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** All is not forgiven

indiaview — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:38:40 +0000

Husain stay back, all is not forgiven

Chandan Mitra

Although some of his paintings are offensive, the artist himself says he never felt victimised in India and left the country voluntarily. So what’s the row about?

India’s high-profile secular-fundamentalist partisans are highly agitated that one of their ilk — nonagerian painter MF Husain — has cocked a snook at their frenzied campaign and accepted to become a subject of the Sheikh of Qatar.

So much for Husain’s alleged commitment to the cherished values of democracy, freedom of expression and born-again secularism! Qatar qualifies on none of these attributes while India does on all. Unable to digest, leave alone convincingly justify, the whimsical painter’s decision, secularists are running about like headless chicken blaming the ubiquitous Sangh Parivar for Husain’s decamping.

I was amused to read a convoluted anti-Parivar tirade by Jyotirmaya Sharma in a Delhi tabloid blaming everybody except Husain himself for running away from his motherland. Sharma explains the Sangh Parivar’s unexceptionable positions on Taslima Nasreen and My Name Is Khan as a deliberate attempt to confuse people by speaking in separate tongues. The logic of this assertion eludes me, but then I have never claimed to be a secular-fundamentalist!

To begin with, it is not comprehensible why an attempt is being made to generate a controversy over Husain’s calculated decision to migrate to Qatar. It is his personal choice and the painter, being no spring chicken, knows well that acceptance of any other country’s citizenship automatically results in the termination of his Indian nationality.

Interestingly, the painter has repeated described himself in recent communications as an “artist of Indian origin” not, mind you, “Indian artist”. He has further stated that he has been “honoured” by Qatar’s decision.

Two things are clear: Husain, in effect, asserts that he merely “originated” in India almost by way of accident of birth and is therefore free to adopt the nationality of any country. Second, he regards Qatar’s gesture as an “honour” and is overwhelmed enough to gratefully accept it. In an interview to Mint, he categorically said “(This is) the media and those with their own interests who’re putting words in my mouth. I don’t feel victimised. I’m really happy with all I have.”

So, what’s the brouhaha all about? The man has voluntarily accepted a lavish exile (“The Sheikha here has been very nice to me,” he toldMint). Earlier he told Times Now TV that he has never felt threatened in India and thus not left its shores out of fear. So much for the argument that Hindu vandals hounded him out of this country and the poor artist is languishing in the arid, inhospitable climes of Qatar a la Bahadur Shah Zafar imprisoned in Rangoon, penning ghazals like:

“Itna hai badnaseeb Zafar, dafn ke liye
Do gaz zameen na mili ku-e-yaar mein.”

The most preposterous suggestions for wooing him back to India were advanced in a discussion on NDTV in which I too was a participant. While Husain’s fellow-artist, the otherwise celebrated painter Anjolie Ela Menon pleaded than an exception be made and he be bestowed dual citizenship by the Government, Lalit Kala Akademi chief, Hindi writer Ashok Vajpeyi demanded that Bharat Ratna be conferred on him by way of mitigation for the crimes of a handful of vandals. I am naming all these personalities because it is important to underline that respected intellectuals, who undoubtedly have a fan following, often put forward the most illogical and provocative arguments in their blind rage against Hindu sentiment.

While it is a fact that many Hindus disapprove of the vandalisation of Husain exhibitions, very few endorse his depiction of Durga, Saraswati and Bharat Mata in the nude or the sexually explicit portrayal of Sita.

Apart from social exhibitionists I cannot think of anybody seriously endorsing such paintings because they offend our deep-seated beliefs and amount to wilful affront to the Hindu faith.

Without suggesting Husain has a communal bent of mind, I believe those who dare him to depict icons of other faiths in similar light do have a point. It’s no good arguing that he has painted Guru Nanak, Christ or Mother Teresa too. Those paintings never became controversial because they were deferential, not perverted. We are told Husain is currently working on a series based on the history of Islam. Considering his faith does not allow pictorial depictions of revered personalities (even statues are, strictly speaking, taboo) it would be worth waiting to see if he actually crosses the line and how Qatar authorities react if Husain indulges in such blasphemy.

The secular-fundamentalist argument on an artist’s right to absolute freedom of expression flounders the moment Taslima Nasreen or even Salman Rushdie enter the debate. Fortunately, the politically motivated riots in Karnataka over Nasreen’s article suggesting the Prophet never favoured the veil died down after only two deaths, but the fact is that the Bangladeshi writer has been viciously hounded in India first by rampaging mobs in Kolkata and then by an insensitive vote-bank driven Government.

Personally, I believe she ought to have been more sensitive to the average Muslim’s sensitivities, just as the Danish cartoonist had no business visually depicting the Prophet, that too in unflattering light knowing the implications of taking such liberties. India banned The Satanic Verses and The Moor’s Last Sigh because the law and order situation could have gone out of control.

Banning may not be a desirable option in a free society but in the case of Rushdie’s works ground realities had to be taken into consideration. Similarly no respectable publication, rightly, reprinted the offensive cartoons of the Prophet. Half-a-dozen States proscribed the film version of Da Vinci Code and clearance of the Church was required to release it (with a disclaimer inserted) in the remaining States.

Just a fortnight ago, widespread violence happened in some Punjab districts over a booklet whose cover depicted Jesus Christ holding a cigarette between his fingers and a can of beer in the other hand. None objected to the tough measures taken by the Government in any of these cases.

In this background I believe it would be entirely appropriate to ban public display of all Husain paintings that portray revered members of the Hindu pantheon in offensive light.

This would be perfectly in order since the artist appears to have enjoyed the controversy, refused to apologise or recant (unlike Nasreen) and has not offered to withdraw those paintings from being shown in exhibitions.

There are muted whispers about some tax fiddles gone wrong in the entire escapade drama. That may or may not be true; probably we will never know because a timid Government can hardly be expected to reveal the truth in the face of secular-fundamental rabble-rousing. But it is abundantly clear that Husain has abandoned the country of his origin for greener pastures abroad and the best thing for us would be to forget that the Qatari artist once walked barefoot into various upmarket clubs with the sole intent of attracting publicity.

