vis a vis the justice process!!.
It is indeed a test case for Indian democracy and the Rule of Law how this
case goes and its outcome.
Allegations on concocting affidavits and filing false evidence have
*only*been made by the State of Gujarat (accused in the State
Sponsored Massacre),
Accused who are facing Trial and now by a former employee of our
organisation Rais Khan who was discontinued from services with the CJP due
to irregularities. There is at present NO investigation into us though a
Court hearing one of the trials (Sardapura Massacre in which 33 persons were
killed) has asked him to be prosecuted for trying to derail the course of
justice!!
There are a bunch of documents on this issue that are available on the CJP
website or with us to mail you for any who are interested. Here is a brief
narrative. Victims filed affidavits through us in the Supreme Court of
India (2003). They also filed affidavits before various international and
national fora. They spoke of the heinous crimes. From day one the State has
questioned the version of the victims. Now nine years later when the SC is
monitoring some of the trials, most witnesses who are also victim survivors
have stood by their affidavits. They have on occasion denied one or other
"factual" aspect in the affidavit relating to crime details or a rape that
was committed. Rape victims as you know deny rape for a variety of reasons.
The victim who so did so has also filed an affidavit through another lawyer
before this, in gruesome terms describing the rape. CJP as a a whole and I
in particular do not want her o be victimised so we will be presenting this
evidence in sealed cover before the SC. The critical thing to remember is
that nine years down, we remain possibly the only group left legally
supporting the survivors. And that is why we have been made a target.
This happened with the 1984 massacres too when politicians rode to power,
"earned" respectability and sidelined the survivors. Please also do take the
time to go through www.gujarat-riots.com that has listed the overwhelming
evidence against Modi available on the website.
The propaganda spearheaded by counsel for the Gujarat government Mukul
Rohatgi in the SC began in May 2009 when he said that I had concoted the
story of Kauser Bano who, nine months pregnant had her womb slit open and
her nine month old foetus hurled and swrirled on a sword before being
brutally killed. This story that came to typify the barbarity of the state
sponsored carnage in Gujarat in 2002, was widely exported at the time by
Times of India, India Today (the same Uday Mahpurkar that is slandering
us!!), Deccan Herald among other national and international human rights
bodies. Do see the attachment Media Rights Groups and Mass Crimes. The story
of the Gujarat carnage is the story of a whitewash by money and corporate
interests to pretend that the barbarities never happened. This is a denial
of acknowledgement for the survivors.
Finally it is worth pointing your public editor to the Concerned Citizens
Tribunal Report headed by two former Supreme Court Judges, Justice Krishna
Iyer and PB Sawant who have dubbed Modi the "architect of a state sponsored
genocide."
Finally and possibly as significant as the above is the fact that the timing
of these baseless allegations comes at a time when substantive evidence
incriminating over 400 accused --powerful persons including elected
representatives and policemen --is afoot under the SC scrutiny in Gujarat.
Victim survivors are being actively supported by CJP. This spate of
suspiciously timed allegations is a bid to question the credibility of
witnesses and affect the course of justice in these critical trials.
Other Miscellaneous Issues:
After one year’s efforts victim survivors and legal rights groups managed to
affect the transfer of one of the judges hearing the Gulberg case. Despite
his offensive behaviour to the witnesses and victims of the massacre it took
a year for the change to be completed and the Judge to relinquish charge in
mid January 2011. The trial is at the final arguments stage. In January 2010
victims and witnesses had filed an application under Section 319 of the CRPC
praying for Joint Commissioner Police MK Tandon and PI Parmar to be
arraigned as accused for their criminally negligent and complicit conduct.
SIT had told the Apex Court five months ago that further investigations into
their role were being carried out. Nothing so far has been done by SIT.
Meanwhile in August 2010, after submitting over 300 pages of Phone Call
Records Analysis to the Nanavati Shah Mehta Commission, witnesses have filed
detailed phone call records in the Gulberg Trial.
Witnesses and Victims have also filed over 200 pages of detailed arguments
in the Sardarpura Case in Mehsana district that saw the massacre of 33
innocent members of the minority community. In these arguments it has been
pointed out that despite an application under section 173(8) of the CRPC
being made to the SIT, the SIT has failed to investigate the arms build up
and build up of provocative and aggressive atmosphere in Mehsana district
prior to the Godhra Train Burning incident of 27.2.2002. Evidence of such
build up is available through the testimonies of witnesses, through the
annexures to the affidavits of former Gujarat State IB chief, RB Sreekumar
and through Tehelka’s Operation Kalank. The reluctance of the SC appointed
SIT to probe these aspects is baffling.
