CITIZENS FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE-SAHMAT
April 4, 2007
Press Invite
Victim Survivor Group delegation to Meet Union Home Minister and Other Political Leaders
A delegation of two dozen representatives of victim survivors from 12 districts in Gujarat, members of Citizens for Justice and Peace, will take a delegation to the Union Home Minister, Shri Shivraj Patil on April 5, 2007, welcoming the UPA government‚s compensation package for the Gujarat victims of 2002 and also urging that the following issues also be taken into consideration so as to enhance the package and include the subtler and wider dimensions of the tragedy.
The delegation will present a signature campaign from 7,500 victim survivors following a meeting in Ahmedabad on March 1, 2007
Press Meet
Thereafter they will address a press meet at SAHMAT at 5.30 p.m. on Thursday 5th April 2007. You are requested to depute your representative to cover the meet.
The delegation on behalf of over 7,500 victim survivors has urged the enhancement of the compensation package.
Enhance the Compensation Package
A. Death Compensation: As already clarified, the Central Government does not accept the State Government‚s figure of 1044 people (only) as dead. Estimate is 2,500 persons died (including 400 who are missing) In the delegation itself there are two victim survivors who lost their husbands who have not received any death compensation from the government. Similarly victim survivors group, the CJP that was authorized by the Gujarat High Court to collect district wise data of life and property damage will provide the date, backed by panchnamas and FIRs to the Central Government.
B. Injured Compensation: That the Centre does not also lay credence to state government‚s only 2,584 injured. In our delegation, there are two women who were badly burned who also have not received any compensation. Besides inury compensation should include those injuries that have not led to permanent disability.
C. Housing Compensation: In March 2003, both CJP and CC ˆvictim survivor groups--have prepared and compiled comprehensive data that has been filed in the Gujarat High Court ( Citizens for Justice and Peace and Communalism Combat versus State of Gujarat,3217/2003 ongoing in the Gujarat High Court) demonstrating to the Court that the contentions of the state of Gujarat are malafide in the act of returning as much as Rs 19-odd crores to the Centre; In this petition, even the meager amount of compensation for house damage (when the scheme announced Rs 50,000 per house damaged) barely 20 per cent of those who's homes have been destroyed have received the full amount. Hence we urge that 1) Housing Compensation as declared, meager as it is (Rs 50,000) is paid to all) and that the Centre declares that this amount of Rs 50,000 is woefully inadequate and ˆrelying on FIRs or Panchnamas˜declares a higher package for Housing Compensation.
D. Expand Compensation Package for Victims of Sexual Violence: No Compensation for victims of brutal sexual violence: The Centre must expand his scheme to include compensation for at least 400 women and girls who were brute victims of sexual violence. We urge that the Central Compensation scheme is expanded to include this.
E. Internally Displaced Refugees: There has been no acknowledgement and reparation for over 10,000 persons in Gujarat today live as abandoned internally displaced persons in their own land with no right to legal housing (the homes given by relief camps built by their own community do not have a legally verified status), without BPL cards and without ration cards. They have in effect been denied basic citizenship rights. The Centre must ensure that their new places of residence are 1) transferred in their names; 2) they receive state government papers including ration cards and BPL cards ; 3) that they are on the state‚s electoral rolls. It appears that the state is reluctant to re-house and rehabilitate them with full-fledged rights as internally displaced refugees.
Teesta Setalvad
Ram Rahman
|
April 05, 2007
Narendra Modi’s Gujarat five years after the horror
(Tehelka
Apr 07 , 2007)
IN THE VIRILE GOD’S GRAVEYARD
Apoorvanand spent a week taking measure of Narendra Modi’s Gujarat five years after the horror. The first of his two-part report
Ashes: Policemen walk past destruction in Ahmedabad during the riots
For many Gujaratis, Narendra Modi is a man who provides
material and spiritual comforts to his people
Gujarat is calm. And is on the march. Every village of the state is a jyotigram. Narmada water is flowing in abundance in the canals quenching the thirst of Gujaratis. “Was not Surat flooded a few months back and did not the people of Gujarat suffer?” I ask my driver. “No, was not Narendrabhai there to take care of everything,” he replies. How can anything go wrong when Narendrabhai is keeping watch!