Meanwhile, deferring to overwhelming public opinion, the Government should proscribe all further Husain exhibitions if the blasphemous portrayals are sought to be displayed yet again.

** Bigger than dynasty

indiaview — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:53:01 +0000

Congress bigger than dynasty

A Surya Prakash

Pioneer

Speaking at a function to mark the 125th foundation day of the Congress last month, party president Sonia Gandhi said that over the next year, the party “will recall those remarkable men and women without whose sacrifices and contributions, we would not be where we are today; we will also mark those events that have defined contemporary India, events shaped by our leaders that have left an indelible imprint on the nation’s social, political and economic history”. According to her, the party has been extraordinarily fortunate “to have had men and women of courage, integrity, sagacity and dedication to lead us”.

During her speech, Ms Gandhi showered fulsome praise on Jawaharlal Nehru, Mrs Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, ‘generously’ devoted two lines to Lal Bahadur Shastri (lest her partisanship become obvious) but made no mention of PV Narasimha Rao, who was one of our greatest Prime Ministers. Since we are celebrating the 60th anniversary of our republic, all citizens who take pride in India becoming an economic powerhouse in the 21st century will be doing a signal disservice to the real heroes of India if they allow Ms Gandhi’s deliberate omission of Rao’s name to go unchallenged.

The facts are as follows: Rao became the Prime Minister on June 21, 1991. The country’s economy was in a shambles when he entered office. Foreign exchange reserves had plummeted to precarious levels and the rate of inflation was 13 per cent and eventually rose to 17 per cent. The predecessor Government, headed by Chandra Shekhar, had pledged gold to the Bank of England to raise $ 200 million because India was on the verge of defaulting on payments. We had just Rs 2,100 crore in foreign exchange — barely enough to pay the import bill for two weeks.

When Rao passed away in 2004, the country’s foreign exchange reserves were $ 140 billion (Rs 6 lakh crore). In the last week of December 2009, when Ms Gandhi felt that Rao was not worthy of a mention at the Congress’s 125th anniversary, India’s forex reserves were close to U.S $ 285 billion (Rs 13 lakh crore !). Apart from this remarkable turnaround on the forex front, the country has achieved spectacular results in terms of per capita income and GDP growth. The media and communication boom that one sees today has its origins in Rao’s decision to end the Government’s monopoly in these sectors. India is now the second fastest growing economy and every nation in the world is keen to have a slice of the action. In short, Rao was ahead of Mr APJ Abdul Kalam in igniting the minds of Indians.

The second but equally commendable achievement of Rao was the grit and sagacity with which he tackled the problem of militancy in Punjab. The seeds of separatism were sown in Punjab during the tenure of Mrs Indira Gandhi and continued unabated during Rajiv Gandhi’s prime ministership. The situation in Punjab appeared to be spiralling out of control when Rajiv Gandhi demitted office in 1989. It needed a cerebral and gutsy Prime Minister like Rao to retrieve ground. But for the firmness displayed by him, Punjab could well have become the first State to secede from India. Yet, Rao is not worthy of a mention by the Congress president.

The Nehru-Gandhis have always been parsimonious in acknowledging the contributions of national leaders other than those who belonged to their family. This is a trait that is obvious from the days of Jawaharlal Nehru, when everything was done to suppress the contribution of Sardar Patel, who successfully integrated 564 princely states and gave us a united India, and BR Ambedkar, who presided over the Constitution Committee.

The same trend continued when Mrs Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were at the helm. Ms Sonia Gandhi is obviously carrying forward the family tradition. That is why although she says the party will remember leaders who have left “an indelible imprint on the nation’s social, political and economic history”, she makes no mention of Rao.

Further, although she says that the party has been fortunate “to have had men and women of courage, integrity, sagacity and dedication to lead us”, she lacks the grace to acknowledge the contribution of a man who displayed both courage and sagacity at a crucial time.

But, the suppression of Rao’s achievements is not the only thing as far as this speech is concerned. The bigger problem is the attempt by her to credit Rao’s signal achievements on the economic front to Rajiv Gandhi. There is another family trait, it appears, to appropriate the achievements of others, be they those of Sardar Patel, Ambedkar or Rao. She makes the extraordinary claim that Rajiv Gandhi ushered in the information revolution and that the party’s manifesto of 1991 became the basis for economic policies over the next five years, “which imparted new strength and direction to our economy and society”, meaning thereby that Rao deserved no credit at all for what he achieved as Prime Minister.

We need to examine this claim. Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister for five years from October 31, 1984. Just a year after he demitted office, India was desperately pledging gold to the Bank of England for a measly $ 200 million and Ms Sonia Gandhi wants us to believe that he ushered in our economic recovery! Yet another claim made by her is that “he brought peace to troubled parts of our country”. Nothing can be more fatuous. Rajiv Gandhi defended the pogrom against Sikhs in his infamous speech at the Boat Club in New Delhi in November 1984. During his prime ministership, Punjab militancy was at its height and there were scores of killings and bombings. In those days, it required real courage to venture into a cinema hall or to travel by public transport in Punjab and Delhi. The man who saved Punjab for India and brought back peace to that State was Rao.

Finally, although Ms Gandhi’s speech at her party’s anniversary is loaded with omissions, it may have its uses. It can enter textbooks dealing with the law of evidence as a classic example of ‘suppressio veri, suggestio falsi’!

1)Dynasty vs. Democracy @

http://indiasecular.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/dynasty-vs-democracy/

2) Demonarchy of India @

http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2007/08/01/de’mo-narchy-of-democratic-india/

** Stakeholders of Kashmir?

indiaview — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:10:39 +0000

Are Muslims the sole stakeholders of Kashmir?