Trial in the Godhra Mass Arson Case has been completed and judgement is
awaited.
Trials into the Naroda Gaam and Naroda Patiya cases as also two trials into
the Odh massacres are on. Over 450 accused are arraigned and face charges in
the trials related to the post Godhra massacres, a first in post-indepedence
India’s history ---Gulberg massacre, Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gaam carnages,
Sardarpura Massacre, Odh Massacre and Deepda Darwaza killings.
SIT Investigation
Aspects of the SIT investigation that ignored critical evidence, dropped
crucial witnesses were brought before the Supreme Court through CJP after
which Gujarat officers on the team were asked to step aside and the one who
remains asked to play a guarded role. Conduct and atmosphere within the
courtroom, a serious issue for victims of mass crimes especially when the
perpetrator dispensation had been twice elected to power in the State
compelled us to make a plea to the Apex Court (December 2009) that court
proceedings be recorded on CCTVs. This remains pending.
Systematic Victimization/Intimidation of Teesta Setalvad/Citizens for
Justice and Peace since 2009 (actually 2004)
Worse in the midst of this propaganda what is being missed is that despite
the fact that victims did through their efforts and the order of the Gujarat
High Court establish the identity of their dead relatives in 2005-2006, it
took an order from the Supreme Court (February 2008 and a subsequent order
of the Trial Court in December 2008) that dignified burial was finally
conducted with no one being allowed to be present in August 2010, ie six
years after the brutal massacre.
The malicious and motivated campaign against human rights activists and
their lawyers struggling for justice for the victims of the genocidal
carnage in Gujarat in 2002 is aimed at derailing the struggle for justice.
The patently false allegations of doctoring evidence are being orchestrated
at a time when crucial trials are nearing completion and accused among whom
are powerful politicians and policemen face charges of criminal conspiracy
and murder.
The allegations against Teesta Setalvad, Secretary Citizens for Justice and
Peace and the organisation she represents as well as advocate MM Tirmizi a
lawyer who has fought tirelessly for justice were spearheaded first by the
state of Gujarat, then fuelled by a former employee and widely publicised by
Pioneer edited by an MP of the same political dispensation that rules
Gujarat.
The timings of the malafide allegation are aimed at derailing the course of
justice and come at a time when the apex court is poised to hear a complaint
of conspiracy to commit mass murder, suppression of justice and destruction
of evidence.
The brazen attempts need to be seen for what they are given the seriousness
of the charges against the Gujarat state and its functionaries. In 2004 too
after the Best Bakery trial was shifted to Mumbai a star witness made
similar allegations. She had thereafter to serve a jail term for perjury
while those found guilty of inducing her into falsehood escaped penal
punishment. The allegations, baseless as they are remain the same though
persons making them have changed.
There is some suggestion and strong possibilities that the Gujarat Police
may try to stage an arrest of Teesta Setalvad, and others. The background of
the case is as follows:
In a nutshell:
On Dec 27, 2005 victim survivors of the Pandharwada massacre (where
officially 27 persons were massacred...actually figure is higher on
1.3.2002) who were frustrated after the studied refusal of the state
authorities to hand back skeletal remains of their dead which were dumped
illegally by the state’s police, began the digging themselves. The spot
where they had been illegally dumped was off the Paanam river Lunawada in
Godhra district.
For months before they started digging they had approached the authorities
to dig out their remains. There was no response. Frustrated, they started
the digging they had informed some members of the electronic media and also
Citizens for Justice and Peace( CJP). The CJP’s then coordinator Rais Khan
(who is since not with the organisation following irregularities since
January 2008) who contacted its Secretary in Mumbai. CJP through its
Secretary Teesta Setalvad clearly told them to wait at the spot till the
authorities came, we informed the Collector and SP and contacted lawyers and
moved the High Court of Gujarat the next day. The local police was informed
by fax of the frustration of the victims.
The victims and CJP together moved the Gujarat HC the next day got our
prayer for DNA sampling from Red HILL Hyderabad The DNA sampling proved that
the victim survivors were right. Nine of the 22 skeletal remains were found
to be of the relatives of the victims of the Pandharwada massacre.