Narendra Modi, you see, does not have a family and he works round the clock, we are informed. I find Modi smiling down at us benevolently from the digital billboards that dot Ahmedabad. There is no escaping his firm developmental smile. “The man has impressive qualities. Gujarat is bound to forge ahead under this workaholic chief minister. A citizen may have doubts of his secularism, but even his enemies don’t doubt his competence,” writes Gunawant Shah, a popular Gujarati columnist.
Have you seen any disturbance in the last five years? There is absolute peace here. People from all over the world are pouring in money to develop Gujarat. It is only Narendrabhai who can get the Ambanis, the Adanis and the Tatas together for the state’s development and who is blessed by Morari Bapu and other spiritual figures. A man providing material and spiritual comfort to his people — that is Modi for you.
TOLL CALL
1,169 the official number of people killed in the riots that engulfed Gujarat in 2002 2,000 cases the police reopened on Supreme Court
directives
2,548 the number of people injured in the period
13 the number of cases in which perpetrators have been convicted
4,252 the number of violence cases filed during the pogrom. Police closed more than half 30,000 the estimated number of refugees living in 81 relief camps across the state
Gujaratis, especially the Hindus, are in awe of Modi. They seem to have found their long lost “man” in him. Manliness is what Gujarati Hindus seem to be craving for. I am told by a group of students that Muslims eat non-vegetarian stuff, have muscular bodies and are cruel by nature. Hindus, on the other hand, are vegetarians which makes them soft in body and nature. That is why we are always at the receiving end. Narendra Modi is the man who showed how it can be reversed. An activist friend tells me that there was a campaign lamenting the loss of mardangi (masculinity) among Hindus resulting in a situation in which actors could flaunt their Muslim identities now.
In Vadodara, an attempt was on to open an exclusive gymnasium for Hindu men to improve their masculinity
This was a loss of ground as there was a time when they had to change their names to sound Hindu. Could Dilip Kumar dare act as Yusuf Khan? Hindus have become cowards and are looking passively at their sad decline, say the pamphlets.
The guilt Hindu males seem to suffer from emanates from this imagined loss of masculinity. Hindu males here have been exhorted to build their bodies to be able to match the muscular Muslim male.
I am told that there was an attempt to open a gymnasium in Vadodara exclusively for Hindu men following the realisation that Hindu girls were being lured by Muslim men. Pamphlets with pictures of motorcycle-borne young Muslim men looking at Hindu girls are in circulation for the last 10 years. It has had the desired impact.
Many, from cosmopolitan students to writers of repute, all believe that “bad” Muslim boys stand outside colleges to lure innocent Hindu girls. They fall prey to their cunning ways, convert to Islam and end up as wives of Muslim men. What is even worse is that after ruining them, these lumpen leave them in the lurch. Poor Hindu parents cannot even take them back as they have been converted and ruined! When asked about proof, the students tell us that one can find Gujarati dailies reporting such marriages.
My friends in Vadodara tell me that in the last decade all the akharas have been purged of non-Hindu elements. It would not be an exaggeration to say that they have been overtaken by elements belonging to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or the Bajrang Dal. They are now the new spaces where a new Hindu male sociology is emerging.
We are in possession of a leaflet issued in the name of Babu Bajrangi which says: “In every home there is a live bomb. It can explode any moment. Who is this live bomb? Our daughters!” It goes on to ask parents to keep an eye on their daughters. If your daughter is missing, you can depend on the services of Babu Bajrangi which are absolutely free. “If you save one girl, you save a hundred cows,” the leaflet concludes calling upon everybody to start saving the bombs (our daughters)!
Babu Bajrangi has made it his job to “rescue” the misguided and fallen Hindu girls from the clutches of badmash and lafange (the lumpen). You’ll find large posters in the colleges of Ahmedabad bearing the Bajrangi’s warning. The stories of very rare cases of Hindu–Muslim marriages have been woven into a pattern. The thought that their own girls are being used to increase the tribe of the badmash , i.e. Muslims, makes the Hindu blood boil.
I am reminded of a report circulating on the Internet that Hindus in England have complained that paid Muslim “goons” are forcibly converting their girls to Islam. The fact that it is happening abroad, as well, proves beyond doubt that there is, in fact, an international conspiracy to increase the population of Muslims, that too at the cost of Hindus and their honour.