Nancy Kaul – Vijayvaani

14 Jan 2010

Muslims of the Kashmir Valley have long been portraying themselves as the sole inhabitants not only of the Valley, but of the entire Jammu and Kashmir State, including Ladakh. It is almost as if the Hindus of the Kashmir Valley who were forcibly driven out of their homes two decades ago had never existed, and as if the Hindus of Jammu and Buddhists of Ladakh also do not exist.

Such is the stranglehold of Muslims in the State that they have succeeded in propagating the myth that the only people who live and count in the State of J&K are Muslims, and they are the sole stakeholders of the place, which is far from the truth.

And now, with the so-called liberal brigade which includes inter alia some self-styled and internationally-funded individuals, a far more sinister design is emerging. In fact, it is giving a helping hand to terrorists and Islamic Jihadis to slowly seep deeper; this is the success of Islamic terrorism and its methods of which Jammu & Kashmir is facing a frontal attack.

Much more is the tragedy emerging out of the so-called dialogues, debates, discussions and Track II’s, etc., where the sole casualty is the ‘integrity’ and ‘sovereignty’ of India.

The fundamental ethos and civilisational moorings of the nation are being eroded and undermined by harebrained formulas and lunatic solutions. Many a times the agenda is pre-decided, as are the final reports and resolutions. The participants by and large, and the organizers of these dubious seminars, tend to take a line of allowing terrorists and separatists a free rein and free speech, which starts in venom-spitting against India and compromise on the vital and strategic issues of integrity and sovereignty, and ends at ways and means of Balkanizing the nation.

One such seminar organised jointly on Nov. 7, 2009, jointly by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, Teen Murti Bhavan, and conducted by CSDS Faculty member, Madhu Kishwar. It turned to be an ill-disguised platform for blatant India-bashing by separatists, terrorists and so-called Indian liberals.

The writer was also invited to speak in her capacity as a known Kashmiri Internally Displaced Person. Yet in her zeal to appease Muslims, particularly those belonging to the Valley, Ms Kishwar appeared to be miles ahead in the quest to dismantle the territorial integrity of the country.

The writer was not allowed to read her paper, and in fact suffered the most humiliating behaviour at the hands of Kishwar and her fellow traveller, the eminent lawyer Ram Jethmalani.

The organizers need to understand that they cannot force the rest of us to kow-tow to the Sunni Muslim line in Kashmir. Although the seminar (as suggested by the invitation) was organized by the CSDS and Nehru Memorial Museum, the official report of the seminar proceedings and some letters of ‘sought support’ in the great endeavour of Muslim appeasement and Balkanizing India appeared rather inexplicably on a website called Manushi, which is managed by neither of these two bodies. It is possibly owned personally by Kishwar, who once edited a magazine by that name, though it has been defunct for some years now, and even the website appears dated.

Facts are blatantly disfigured in Kishwar’s report, which is an open support to separatists and the so-called autonomy or self-rule envisaging politicians who are more or less acting in tandem with the separatists. Kishwar should realize that by doing this, the horrendous behaviour particularly of Ram Jethmalani, can neither be forgiven nor forgotten, and she was an equal partner in the crime.

It was she who had invited the writer to the seminar or so-called dialogue. The viewpoint of neither the separatists nor the secessionists nor others can be treated as binding or agreeable to me. If hours and hours had been allotted to the Hurriyat, People’s Democratic Party and such, why could ten minutes not be given to the speaker with a different perspective?

During the course of long hourly speeches of Gani Bhat of the Hurriyat, Mohammed Shafi Uri of the National Conference, and Muzzaffar Beg of the PDP, I neither objected nor interrupted anyone even though I do not subscribe to either autonomy, self-rule or separatism and devolution of sovereignty.

Yet one may ask why Mehbooba Mufti was invited to speak at length in the second session when Muzzaffar Beg had already taken more than enough potshots at the basis of Indian unity – Article 1 of the Constitution.

An important question that has to be answered by the organizers and those who not only stopped me from reading my paper but also humiliated and misbehaved with me, is WHY, after I had read just one page of my prepared speech, Kishwar announced that I can read no further? Why did Ram Jethmalani behave in a derogatory and humiliating manner? Where was the necessary dignity of the organizers when he got up and said he will not allow the paper to be read and will ask me to leave the place?

Jethmalani, Kishwar, and the others who shouted and did not allow the paper to be read forgot in their appeasement of Muslims of the Valley that I had been called by them. Why should a learned lawyer misbehave and gag the voice of a law-abiding citizen who is internally displaced in her own country because of the violence and terrorism unleashed in the Valley? His conduct in fact mauled the freedom of speech and in turn Articles 16, 19 and 21 which are guaranteed under the Constitution of India.

Why should it be taken for granted that only the likes of Hurriyat, PDP and separatists have a right to speak? Why are the other equal stakeholders in the valley not entitled to articulate their viewpoint?

Is asking for the free flow of the Indian Constitution a crime?

It is rather unfortunate and in fact demeaning of Kishwar to lie in her report about the seminar. Where were the representatives from Jammu region and Ladakh? Where were the Buddhists, Dogras, Sikhs, Christians from the State? What is the motto behind giving incorrect information to Indians by her? How could they then not allow even ten minutes to listen to the other viewpoint?

Why in Kishwar’s Final Report is there no mention of the demand put forward by Ramesh Manvati of Panun Kashmir?

Is it because Kishwar’s personal agenda also seems to further the cause of the PDP, and Muslims in particular? In this regard it may be pertinent to mention that Madhu Kishwar has been enjoying the hospitality of PDP now and again; in fact she visited Rajouri along with Mufti Mohammed Syed in second half of December 2009.

In a bid to clothe her pre-fabricated design of furthering the Kashmiri Muslim agenda she has unashamedly and blatantly given an incorrect picture to the country.