After the initial order in the Gujarat HC which was a breakthrough, year
later the Gujarat HC dismissed the victims’ petition asking for transfer of
investigation of the massacre to the CBI. Ironically we had pointed out that
the panchnamas related to the crimes had nowhere mentioned the skeletal
remains.
The state has tried to say that this was never an illegal dumping but a
proper burial on Forest land off an river. Legally speaking not only has the
panchnama of the original crime of mass murder not list the skeletal remains
disproving the version of the Gujarat state and police. Victims and rights
activists have argued that Lunawada has a large Kabrastan hence if Gujarat
Police could in fact not trace relatives, what was the need to so dump the
remains rather than according them a dignified prayer cum burial in the
Kabrastan? Why dump them in an obscure spot off the river rather than give
them to community leaders for a dignified burial?
Worse in the midst of this propaganda what is being missed is that despite
the fact that victims did through their efforts and the order of the Gujarat
High Court establish the identity of their dead relatives in 2005-2006, it
took an order from the Supreme Court (February 2008 and a subsequent order
of the Trial Court in December 2008) that dignified burial was finally
conducted with no one being allowed to be present in August 2010, i.e. six
years after the brutal massacre.
Following in its tradition of victimising human rights defenders and
victims, the local police lodged an FIR on Jan 1 2006 against victim
survivors and Rais Khan of the CJP. CJP gave full legal aid to them and bail
was granted and a stay against their arrest also granted by the Gujarat High
Court.
In the interim Rais Khan has today is no more with the organisation, he was
dismissed from service. He is today under the influence been won over by the
accused in the Naroda Patiya case and powerful vested interests in Gujarat.
Inexplicably on November 24, 2010 the matter that had been stayed by the
Gujarat High Court was listed and the stay vacated. Rais Khan surrendered
and has in statement recorded under section 164 made false accusations
against mediapersons and Teesta Setalvad.
He appears to enjoy full immunity and security within the state of Gujarat.
Background
The major issue that the Supreme Court will decide on January 20 2011 is the
issue of the complaint against chief minister N Modi and 61 others sent,
with over 2,000 pages of official documents to be registered as an FIR by
Smt Zakia Ahsan Jafri to the Gujarat Director General of Police on 8.6.2006.
When no steps were taken to register the offence, the complainant with
Citizens for Justice and Peace approached the Gujarat High Court with a
prayer for registration of an FIR. (Details of the complaint ad offences
against all accused can be had from www.cjponline.org and
www.gujarat-riots.com)
The evidence that forms the basis for the initial complaint are over three
dozen affidavits filed by policemen from the Gujarat police on the carnage
including former Director general of Police RB Sreekumar and SP Bhavnagar
Rahul Sharma. Subsequently detailed analysis of Phone Call records and
Police Control Room records obtained by CJP and submitted before the
investigating agencies and the courts have provided further decisive
evidence.
After three benches declined to hear the matter in the Gujarat High Court,
a single Judge MR Shah, after hearing extensive arguments made by the
petitioner in 2007 dismissed the petition in November 2007. (Tehelka had, in
October 2007, exposed through Operation Kalank the extra judicial
confessions of many accused, CJP tried to get first the Gujarat HC and then
the SC to order investigation into the Tapes which was declined; thereafter
NHRC ordered CBI to authenticate the tapes which was done though 2008).
In appeal, Smt Zakia Ahsan Jafri and CJP filed an SLP 1088 of 2008 on which
the SC on 3.3.2008 issued notice and then, on 27.4.2009 directed the SIT
appointed by it a year earlier to probe the complaint. Shri Prashant Bhushan
was appointed amicus curiae by the Supreme Court.
(By August 2009 the SIT investigation into eight trials has been exposed foe
being superficial and worse non critical of the role of powerful accused
–this was revealed in the charge sheets filed in eight trials).