Combine it with the widely-held belief that Muslims across Gujarat are busy slaughtering cows. What business do they have to smuggle cows out of the state, a young boy asks us angrily. Activists tell us that lorries carrying cattle are stopped by Bajrang Dal gangs and they forcibly load one or two cows on the truck to implicate the trader in cow slaughter cases. Gujarati dailies flash such “factual reports” at regular intervals, never to be verified by any agency and, therefore, adding to “truth” about Muslims, or their “true reality”, quoting a student we talked to. This account of truth about Muslims is similar to the truth being taught to the Class x students of Rajasthan by their new Social Science textbooks that on the state’s western borders resides a particular community that has been found to indulge in the trafficking of minor girls and cows.
Middle class Hindus seem to suffer from a guilt complex that they have not done enough to retrieve their honour. Their vegetarianism would never allow them to be as “powerful” as Muslims. Most of them cannot forsake their families. Narendra Modi doesn’t have a family and can’t be corrupted as he has conserved his virility. He could take on the world railing against him after March 2002 and remained firm. The cunning that helps him outwit opponents in his party and elsewhere makes him a modern day Krishna. These are the ‘praiseworthy qualities’ of Narendra Modi which endear him to the masses, says a writer, who is otherwise critical of his role in 2002.
Swami Vivekananda aspired for a man who would have the mind of a Hindu and the body of a Muslim. Narendra Modi showed that the Muslim body could be annihilated, made irrelevant.
A journalist friend tells me that after the success of Hrithik Roshan’s first film, Kaho Na Pyar Hai, rss mouthpiece Panchajanya commented that in Hrithik Roshan we could see the entry of a new, real Hindu Putra.
That he went on to marry a Muslim girl could also be treated as a revenge on behalf of those Hindus who have lost their daughters and sisters to Muslim men. Narendra Modi vanquished the Muslim body, Hrithik Roshan made it evaporate by integrating it with himself. Roshan has scored another hit at the box office, Modi would continue his run at the political box office.
Gujarati Hindus seem to be all too eager to pay for it with their souls.
Apr 07 , 2007)
IN THE VIRILE GOD’S GRAVEYARD
Apoorvanand spent a week taking measure of Narendra Modi’s Gujarat five years after the horror. The first of his two-part report
Ashes: Policemen walk past destruction in Ahmedabad during the riots
For many Gujaratis, Narendra Modi is a man who provides
material and spiritual comforts to his people
Gujarat is calm. And is on the march. Every village of the state is a jyotigram. Narmada water is flowing in abundance in the canals quenching the thirst of Gujaratis. “Was not Surat flooded a few months back and did not the people of Gujarat suffer?” I ask my driver. “No, was not Narendrabhai there to take care of everything,” he replies. How can anything go wrong when Narendrabhai is keeping watch!
Narendra Modi, you see, does not have a family and he works round the clock, we are informed. I find Modi smiling down at us benevolently from the digital billboards that dot Ahmedabad. There is no escaping his firm developmental smile. “The man has impressive qualities. Gujarat is bound to forge ahead under this workaholic chief minister. A citizen may have doubts of his secularism, but even his enemies don’t doubt his competence,” writes Gunawant Shah, a popular Gujarati columnist.
Have you seen any disturbance in the last five years? There is absolute peace here. People from all over the world are pouring in money to develop Gujarat. It is only Narendrabhai who can get the Ambanis, the Adanis and the Tatas together for the state’s development and who is blessed by Morari Bapu and other spiritual figures. A man providing material and spiritual comfort to his people — that is Modi for you.
TOLL CALL
1,169 the official number of people killed in the riots that engulfed Gujarat in 2002 2,000 cases the police reopened on Supreme Court
directives
2,548 the number of people injured in the period
13 the number of cases in which perpetrators have been convicted
4,252 the number of violence cases filed during the pogrom. Police closed more than half 30,000 the estimated number of refugees living in 81 relief camps across the state
Gujaratis, especially the Hindus, are in awe of Modi. They seem to have found their long lost “man” in him. Manliness is what Gujarati Hindus seem to be craving for. I am told by a group of students that Muslims eat non-vegetarian stuff, have muscular bodies and are cruel by nature. Hindus, on the other hand, are vegetarians which makes them soft in body and nature. That is why we are always at the receiving end. Narendra Modi is the man who showed how it can be reversed. An activist friend tells me that there was a campaign lamenting the loss of mardangi (masculinity) among Hindus resulting in a situation in which actors could flaunt their Muslim identities now.
In Vadodara, an attempt was on to open an exclusive gymnasium for Hindu men to improve their masculinity
This was a loss of ground as there was a time when they had to change their names to sound Hindu. Could Dilip Kumar dare act as Yusuf Khan? Hindus have become cowards and are looking passively at their sad decline, say the pamphlets.