The factual details are not only missing, but also incorrect:-

For instance, the claim that Swaraj was Gandhi’s vision is the biggest untruth for any self-respecting Indian. It was Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak who envisaged the vision of Swaraj and gave the famous slogan: “Swaraj is my birthright”. Although this was in the context of the British Raj and not Indians, yet Kishwar in her appeasement of the PDP termed its self-rule document which envisages devolution of Indian sovereignty on the same level, and even called it more creative than even the European Union!

This is both flawed and questionable, as EU is a Union of several countries and nationalities, while India is one country and nationality. Yet Kishwar has made the very basics of nation-state existence, geo-political, cultural and civilisational aspects, and thousands of years of history and existence redundant in her zeal for Muslim appeasement! There are reams and reams of kudos to the insane ideas which include having two currencies in the State and joint management of the State.

Apart from an apology for her shoddy behaviour, Kishwar should explain what all support she was giving to separatists in the 1990s, as Yasin Malik himself mentioned at Teen Murti that she supported his ideas in 1994, at a meeting in his house in Srinagar.

Kishwar and her ilk are no better than the separatists, and for all their so-called liberal tags, a few foreign jaunts and funds are enough to make them cut at the very roots of the nation’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. I pray to Ma Durga to stand by truth and let it prevail and Ma MahaKali to deliver justice.

Tailpiece: what is RSS up to?

As I was concluding this piece, a friend sent me an email of a discussion organised in Delhi on 19 Jan. 2010 to observe the Kashmir Exodus of 19 January 1990, the day loudspeakers from mosques in the Valley blared open and grim threats to the Hindus: Pandits get out of the Valley, leave your women behind.

I had received the email information before – it was a discussion organised by the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation, and the main speakers were listed as the new BJP President Nitin Gadkari, former J&K Governor Jagmohan, and Ladakh Union Territory Front president Thupstan Chhewang, among others.

Thus it was with a sense of shock that I realized that my informant was drawing my attention to the fact that the impugned Madhu Kishwar, Editor, Manushi, was suddenly listed as one of the main speakers at the functions, sharing equal honours with the new BJP president!

Now, the provincial Gadkari may or may not be familiar with Kishwar and her professional history, but the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation is an RSS think tank, and someone very powerful in the RSS or the BJP must have been behind her sudden elevation in a place where she has no business to be at all.

RSS Sarsanghachalak Shri Mohan Rao Bhagwat has more than once categorically stated the position of the RSS on Jammu & Kashmir, both in Jammu and in New Delhi. And if the public positions of the Sarsanghachalak can be upturned in such a daring fashion in the capital itself (powerful BJP leaders visit Jammu and say concessions ‘must be given’ to Muslims, without telling the Nation at large and Hindus in particular why), RSS needs to do a serious audit about the Hindutva commitment of its cadres and the BJP which seeks its advice and support.

If a foundation dedicated to Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who is widely believed to have been martyred for the cause of Jammu & Kashmir’s full and final integration into India, for one constitution and one flag (ek nishan, ek pradhan), can provide a platform for a fellow traveller of terrorists, secessionists, separatists and outright criminals, then what is the RSS’ stand?

The issue is too critical to be brushed under the carpet and demands a clarification and an answer.

1) Delhi Yielding @ http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=1035

2) To Forget History? http://indiasecular.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/to-forget-is-to-forgive/

** Wolf in sheep’s clothing

indiaview — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:52:36 +0000

Atma Jyoti Ashram: Wolf in sheep’s clothing
By Swami Devananda Saraswati

Organiser Weekly

The sponsorship of Ramana Ashram and the publication of the Atma Jyoti Ashram brothers’ articles under assumed Hindu names in the Ramana Ashram journal Mountain Path is not really surprising. Sri Ramana Ashram is a family business headed by a hereditary trustee. The current president is the Advaita Vedanta paralogist VS Ramanan. The Ashram was declared a non-Hindu institution in 1963.

This kind of advice is irresponsible, especially when made to foreign seekers who take the guru’s instruction as divine word. Christianity is based on a false doctrine of vicarious salvation, and there is nothing in Hindu scripture or the ancient Rishi tradition to support the ill-conceived advice handed out to foreign seekers by Hindu teachers who do not want to take spiritual responsibility for their charges.

In Catholic Ashrams: Sannyasins or Swindlers, Sita Ram Goel describes the Christian missionary strategists’ plan to infiltrate Hindu society and gain the confidence of the people: “Christianity has to drop its alien attire and get clothed in Hindu cultural forms. In short, Christianity has to be presented as an indigenous faith. Christian theology has to be conveyed through categories of Hindu philosophy; Christian worship has to be conducted in the manner and with the materials of Hindu puja. Christian sacraments have to sound like Hindu samskaras; Christian churches have to copy the architecture of Hindu temples; Christian hymns have to be set to Hindu music; Christian themes and personalities have to be presented in styles of Hindu painting; Christian missionaries have to dress and live like Hindu sannyasins; Christian mission stations have to look like Hindu Ashrams. And so on, the literature of Indigenisation goes into all aspects of Christian thought, organisation and activity and tries to discover how far and in what way they can be disguised in Hindu forms.”

The late Sita Ram Goel wrote this in 1988, and he would not be surprised to learn that Christian priests and monks in America have adopted these very tactics to attract a whole generation of American youth interested in Hindu spirituality, back to Christianity. The leader in this movement today is Abbot George Burke of Atma Jyoti Ashram in Cedar Crest, New Mexico. He is better known on the Internet as Swami Nirmalananda Giri.

Isha Jyoti to Atma Jyoti
Atma Jyoti Ashram was originally called Sri Isha (Jesus) Jyoti Sannyas Ashram and was located at Borrego Springs, California. Fr. George Burke is a Greek Orthodox Christian priest, and if reports are correct, most or all of the community of brothers attached to him are Christian priests.

On a visit to India, Fr. George met the Bengali saint Ananda Mai Ma. She is said to have instructed him to remain in the Christian religion and continue his Christian practices. This is not unusual advice from a Hindu guru. In spite of their enlightenment, most are grossly ignorant of Christianity’s ideology and imperial designs, its triumphant, sectarian prayers and bloody rituals. Hindu gurus advise their foreign followers to remain in the religion of their forefathers, not realising the negative consequences of their thoughtless words.