Now, these major trials are nearing completion, some rectification of
investigations have been done though in our view the investigations by SIT
continue to have glaring lacunae of deliberately ignoring investigations
into the roles of powerful politicians and policemen –despite the available
evidence of phone records and police control room records the SIT has
consciously turned a blind eye to them. For details on the struggle for
justice do visit www.cjponline.org and www.gujarat-riots.com
In the parallel investigation, SIT submitted its report on the Zakia Jafri
Complaint on May 14 2010. Thereafter former minister for home Govardhan
Zadaphiya offered to turn approver and every effort was made by the state
and the accused to derail the ongoing trials and especially influence the
course of the Zakia Jafri + CJP complaint in various ways including
slandering the groups and activists supporting the victim survivors. This
campaign was spearheaded by Pioneer (Chandan Mitra) and India Today (Uday
Mahapurkar) since September 2010. Affidavits filed by the victim survivors
in the SC, that have been accepted by them in the depositions before the
Court – while some factual aspects have been clarified – are being singled
out to create utterly false canards against us of “doctoring evidence”. (see
details below on Allegations)
On October 26, 2010 when Amicus Prashant Bhushan was scheduled to give his
opinion on what should further be done with the Zakia Jafri + CJP complaint,
he was confronted by a belated application from the state of Gujarat
expressing doubts about his ability to function independently as an amicus
when he had freely expressed opinions on the Gujarat 2002 carnage including
the role of the chief minister. On the day of the hearing, when asked by the
Court what he (Shri Bhushan) would choose to do under the circumstances,
Shri Bhushan recused himself after which the Court appointed a new Amicus.
Shri Rohinton Nariman declined the Court’s request after which Shri Raju
Ramachandran and Shri Gaurav Agarwal have been appointed. Tomorrow, i.e.
June 20 2011 they are expected to advise the Court on the next course of
action.
In the interim period, efforts are clearly afoot through the media, to
pre-empt the process on within the Supreme Court. On December 3, 2010 a
report in all editions of a national daily stated “SIT had given a clean
chit to Modi.” Nothing that had transpired in the SC the day before, pointed
to this, it appeared nothing short of a brazen bid to influence public
opinion, possibly even the Court. Today that is January 19, 2011, the day
before the critical hearing tomorrow, all editions of the Times of India
have carried a “lead story” on how a Deoband cleric says that there is “No
Discrimination Against Muslims in Gujarat.” That is not the issue under
consideration in the Zakia + CJP complaint. The issue is whether a grisly
conspiracy into mass murder, criminal conspiracy to take lives brutally,
commit rapes, destroy evidence and subvert the criminal justice system was
afoot in 2002 and continued to this day vis a vis the justice process!!.
It is indeed a test case for Indian democracy and the Rule of Law how this
case goes and its outcome.
Allegations on concocting affidavits and filing false evidence have
*only*been made by the State of Gujarat (accused in the State
Sponsored Massacre),
Accused who are facing Trial and now by a former employee of our
organisation Rais Khan who was discontinued from services with the CJP due
to irregularities. There is at present NO investigation into us though a
Court hearing one of the trials (Sardapura Massacre in which 33 persons were
killed) has asked him to be prosecuted for trying to derail the course of
justice!!
There are a bunch of documents on this issue that are available on the CJP
website or with us to mail you for any who are interested. Here is a brief
narrative. Victims filed affidavits through us in the Supreme Court of
India (2003). They also filed affidavits before various international and
national fora. They spoke of the heinous crimes. From day one the State has
questioned the version of the victims. Now nine years later when the SC is
monitoring some of the trials, most witnesses who are also victim survivors
have stood by their affidavits. They have on occasion denied one or other
"factual" aspect in the affidavit relating to crime details or a rape that
was committed. Rape victims as you know deny rape for a variety of reasons.
The victim who so did so has also filed an affidavit through another lawyer
before this, in gruesome terms describing the rape. CJP as a a whole and I
in particular do not want her o be victimised so we will be presenting this
evidence in sealed cover before the SC. The critical thing to remember is
that nine years down, we remain possibly the only group left legally
supporting the survivors. And that is why we have been made a target.
This happened with the 1984 massacres too when politicians rode to power,
"earned" respectability and sidelined the survivors. Please also do take the
time to go through www.gujarat-riots.com that has listed the overwhelming
evidence against Modi available on the website.