The guilt Hindu males seem to suffer from emanates from this imagined loss of masculinity. Hindu males here have been exhorted to build their bodies to be able to match the muscular Muslim male.
I am told that there was an attempt to open a gymnasium in Vadodara exclusively for Hindu men following the realisation that Hindu girls were being lured by Muslim men. Pamphlets with pictures of motorcycle-borne young Muslim men looking at Hindu girls are in circulation for the last 10 years. It has had the desired impact.
Many, from cosmopolitan students to writers of repute, all believe that “bad” Muslim boys stand outside colleges to lure innocent Hindu girls. They fall prey to their cunning ways, convert to Islam and end up as wives of Muslim men. What is even worse is that after ruining them, these lumpen leave them in the lurch. Poor Hindu parents cannot even take them back as they have been converted and ruined! When asked about proof, the students tell us that one can find Gujarati dailies reporting such marriages.
My friends in Vadodara tell me that in the last decade all the akharas have been purged of non-Hindu elements. It would not be an exaggeration to say that they have been overtaken by elements belonging to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or the Bajrang Dal. They are now the new spaces where a new Hindu male sociology is emerging.
We are in possession of a leaflet issued in the name of Babu Bajrangi which says: “In every home there is a live bomb. It can explode any moment. Who is this live bomb? Our daughters!” It goes on to ask parents to keep an eye on their daughters. If your daughter is missing, you can depend on the services of Babu Bajrangi which are absolutely free. “If you save one girl, you save a hundred cows,” the leaflet concludes calling upon everybody to start saving the bombs (our daughters)!
Babu Bajrangi has made it his job to “rescue” the misguided and fallen Hindu girls from the clutches of badmash and lafange (the lumpen). You’ll find large posters in the colleges of Ahmedabad bearing the Bajrangi’s warning. The stories of very rare cases of Hindu–Muslim marriages have been woven into a pattern. The thought that their own girls are being used to increase the tribe of the badmash , i.e. Muslims, makes the Hindu blood boil.
I am reminded of a report circulating on the Internet that Hindus in England have complained that paid Muslim “goons” are forcibly converting their girls to Islam. The fact that it is happening abroad, as well, proves beyond doubt that there is, in fact, an international conspiracy to increase the population of Muslims, that too at the cost of Hindus and their honour.
Combine it with the widely-held belief that Muslims across Gujarat are busy slaughtering cows. What business do they have to smuggle cows out of the state, a young boy asks us angrily. Activists tell us that lorries carrying cattle are stopped by Bajrang Dal gangs and they forcibly load one or two cows on the truck to implicate the trader in cow slaughter cases. Gujarati dailies flash such “factual reports” at regular intervals, never to be verified by any agency and, therefore, adding to “truth” about Muslims, or their “true reality”, quoting a student we talked to. This account of truth about Muslims is similar to the truth being taught to the Class x students of Rajasthan by their new Social Science textbooks that on the state’s western borders resides a particular community that has been found to indulge in the trafficking of minor girls and cows.
Middle class Hindus seem to suffer from a guilt complex that they have not done enough to retrieve their honour. Their vegetarianism would never allow them to be as “powerful” as Muslims. Most of them cannot forsake their families. Narendra Modi doesn’t have a family and can’t be corrupted as he has conserved his virility. He could take on the world railing against him after March 2002 and remained firm. The cunning that helps him outwit opponents in his party and elsewhere makes him a modern day Krishna. These are the ‘praiseworthy qualities’ of Narendra Modi which endear him to the masses, says a writer, who is otherwise critical of his role in 2002.
Swami Vivekananda aspired for a man who would have the mind of a Hindu and the body of a Muslim. Narendra Modi showed that the Muslim body could be annihilated, made irrelevant.
A journalist friend tells me that after the success of Hrithik Roshan’s first film, Kaho Na Pyar Hai, rss mouthpiece Panchajanya commented that in Hrithik Roshan we could see the entry of a new, real Hindu Putra.
That he went on to marry a Muslim girl could also be treated as a revenge on behalf of those Hindus who have lost their daughters and sisters to Muslim men. Narendra Modi vanquished the Muslim body, Hrithik Roshan made it evaporate by integrating it with himself. Roshan has scored another hit at the box office, Modi would continue his run at the political box office.
Gujarati Hindus seem to be all too eager to pay for it with their souls.