Ananda Mai’s alleged instruction suited Fr. George and his followers and they quoted her later as their authority to don the ochre robes of Hindu sannyasis and adopt the Sanskrit titles and names of Smartha Dasnami monks. The fact that Ananda Mai Ma was not an initiated Dasnami sannyasin and had no authority to give them ochre robes or Dasnami titles did not deter them in the impersonation drama.

They continued to perform the bloody sacrifice of the Christian Mass in secret, even as they presented themselves in public as simple, unaffiliated Hindu monks. It was the old fraud of Robert de Nobili and Henri Le Saux being repeated on an unsuspecting public, only this time it was an American and not an Indian public being duped by persuasive snake oil salesmen.

Om on Cross
At one point in their career, while still the Sri Isha Jyoti Sannyas community in Borrego Springs, they were caught out in their charade by none other than the Shaiva Siddhanta Church in Hawaii. The brothers did carpentry for a living, being followers of the Carpenter, and one of the items they produced for sale was a Roman cross with the sacred Hindu word-symbol ‘Om’ nailed to its cross bars. They sent a sample to Hinduism Today with the hope of attracting sales. They got instead a negative response and a return of the obscene article. Hindus, even modern American Hindu converts, are deeply offended by this kind of syncretism and do not understand the appeal it has for New Agers and gay Christian priests who flaunt it on their cassock fronts as a sign of their radical universalism.

Catholic writer S. Kulandaiswami said vis-à-vis Fr. Bede Griffiths and his bastardised Om-on-Cross iconography: “Ritual, rites, and ceremonies in Hinduism have not been changed to suit the whims of modern innovators. Griffiths, by superimposing the sacred word ‘Om’ on a Cross, imagines he has created a new spiritual phenomenon. On the contrary, he confuses and insults both Hinduism and Christianity. He fails to realise that by such acts he is neither enriching Christianity nor honouring Hinduism. One has to respect the unique rites and rituals of each religion, which placed in another context, will be meaningless and confusing.”

In a later debate published in the letters column of The Indian Express, Chennai, in 1989, The Hindu correspondent S Venkatachalam wrote: “It is highly outrageous and objectionable to compare … Hindu leaders and religious heads with the Christian missionary experimentalists like Bede Griffiths, Hans Staffner and the Christian missionary Fr. Henri Le Saux, the so-called Abhishiktananda. Swami Vivekananda, Gandhiji, Ramana Maharshi and Paramacharya of Kanchi never resorted to such experimentation of a “cocktail religion” or “masala and kichidi religion” by mixing religious symbols, donning the dress of a Christian father or Muslim mullah, building church-like or mosque-like temples, fabricating Bible or Quran-like Hindu shlokas, or asserting that Rama or Krishna or Shiva is the only God and by accepting Him alone one can get salvation.”

The Sri Isha (Jesus) Jyoti Sannyas Ashram brothers did not succeed in pedalling their original handcrafted ‘Om-on-cross’ to the Hindus of Hawaii then, but in their new incarnation as sadhus of Atma Jyoti Ashram they have succeeded in getting advertising space in Hinduism Today and the sponsorship of Ramana Ashram in Tiruvannamalai. Yet they remain, so far as we know, Christian priests in orange robes with false Sanskrit names and titles, the usual New Age bells and beads added. They are quite a success in Christian duplicity, if not in true Hindu spirituality.

The sponsorship of Ramana Ashram and the publication of the Atma Jyoti Ashram brothers’ articles under assumed Hindu names in the Ramana Ashram journal Mountain Path is not really surprising. Sri Ramana Ashram is a family business headed by a hereditary trustee. The current president is the Advaita Vedanta paralogist VS Ramanan. The ashram was declared a non-Hindu institution in 1963.

Theosophists and Benedictines
Though Ramanan is the editor of Mountain Path as required by law, the de facto editor is the Australian theosophist Christopher Quilkey, a disciple of the anti-modernist French Sufi Rene Guenon. Quilkey is assisted by the American Catholic Benedictine monk Brother Michael.

Brother Michael divides his time between Shanti Vanam near Tiruchirappalli, the Benedictine hermitage of the notorious Christian missionary Fr. Bede Griffiths, and Ramana Ashram in Tiruvannamalai. He is a Catholic priest and will say, Mass whenever and wherever the Catholic spirit moves him, including Ramana Ashram and other places of Hindu pilgrimage and worship. His other duty is to vet articles sent to Mountain Path and forward them to Christopher Quilkey in Kodaikanal for acceptance and publication. Ramanan shows little or no interest in the articles selected for publication, and though the ashram follows Vedic Brahminical traditions and can afford to employ a professional, it is not able to find and keep a responsible and dedicated Hindu editor for its magazine.

Ramanan appears to be in a state of denial regarding Christians in his own ashram and missionaries in general. He writes, “There is no doubt that Christianity has, over centuries been a proselytising religion and some of the preachers had indulged in scurrilous propaganda against Hindu beliefs and mores. But there is nothing to worry. The worst is over and the Vedantic Truth is eternal and imperishable. I know a number of Christian priests who revere Hinduism and Vedanta. It is well known that Westerners are increasingly being drawn to Yoga and Vedanta which Swami Vivekananda called the ‘Religion of the Future.’”

Nothing to worry, eh? The worst is over, eh? Either Ramanan is a fool or he is in league with the Christian missionaries who publish in the ashram journal.

The first articles to appear in Mountain Path by an Atma Jyoti Ashram member were by a Catholic priest who resides in Tiruvannamalai and calls himself Swami Sadasivananda Giri. The articles were inoffensive enough, but because it was known to a number of sadhus and Ramana Ashram devotees that the author was in fact a Christian priest masquerading as a Hindu sannyasi, the matter was brought to the Ramana Ashram president’s attention with the request that Sadasivananda be identified by his real Christian name and titles to Mountain Path readers.