The propaganda spearheaded by counsel for the Gujarat government Mukul
Rohatgi in the SC began in May 2009 when he said that I had concoted the
story of Kauser Bano who, nine months pregnant had her womb slit open and
her nine month old foetus hurled and swrirled on a sword before being
brutally killed. This story that came to typify the barbarity of the state
sponsored carnage in Gujarat in 2002, was widely exported at the time by
Times of India, India Today (the same Uday Mahpurkar that is slandering
us!!), Deccan Herald among other national and international human rights
bodies. Do see the attachment Media Rights Groups and Mass Crimes. The story
of the Gujarat carnage is the story of a whitewash by money and corporate
interests to pretend that the barbarities never happened. This is a denial
of acknowledgement for the survivors.
Finally it is worth pointing your public editor to the Concerned Citizens
Tribunal Report headed by two former Supreme Court Judges, Justice Krishna
Iyer and PB Sawant who have dubbed Modi the "architect of a state sponsored
genocide."
Finally and possibly as significant as the above is the fact that the timing
of these baseless allegations comes at a time when substantive evidence
incriminating over 400 accused --powerful persons including elected
representatives and policemen --is afoot under the SC scrutiny in Gujarat.
Victim survivors are being actively supported by CJP. This spate of
suspiciously timed allegations is a bid to question the credibility of
witnesses and affect the course of justice in these critical trials.
Other Miscellaneous Issues:
After one year’s efforts victim survivors and legal rights groups managed to
affect the transfer of one of the judges hearing the Gulberg case. Despite
his offensive behaviour to the witnesses and victims of the massacre it took
a year for the change to be completed and the Judge to relinquish charge in
mid January 2011. The trial is at the final arguments stage. In January 2010
victims and witnesses had filed an application under Section 319 of the CRPC
praying for Joint Commissioner Police MK Tandon and PI Parmar to be
arraigned as accused for their criminally negligent and complicit conduct.
SIT had told the Apex Court five months ago that further investigations into
their role were being carried out. Nothing so far has been done by SIT.
Meanwhile in August 2010, after submitting over 300 pages of Phone Call
Records Analysis to the Nanavati Shah Mehta Commission, witnesses have filed
detailed phone call records in the Gulberg Trial.
Witnesses and Victims have also filed over 200 pages of detailed arguments
in the Sardarpura Case in Mehsana district that saw the massacre of 33
innocent members of the minority community. In these arguments it has been
pointed out that despite an application under section 173(8) of the CRPC
being made to the SIT, the SIT has failed to investigate the arms build up
and build up of provocative and aggressive atmosphere in Mehsana district
prior to the Godhra Train Burning incident of 27.2.2002. Evidence of such
build up is available through the testimonies of witnesses, through the
annexures to the affidavits of former Gujarat State IB chief, RB Sreekumar
and through Tehelka’s Operation Kalank. The reluctance of the SC appointed
SIT to probe these aspects is baffling.
Trial in the Godhra Mass Arson Case has been completed and judgement is
awaited.
Trials into the Naroda Gaam and Naroda Patiya cases as also two trials into
the Odh massacres are on. Over 450 accused are arraigned and face charges in
the trials related to the post Godhra massacres, a first in post-indepedence
India’s history ---Gulberg massacre, Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gaam carnages,
Sardarpura Massacre, Odh Massacre and Deepda Darwaza killings.
SIT Investigation
Aspects of the SIT investigation that ignored critical evidence, dropped
crucial witnesses were brought before the Supreme Court through CJP after
which Gujarat officers on the team were asked to step aside and the one who
remains asked to play a guarded role. Conduct and atmosphere within the
courtroom, a serious issue for victims of mass crimes especially when the
perpetrator dispensation had been twice elected to power in the State
compelled us to make a plea to the Apex Court (December 2009) that court
proceedings be recorded on CCTVs. This remains pending.
Systematic Victimization/Intimidation of Teesta Setalvad/Citizens for
Justice and Peace since 2009 (actually 2004)
Worse in the midst of this propaganda what is being missed is that despite
the fact that victims did through their efforts and the order of the Gujarat
High Court establish the identity of their dead relatives in 2005-2006, it
took an order from the Supreme Court (February 2008 and a subsequent order
of the Trial Court in December 2008) that dignified burial was finally
conducted with no one being allowed to be present in August 2010, ie six
years after the brutal massacre.
The malicious and motivated campaign against human rights activists and
their lawyers struggling for justice for the victims of the genocidal
carnage in Gujarat in 2002 is aimed at derailing the struggle for justice.
The patently false allegations of doctoring evidence are being orchestrated
at a time when crucial trials are nearing completion and accused among whom
are powerful politicians and policemen face charges of criminal conspiracy
and murder.