April 04, 2007
"The Road Ahead" a public hearing: Gujarat riot victims
(Hindustan Times
Public hearing: Gujarat riot victims
by Srinand Jha
New Delhi, April 04, 2007
First Published: 23:04 IST(4/4/2007)
Last Updated: 23:08 IST(4/4/2007)
Two hundred victims of the Gujarat riots deposed at a conference titled, "The Road Ahead" for a public hearing whose jury member included Planning Commission member BN Yugandhar and Siddhartha Vardharajan of The Hindu.
One of the victims - thirty six year old Hajra Hussain Sheikh’s says, "Fifty houses in my locality in Baroda were burnt and destroyed and we subsequently shifted to Godhra, where my mother stays. My husband is sick and disabled and my children have been forced into daily labour. There are 36 makeshift tents where displaced people live; there is filth all around. We have not received any assistance from the Government”.
Hajra Sheikh’s continuing plight - five years after the carnage happened in Gujarat - is representative of a larger problem of governance: The inability to reconcile the concepts of development and democracy, said Gagan Sethi of an Ahmedabad-based voluntary organisation called "Janvikas" - co-organisers of the first public hearing of the 2002 Gujarat riot victims in New Delhi.
Sethi’s central argument: On the developmental index, Gujarat rates high. However, society has been turning more intolerant, fundamentalist and obscurantist. It is, he said, a similar situation being reflected at the national level: India’s GDP is on a rapid fast-forward mode, but it ranks poorly on the human index.
Concurring with that view is National Commission for Women (NCW) member Prof Zoya Hassan. “Concrete parameters of the government’s response to riot affected victims have to be evolved by designing a comprehensive rehabilitation package”.
A policy for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) was an idea repeatedly articulated at the meeting, with the Jury Chairman Justice AM Ahmadi advocating the concept of rehabilitation package that conforms to a standardised formula. “Development without the human element is development without a soul”, he said.
The rehabilitation package recently announced by the Union Government (Rs.106.57 crore) amounts to”death compensation”. An additional Rs.200-250 crore is required - if issues of livelihood and infrastructure are to be meaningfully addressed, said Shabnam Hashmi.
In his concluding remarks, Planning Commission member BN Yugandhar referred to the possibility of engaging organisations like the minority commission and small-scale industries corporation for raising funds/loans for Gujarat riot victims.
Public hearing: Gujarat riot victims
by Srinand Jha
New Delhi, April 04, 2007
First Published: 23:04 IST(4/4/2007)
Last Updated: 23:08 IST(4/4/2007)
Two hundred victims of the Gujarat riots deposed at a conference titled, "The Road Ahead" for a public hearing whose jury member included Planning Commission member BN Yugandhar and Siddhartha Vardharajan of The Hindu.
One of the victims - thirty six year old Hajra Hussain Sheikh’s says, "Fifty houses in my locality in Baroda were burnt and destroyed and we subsequently shifted to Godhra, where my mother stays. My husband is sick and disabled and my children have been forced into daily labour. There are 36 makeshift tents where displaced people live; there is filth all around. We have not received any assistance from the Government”.
Hajra Sheikh’s continuing plight - five years after the carnage happened in Gujarat - is representative of a larger problem of governance: The inability to reconcile the concepts of development and democracy, said Gagan Sethi of an Ahmedabad-based voluntary organisation called "Janvikas" - co-organisers of the first public hearing of the 2002 Gujarat riot victims in New Delhi.
Sethi’s central argument: On the developmental index, Gujarat rates high. However, society has been turning more intolerant, fundamentalist and obscurantist. It is, he said, a similar situation being reflected at the national level: India’s GDP is on a rapid fast-forward mode, but it ranks poorly on the human index.
Concurring with that view is National Commission for Women (NCW) member Prof Zoya Hassan. “Concrete parameters of the government’s response to riot affected victims have to be evolved by designing a comprehensive rehabilitation package”.
A policy for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) was an idea repeatedly articulated at the meeting, with the Jury Chairman Justice AM Ahmadi advocating the concept of rehabilitation package that conforms to a standardised formula. “Development without the human element is development without a soul”, he said.
The rehabilitation package recently announced by the Union Government (Rs.106.57 crore) amounts to”death compensation”. An additional Rs.200-250 crore is required - if issues of livelihood and infrastructure are to be meaningfully addressed, said Shabnam Hashmi.