The letter was ignored, and when the April-June 2009 issue of Mountain Path appeared, it was discovered that not only did Swami Sadasivananda’s article appear without proper identification, but an article by Fr. George Burke, Greek Orthodox abbot of Atma Jyoti Ashram, New Mexico, was also included under the name Swami Nirmalananda Giri. The request to identify Christian contributors to the journal was not only denied by the Ramana Ashram president Ramanan, but a strong message of contempt and scorn for Hindu sannyas traditions was given out by the Mountain Path editor and his dubious, uncommitted assistants.

Infiltration by Impersonation
The problem of Christian priests and missionaries masquerading as Hindu sannyasis is an old one in India. The impersonation drama was first carried out by Robert de Nobili in Madurai in the 17th century.

It was continued and made notorious by Fr. Bede Griffiths (aka Swami Dayananda) in the 20th century, though his collaborator, the French Benedictine monk Fr. Henri Le Saux, was without doubt the most successful Hindu sadhu impersonator. He is known to this day by his assumed Sanskrit name Swami Abhishiktananda, and had none other than the late Swami Chidananda Saraswati of Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh as a patron.

** Godhra:The True Story

indiaview — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:32:32 +0000

GODHRA: THE TRUE STORY

Nicole Elfi, jaia-bharati.org

Godhra, a city of the Indian State of Gujarat, was the lead story in all Indian newspapers on February 27th-28th, 2002.

A shattering piece of news: 58 Hindu pilgrims had been burned alive in a train. “57 die in ghastly attack on train” ran the Times of India’s headline;

“Mob targets Ramsevaks [Devotees of Rama] returning from Ayodhya”; “58 killed in attack on train with Karsevaks [volunteers]” (The Indian Express);

“1500-strong mob butcher 57 Ramsevaks on Sabarmati Express” (The Asian Age).

But the BBC’s announcement had a very different tone: “58 Hindu ‘extremists’ burned to death” …

or Agence France Press on March 2nd: “A train full of Hindu ‘extremists’ was burnt.”

A deluge of anguished news followed about a “Muslim genocide”: “Mass killings of Muslims in reprisal riots” (NYT, March 5th),

“The authorities … share the prejudices of the Hindu gangs who have been busy pulping their Muslim neighbours” (The Observer, March 4th).

We were told that Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, intended to eradicate Muslims from the State — more than 9% of Gujarat’s population, in other words five million people.

We read that the police was conniving in the mass slaughter and did nothing to prevent it. Narendra Modi was compared to Hitler, or Nero. We shuddered reading the reports describing rapes and various horrors, supposedly inflicted on Muslims by Hindus.

Today, six years later, with the noises and cries of the wounds having fallen silent, what emerges from those events? What are the facts?

At 7:43 A.M. on February 27th, 2002, the Sabarmati Express rolled into the Godhra station, fortunately with a four-hour delay, in broad daylight. This train transported more than 2,000 people, mainly karsewaks on their way back to Ahmedabad after participating in the Poorna Ahuti Yagya at Ayodhya, a ritual at the traditional birthplace of Rama.

As it pulled out of the station, the train was pelted with stones and bricks, and passengers from several bogeys were forced to bring down their windows to protect themselves.

Someone pulled the emergency chain: the train came to a halt about 100 metres away from the platform, surrounded by a large crowd of Muslims. The railway police managed to disperse the crowd, and the train resumed its journey.

Within minutes, the emergency chain was simultaneously pulled again, from several coaches.

It halted at about 700 metres from the station. A crowd of over 1,000 surrounded the train, pelting it with bricks, stones, then burning missiles and acid bulbs, especially on the S-5, S-6 and S-7 coaches.

The vacuum pipe between coaches S-6 and S-7 was cut, thereby preventing any further movement of the train. The doors were locked from outside. A fire started in coach S-7, which the passengers were able to extinguish. But the attack intensified and coach S-6 caught fire and minutes later, was in flames. Passengers who managed to get out of the burning compartment were attacked with sharp weapons, and stoned. They received serious injuries, some were killed. Others got out through the windows and took shelter below the coach.

Fifty eight pilgrims were burned alive, including twenty-seven women and ten children. The whole attack lasted 20-25 minutes.[1]

What transpired then, in the Indian press? Let’s imagine a coach of French pilgrims coming back from Lourdes, burned alive.

Strangely, instead of clearly, straightforwardly condemning the act, the Indian English-language press tried to justify it: “Pilgrims provoked by chanting pro-Hindu slogans” (they were not slogans but bhajans, or devotional songs, ending with “Jai Sri Ram” (Victory to Sri Rama). “It’s because they were returning from Ayodhya, where they asked for the reconstruction of a temple at the traditional birth place of Rama; this offends the feelings of the Muslims.”

In sum, the victims, roasted alive, were guilty.

The Anger

Numb with shock, the people of Gujarat did not react straightaway. They remained calm at first. Till that afternoon, when the charred bodies started arriving at their respective families — with no comforting voice sounded, either from the government, or from the media, no condemnation for this barbaric act, but an indifferent, deafening silence — then these people known for their non-violent nature and exceptional patience, burst into a frenzy.

There was a revolt in the whole of Gujarat. For three days, tens of thousands of enraged Hindus set fire to Muslim shops, houses, vehicles: They came out from all sides, all parties, all classes, uncontrollable — one cannot control a revolution (except in China maybe).

The fatalities: 720 Muslims, 250 Hindus, according to official figures.

We read all over about a “genocide of Muslims.” Do we remember a single report on the Hindus who heroically helped save Muslims in their neighbourhood? Was even one family of Hindu victims interviewed following the criminal burning of the Sabarmati Express?

One fourth of the dead in the ensuing riots were Hindus. How to classify those 250 victims? Who evoked the dead on the Hindu side? According to reports, Congress Party councillor Taufeeq Khan Pathan and his son Zulfi, notorious gangsters, were allegedly seen leading Muslim rioters.