The allegations against Teesta Setalvad, Secretary Citizens for Justice and
Peace and the organisation she represents as well as advocate MM Tirmizi a
lawyer who has fought tirelessly for justice were spearheaded first by the
state of Gujarat, then fuelled by a former employee and widely publicised by
Pioneer edited by an MP of the same political dispensation that rules
Gujarat.
The timings of the malafide allegation are aimed at derailing the course of
justice and come at a time when the apex court is poised to hear a complaint
of conspiracy to commit mass murder, suppression of justice and destruction
of evidence.
The brazen attempts need to be seen for what they are given the seriousness
of the charges against the Gujarat state and its functionaries. In 2004 too
after the Best Bakery trial was shifted to Mumbai a star witness made
similar allegations. She had thereafter to serve a jail term for perjury
while those found guilty of inducing her into falsehood escaped penal
punishment. The allegations, baseless as they are remain the same though
persons making them have changed.
There is some suggestion and strong possibilities that the Gujarat Police
may try to stage an arrest of Teesta Setalvad, and others. The background of
the case is as follows:
In a nutshell:
On Dec 27, 2005 victim survivors of the Pandharwada massacre (where
officially 27 persons were massacred...actually figure is higher on
1.3.2002) who were frustrated after the studied refusal of the state
authorities to hand back skeletal remains of their dead which were dumped
illegally by the state’s police, began the digging themselves. The spot
where they had been illegally dumped was off the Paanam river Lunawada in
Godhra district.
For months before they started digging they had approached the authorities
to dig out their remains. There was no response. Frustrated, they started
the digging they had informed some members of the electronic media and also
Citizens for Justice and Peace( CJP). The CJP’s then coordinator Rais Khan
(who is since not with the organisation following irregularities since
January 2008) who contacted its Secretary in Mumbai. CJP through its
Secretary Teesta Setalvad clearly told them to wait at the spot till the
authorities came, we informed the Collector and SP and contacted lawyers and
moved the High Court of Gujarat the next day. The local police was informed
by fax of the frustration of the victims.
The victims and CJP together moved the Gujarat HC the next day got our
prayer for DNA sampling from Red HILL Hyderabad The DNA sampling proved that
the victim survivors were right. Nine of the 22 skeletal remains were found
to be of the relatives of the victims of the Pandharwada massacre.
After the initial order in the Gujarat HC which was a breakthrough, year
later the Gujarat HC dismissed the victims’ petition asking for transfer of
investigation of the massacre to the CBI. Ironically we had pointed out that
the panchnamas related to the crimes had nowhere mentioned the skeletal
remains.
The state has tried to say that this was never an illegal dumping but a
proper burial on Forest land off an river. Legally speaking not only has the
panchnama of the original crime of mass murder not list the skeletal remains
disproving the version of the Gujarat state and police. Victims and rights
activists have argued that Lunawada has a large Kabrastan hence if Gujarat
Police could in fact not trace relatives, what was the need to so dump the
remains rather than according them a dignified prayer cum burial in the
Kabrastan? Why dump them in an obscure spot off the river rather than give
them to community leaders for a dignified burial?
Worse in the midst of this propaganda what is being missed is that despite
the fact that victims did through their efforts and the order of the Gujarat
High Court establish the identity of their dead relatives in 2005-2006, it
took an order from the Supreme Court (February 2008 and a subsequent order
of the Trial Court in December 2008) that dignified burial was finally
conducted with no one being allowed to be present in August 2010, i.e. six
years after the brutal massacre.
Following in its tradition of victimising human rights defenders and
victims, the local police lodged an FIR on Jan 1 2006 against victim
survivors and Rais Khan of the CJP. CJP gave full legal aid to them and bail
was granted and a stay against their arrest also granted by the Gujarat High
Court.
In the interim Rais Khan has today is no more with the organisation, he was
dismissed from service. He is today under the influence been won over by the
accused in the Naroda Patiya case and powerful vested interests in Gujarat.
Inexplicably on November 24, 2010 the matter that had been stayed by the
Gujarat High Court was listed and the stay vacated. Rais Khan surrendered
and has in statement recorded under section 164 made false accusations
against mediapersons and Teesta Setalvad.
He appears to enjoy full immunity and security within the state of Gujarat.
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