In his concluding remarks, Planning Commission member BN Yugandhar referred to the possibility of engaging organisations like the minority commission and small-scale industries corporation for raising funds/loans for Gujarat riot victims.
Titles of BJP audio-visual matter for UP elections
[A video CD titled UP victimised has been suddenly withdrawn. It was released in December 2006]
o o o
Lucknow Newsline
April 04, 2007
PAGE 1
Star ‘Tulsi’ missing, BJP launches audio-visual war
Express News Service
Lucknow, April 3: The nation’s favourite bahu, Smriti Irani (aka Tulsi) failed to keep her date with the city during a function to launch BJP’s audio and video material for the election campaign today. The material was finally launched minus the glam quotient, as Irani was left stranded in Mumbai after missing her flight this morning.
Firing all cylinders at the Mulayam government, the audio cassettes and video CDs have imaginative titles — Vijaypath, Sawaranyug, Sankalp, Samarthan tatha Parivartan (audio & CD), Bharat ki Pukar, Sandesh, Uttar Pradesh Utpidit Pradesh, Uttishthat Jagrat, Samay ki Pukar and Parivartan(all VCDs).
o o o
Lucknow Newsline
April 04, 2007
PAGE 1
Star ‘Tulsi’ missing, BJP launches audio-visual war
Express News Service
Lucknow, April 3: The nation’s favourite bahu, Smriti Irani (aka Tulsi) failed to keep her date with the city during a function to launch BJP’s audio and video material for the election campaign today. The material was finally launched minus the glam quotient, as Irani was left stranded in Mumbai after missing her flight this morning.
Firing all cylinders at the Mulayam government, the audio cassettes and video CDs have imaginative titles — Vijaypath, Sawaranyug, Sankalp, Samarthan tatha Parivartan (audio & CD), Bharat ki Pukar, Sandesh, Uttar Pradesh Utpidit Pradesh, Uttishthat Jagrat, Samay ki Pukar and Parivartan(all VCDs).
April 03, 2007
VHP-backed outfit attacks Christians
(The Hindu
April 3, 2007)
VHP-backed outfit attacks Christians
Staff Correspondent
BHOPAL: Members of the Dharma Sena, a Vishwa Hindu Parishad-backed outfit, attacked many Christians, including girls and women, who were participating in a Palm Sunday function in Jabalpur's Cantonment area. Case filed
The police have registered a case of rioting and damage to property under Sections 147, 148, 323, 427 and 506 of the Indian Penal Code against the Dharma Sena activists.
The Dharma Sena is a band of about two-dozen local activists drawing strength from the VHP. It spearheads an anti-conversion campaign in Jabalpur.
In Sunday's incident near the Hanuman Mandir on a hillock at Patababa, the Dharma Sena activists were outnumbered and two of them were also injured.
While those from the Christian community claimed that they had been going to the Patababa hill for the past several years, the Dharma Sena activists said they were there for preparations in connection with Monday's Hanuman Jayanthi.
When contacted, Collector Sanjay Dubey said police investigations were under way.
April 3, 2007)
VHP-backed outfit attacks Christians
Staff Correspondent
BHOPAL: Members of the Dharma Sena, a Vishwa Hindu Parishad-backed outfit, attacked many Christians, including girls and women, who were participating in a Palm Sunday function in Jabalpur's Cantonment area. Case filed
The police have registered a case of rioting and damage to property under Sections 147, 148, 323, 427 and 506 of the Indian Penal Code against the Dharma Sena activists.
The Dharma Sena is a band of about two-dozen local activists drawing strength from the VHP. It spearheads an anti-conversion campaign in Jabalpur.
In Sunday's incident near the Hanuman Mandir on a hillock at Patababa, the Dharma Sena activists were outnumbered and two of them were also injured.
While those from the Christian community claimed that they had been going to the Patababa hill for the past several years, the Dharma Sena activists said they were there for preparations in connection with Monday's Hanuman Jayanthi.
When contacted, Collector Sanjay Dubey said police investigations were under way.
RSS prevails, Chhattisgarh too bans sex course
Indian Express
RSS prevails, C’garh too bans sex course
Nitin Mahajan
Posted online: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 at 0000 hrs Print Email
Schools: Both states face opposition to Adolescent Education Programme over ‘objectionable material’ being used
RAIPUR, APRIL 2 : The Chhattisgarh government has decided to end its Adolescence Education Programme. Days after similar steps were initiated by neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra and two years after it introduced the programme in Classes IX and XI, the Raman Singh government asked the Chhattisgarh State Council for Educational Research and Training to immediately stop sex education in state schools, while instructing the SCERT to find ways “compatible with Indian culture” to create AIDS awareness among students.