Another such character, Congress member of the Godhra Nagarpalika [municipality], Haji Balal, was said to have had the fire-fighting vehicle sabotaged beforehand.[2]

Then, he stopped the vehicle on its way to the Godhra Station and did not allow it to proceed any further. A man stood in front of the vehicle, the mob started pelting stones, … The headlights and the windowpanes of the vehicle got damaged … Fearing for his own and his crew’s life, the driver drove the vehicle through the mob, as it was not possible to move backwards. The mob gave in but 15-20 precious minutes had been lost.[3]

Lost for a coach full of innocent people in flames.

Which newspaper article stated that the most violent events took place following provocations by leaders of this sort?

The Union Home Ministry’s Annual Report of 2002-03 stated that 40,000 Hindus were in riot relief camps. What made those 40,000 Hindus rush to relief camps? To seek protection from whom? Why was it necessary if they were the main aggressors?

More than the barbaric event itself, it is the insensitivity of the Indian “elite” and of the media that infuriated the Gujaratis.

Those accused of terrorism often receive political support, are benevolently portrayed by the media, and a host of “human rights” organisations are always on hand to fight for them. But those victims whose life is cut down for no reason, are they not “human” enough to get some rights too? The great majority of those who took to revolt in Gujarat were neither rich nor particularly intellectual — neither right nor left: they were middle- and lower-class Gujaratis, simple people, workers, also tribals. But some from the upper middle class, among them a lot of women, took part in the upheaval.

The media sources

Apart from local journalists usually more objective in their reports, no English media reporter, thought it worthwhile to look deeper into the events at the Godhra railway station. Nobody came to question possible survivors of the tragedy. Is a coach of Hindu pilgrims even worth the trip? They had to wait for the “elite” to react; they had to receive directives from the politically correct, before taking their pens. Worse, they reported deliberate rumours and made up versions as actual news.

We were told, for instance, that when some pilgrims got off the ill-fated coaches to have tea, “some altercation took place” between them, and a Muslim tea vendor: “They argued with the old man on purpose,” wrote some newspapers; “they refused to pay for their tea” (though Gujarati honesty is well known); “they pulled his beard and beat him up … They kept shouting ‘Mandir ka nirmaan karo, Babar ki aulad ko bahar karo’ (start building the temple and throw out the sons of Babar). Hearing the chaos, the tea vendor’s 16-year-old daughter came forward and tried to save her father from the karsevaks. She kept pleading and begging them to leave him alone. The karsevaks, according to this version, then seized the girl, took her inside their compartment and closed the door. The old man kept banging on the door and pleaded for his daughter. Then two stall vendors jumped into the last bogey, pulled the chain, and put the bogey on fire.”

But would they have been stupid enough to set fire to the coach where their colleague’s young daughter was being held? And why were 2,000 Muslims assembled there at 7 A.M. with jerry-cans of petrol bought the previous evening?

Rajeev Srinivasan, an American journalist of Indian origin, was e-mailed this anonymous report a dozen times, supposedly written by Anil Soni, Press Trust of India reporter. He contacted Anil Soni to check on the veracity of this account. Soni answered:

Some enemy of mine has done this to make life difficult for me, do you understand, sir? I did not write this at all. I am a PTI correspondent. Yes, that is my phone number, but it is not my writing.

Anil Soni apparently had heard about it from hundreds of people, and was upset to see a false report circulated in his name.

Inquiries with the Railway Staff and passengers travelling in the Sabarmati Express showed that: no quarrel whatsoever took place on the platform between a tea vendor and pilgrims, and no girl was manhandled nor kidnapped.

As the Nanavati Report established later, this fictitious report was in fact circulated by the Jamiat-Ulma-E-Hind, the very hand responsible for the carnage.[4] It nevertheless went around the world, exhibited as “the true story.” Aren’t we compelled to conclude that the assailants, in India, are those who dictate what’s “politically correct,” and instruct the media?

Arson and Canards

On the afternoon of February 28th, Gujarati Hindus’ revolt broke out. A few journalists then booked their tickets for Gujarat.

As far as we can see, they had a framework in place: the outbreak would be dealt with independently of the Godhra carnage, as a different, unrelated subject; it was a planned violence perpetrated by “fundamentalist” Hindus against Gujarat’s Muslims, fully backed by the State of Gujarat. From this day on, the burning of coach S-6 was to be left behind, forgotten.

On February 28th evening, Chief Minister Narendra Modi announced his decision to deploy the Army, and the next day, March 1st, by 11 A.M. the actual deployment of troops at sensitive points had begun. Violence abated in most major cities, after their arrival with orders to shoot on sight.

But security forces were largely outnumbered by the angry flood of people, spreading for the first time like rivers in spate, to rural areas and villages.

Apprehending the seriousness of the situation, Narendra Modi had made a request for security personnel from neighbouring States of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab. This request was turned down by each State. Why did no one report this fateful refusal?

That same day (1st March), at the peak of the turmoil, the National Human Rights Commission faxed a notice to the Gujarat Government, calling for a report within three days on the measures being taken … “to prevent any further escalation of the situation in the State of Gujarat which is resulting in continued violation of human rights of the people.”[5] But it was silent on what had led to such a situation in the first place.

One major event which received a great deal of attention from the media was the conflagration at the Gulbarg Society in Ahmedabad, home of a former Member of Parliament, Ehsan Jaffri. This man, rather refined and usually respected, did not feel threatened. But on February 28th morning, a crowd surrounded his house, in which a number of Muslims had taken refuge. Jaffri made a number of panic-stricken phone calls for help to authorities and to his colleagues, journalists and friends. The crowd was growing … (from 200 to 20,000, figures vary in the reports).

The Indian Express (March 1st, 2002), as well as police records, reported that “eventually, in panic, he fired at the 5,000-strong mob … 2 were killed and 13 injured … That incensed the mob …” which at 1:30 P.M. set the bungalow ablaze by exploding a gas cylinder. Final toll: 42 (March 11th edition).