The decision to abandon sex education in schools was taken after senior RSS functionaries objected to the “explicit material” being used in the Adolescent Education Programme, forcing the Chief Minister to direct SCERT to remove “objectionable” material and photographs which “do not have a place in Indian culture”.
Senior SCERT officials involved in the development and implementation of the programme had tried to convince the Chief Minister about the merits of the programme, urging him not to abandon it. But Raman bowed to the RSS’s demands. “The SCERT has been told to remove graphic anatomical pictures from the kit meant for teachers,” an official, baffled by the government’s decision, said.
Incidentally the step to remove sex education from school curriculum comes even as the RSS lobby, which has been keen to remodel the education system, managed to include yoga in the state school curriculum recently.
Speaking to The Indian Express, SCERT Director Nand Kumar confirmed that the government had sought “remodelling” of the Adolescence Education Programme. “We have been asked to remove photographs which were deemed too explicit and replace these with sketches and find other ways to create AIDS awareness,” he said.
The Chief Minister has also asked the SCERT to make a presentation of the remodelled programme, after which a decision on the future of the programme would be taken.
The programme was introduced in the state two years back and under it, Classes IX, X and XI students were to be imparted sex education and told about AIDS. About 725 teachers were provided training by the National AIDS Control Organisation and Unicef for making children aware about AIDS, in a project which cost Rs 25 lakh and had been implemented in a majority of districts in the state.
The government’s move has been severely criticised by people behind the project. “Scrapping the programme is not the solution. We need to find ways in which a student can be taught about AIDS and given sex education that does not affect the cultural sensitivity prevalent in an area,” Joint Secretary, Council Of Boards of Secondary Education (COBSE), Puran Chand said.
He pointed out that a few months ago COBSE, a consultative and apex body of education boards in the country, had launched a package on adolescent education and requested each state government to implement it. “However, due to non-cooperation from various states we have not been able to integrate sex education in the syllabus,” he added, stating that only 17 of the member 41 boards had replied positively to COBSE's initiative.
RSS prevails, C’garh too bans sex course
Nitin Mahajan
Posted online: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 at 0000 hrs Print Email
Schools: Both states face opposition to Adolescent Education Programme over ‘objectionable material’ being used
RAIPUR, APRIL 2 : The Chhattisgarh government has decided to end its Adolescence Education Programme. Days after similar steps were initiated by neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra and two years after it introduced the programme in Classes IX and XI, the Raman Singh government asked the Chhattisgarh State Council for Educational Research and Training to immediately stop sex education in state schools, while instructing the SCERT to find ways “compatible with Indian culture” to create AIDS awareness among students.
The decision to abandon sex education in schools was taken after senior RSS functionaries objected to the “explicit material” being used in the Adolescent Education Programme, forcing the Chief Minister to direct SCERT to remove “objectionable” material and photographs which “do not have a place in Indian culture”.
Senior SCERT officials involved in the development and implementation of the programme had tried to convince the Chief Minister about the merits of the programme, urging him not to abandon it. But Raman bowed to the RSS’s demands. “The SCERT has been told to remove graphic anatomical pictures from the kit meant for teachers,” an official, baffled by the government’s decision, said.
Incidentally the step to remove sex education from school curriculum comes even as the RSS lobby, which has been keen to remodel the education system, managed to include yoga in the state school curriculum recently.
Speaking to The Indian Express, SCERT Director Nand Kumar confirmed that the government had sought “remodelling” of the Adolescence Education Programme. “We have been asked to remove photographs which were deemed too explicit and replace these with sketches and find other ways to create AIDS awareness,” he said.
The Chief Minister has also asked the SCERT to make a presentation of the remodelled programme, after which a decision on the future of the programme would be taken.
The programme was introduced in the state two years back and under it, Classes IX, X and XI students were to be imparted sex education and told about AIDS. About 725 teachers were provided training by the National AIDS Control Organisation and Unicef for making children aware about AIDS, in a project which cost Rs 25 lakh and had been implemented in a majority of districts in the state.
The government’s move has been severely criticised by people behind the project. “Scrapping the programme is not the solution. We need to find ways in which a student can be taught about AIDS and given sex education that does not affect the cultural sensitivity prevalent in an area,” Joint Secretary, Council Of Boards of Secondary Education (COBSE), Puran Chand said.
He pointed out that a few months ago COBSE, a consultative and apex body of education boards in the country, had launched a package on adolescent education and requested each state government to implement it. “However, due to non-cooperation from various states we have not been able to integrate sex education in the syllabus,” he added, stating that only 17 of the member 41 boards had replied positively to COBSE's initiative.
April 01, 2007
BJP and 'religious leaders' in active politics
(Gulf News
April 1, 2007)
Exodus of Hindu holy men worries BJP
by Ajay Jha, Chief Correspondent
New Delhi: The number of saffron-clad "holy men" is dwindling fast in the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Yogi Adityanath, a saffron-clad lawmaker from Gorakhpur, is the latest among a long list of holy men to rebel against the party.
The BJP has started the experiment of bringing religious leaders into active politics in order to emerge the first choice of the majority Hindu voters. The move paid rich political dividends with the party that had won just two seats in the 1984 general elections and ruled the country for six years between 1998 and 2004.
Adityanath, 34, parted ways with the BJP recently and has announced his decision to field nearly 75 candidates across 14 districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh during the state assembly elections under the banner of the nearly defunct Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha.
Presence
Although Adityanath is confident that at least 10 of his nominees would make it to the new legislative assembly, political analysts feel the presence of his candidates could ensure defeat of about 15 BJP nominees. Besides Adityanath, the BJP also has to contend with saffron-clad former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharati whose fledgling Bharatiya Janashakti party is also contesting state polls on its own. Bharati's party cost the BJP at least three seats in the just concluded polls in neighbouring Uttarakhand ensuring that the BJP fell short of a simple majority.
Interestingly, the religious leaders have left the BJP accusing it of compromising on the cause of the Hindus.
Provoke
Sachidanand Sakshi Maharaj was the first saffron-clad leader to rebel against the party. The former Farrukhabad lawmaker caused enough damage to his erstwhile party by provoking former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh to float his own party prior to the 2002 state polls leading to the BJP losing power in the state. Singh has since returned to the BJP and is being projected as its chief ministerial candidate.
Swami Chinmayanand was the next to quit the BJP after serving as the junior home minister while the BJP ruled at the centre.
While the BJP is putting on a brave front saying Adityanath would not make much difference, Tarun Vijay, editor of Panchjanya, the Hindi magazine of the BJP's ideological fountainhead Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh agrees that split of Hindu votes could damage the BJP to some extent.
April 1, 2007)
Exodus of Hindu holy men worries BJP
by Ajay Jha, Chief Correspondent
New Delhi: The number of saffron-clad "holy men" is dwindling fast in the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Yogi Adityanath, a saffron-clad lawmaker from Gorakhpur, is the latest among a long list of holy men to rebel against the party.
The BJP has started the experiment of bringing religious leaders into active politics in order to emerge the first choice of the majority Hindu voters. The move paid rich political dividends with the party that had won just two seats in the 1984 general elections and ruled the country for six years between 1998 and 2004.
Adityanath, 34, parted ways with the BJP recently and has announced his decision to field nearly 75 candidates across 14 districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh during the state assembly elections under the banner of the nearly defunct Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha.
Presence
Although Adityanath is confident that at least 10 of his nominees would make it to the new legislative assembly, political analysts feel the presence of his candidates could ensure defeat of about 15 BJP nominees. Besides Adityanath, the BJP also has to contend with saffron-clad former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharati whose fledgling Bharatiya Janashakti party is also contesting state polls on its own. Bharati's party cost the BJP at least three seats in the just concluded polls in neighbouring Uttarakhand ensuring that the BJP fell short of a simple majority.
Interestingly, the religious leaders have left the BJP accusing it of compromising on the cause of the Hindus.
Provoke
Sachidanand Sakshi Maharaj was the first saffron-clad leader to rebel against the party. The former Farrukhabad lawmaker caused enough damage to his erstwhile party by provoking former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh to float his own party prior to the 2002 state polls leading to the BJP losing power in the state. Singh has since returned to the BJP and is being projected as its chief ministerial candidate.
Swami Chinmayanand was the next to quit the BJP after serving as the junior home minister while the BJP ruled at the centre.
While the BJP is putting on a brave front saying Adityanath would not make much difference, Tarun Vijay, editor of Panchjanya, the Hindi magazine of the BJP's ideological fountainhead Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh agrees that split of Hindu votes could damage the BJP to some extent.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