Human Rights Watch, an NGO based in New York, published a dossier (on April 30th, 2002) about the Gujarat events which caused a sensation and fed a large number of articles in the international press.

In this report, Smita Narula had an unnamed “witness” at hand, to relate the attack on Jaffri’s house. First “a 200 to 500-strong mob threw stones; refugees in the house (also 200-250 people — sic!) also threw stones in self-defence.” Then the crowd set the place on fire at about 1:30 P.M. Our witness then jumped from the third floor where he was hiding — and from where he had been observing in minute detail all that was going on in the ground floor, even the theft of jewels (it would seem the floors between the third and the ground floor were transparent). At that point we jump into the sensational. Narula’s witness sees that “four or five girls were raped, cut, and burned …; two married women were also raped and cut. Some on the hand, some on the neck” …; “Sixty-five to seventy people were killed.” Those rapes and hackings are said to have started at 3:30 P.M. … when the house was already on fire. Was the mob waiting for everything to be reduced to cinders to commit its crimes?

Among the most morbid canards, the novelist Arundhati Roy’s vitriolic article (Outlook magazine, May 6th, 2002). She describes the event which precedes Ehsan Jaffri’s death (extract):

… A mob surrounded the house of former Congress MP Iqbal Ehsan Jaffri. His phone calls to the Director-General of Police, the Police Commissioner, the Chief Secretary, the Additional Chief Secretary (Home) were ignored. The mobile police vans around his house did not intervene. The mob broke into the house. They stripped his daughters and burned them alive. Then they beheaded Ehsan Jaffri and dismembered him …

Wait a minute. Jaffri was burned alive in the house, true — is it not awful enough? Along with some other 41 people. Not enough? But his daughters were neither “stripped” nor “burnt alive.”

T. A. Jafri, his son, in a front-page interview titled “Nobody knew my father’s house was the target” (Asian Age, May 2nd, Delhi ed.), felt obliged to rectify:

Among my brothers and sisters, I am the only one living in India. And I am the eldest in the family. My sister and brother live in the US. I am 40 years old and I have been born and brought up in Ahmedabad.

There we are, reassured as regards Ehsan Jaffri’s children. He had only one daughter, who was living abroad. No one was raped in the course of this tragedy, and no evidence was given to the police to that effect.

The Gujarat Government sued Outlook magazine. In its May 27th issue, Outlook published an apology to save its face. But in the course of its apology, the magazine’s editors quoted a “clarification” from Roy, who withdrew her lie by planting an even bigger one: the MP’s daughters “were not among the 10 women who were raped and killed in Chamanpura that day”!

From Smita Narula to Arundhati Roy, “four or five girls” had swollen to “ten women,” equally anonymous and elusive.

Roy begins theatrically:

Last night a friend from Baroda called. Weeping. It took her fifteen minutes to tell me what the matter was. It wasn’t very complicated. Only that Sayeeda, a friend of hers, had been caught by a mob. Only that her stomach had been ripped open and stuffed with burning rags. Only that after she died, someone carved ‘OM’ on her forehead.

Balbir Punj, Rajya Sabha MP and journalist, shocked by this “despicable incident” which allegedly occurred in Baroda, decided to investigate it. He got in touch with the Gujarat government.

The police investigations revealed that no such case, involving someone called Sayeeda, had been reported either in urban or rural Baroda. Subsequently, the police sought Roy’s help to identify the victim and seek access to witnesses who could lead them to those guilty of this crime. But the police got no cooperation. Instead, Roy, through her lawyer, replied that the police had no power to issue summons.[6]

This redefines the term “fiction writer.”

Another story about a “pregnant Muslim woman” whose stomach was allegedly “ripped open,” her “foetus taken out” and both being burnt, horrified people all over the world. The first mention of it seems to be in a BBC report around March 6th, which, though “uncorroborated,” spread like wildfire, with fresh details (divergent and varied, but who cares?), so much so that you end up feeling there is no smoke without fire.

The rumour was never confirmed — which twisted tongue first whispered it?

Press articles kept quoting one another, creating “dossiers” out of floating rumours. None of the authors even deigned to visit the scene of the alleged events; none except the official inquiry commissions, had the honesty to question fairly, in parallel, the involved Hindu families regarding the tragedy unfolding in the two Gujarati communities.

Onlookers get caught

On March 1st, 2002, in a village on the outskirt of Vadodara (Baroda), the “Best Bakery” was set on fire: fourteen persons were burnt alive (nine Muslims and three Hindus).

This particular incident made much ink flow, since the prime witness, young Zaheera Habibullah Sheikh, aged 19, turned against the prosecution in favour of the accused in the trial court.

Though Zaheera lost several family members in the tragedy, on May 17th, 2003, in the Vadodara High Court, she testified that the accused persons in the dock were innocent and had nothing to do with the arson. She, as well as the other witnesses, did not recognize their own alleged statements before the police.

Justice Mahida of the High Court observed that:

1) There has been an inexcusable delay in the First Information Report (FIR). The so-called FIR of Zahiribibi (Zaheera) was sent to the Magistrate after four to five days. So there is every reason to believe that factually this FIR was cropped up afterwards in the manner suitable to the police.

2) The arrested persons had nothing to do with the incident.

“We all knew these accused persons and because of them, our lives are saved,” reported Lal Mohammed Shaikh, a witness before the court. … “There were cordial relations between my family members, the persons residing in the compound of Best Bakery and all the accused persons before the court … The 65 persons who are saved in this incident are all before the Court and all these were saved by and due to the accused and their family members … These persons had called us, in darkness we silently came out of our house, and they saved our lives.”

3) The police is trying to put as accused passers-by at the place of incident, innocent persons gathering there or persons residing in the neighbourhood (in confidence that the police wouldn’t do anything to them).

4) No legal or acceptable evidence at all is produced by the prosecution against the accused involving them in this incident. In this case, … it has come out during the trial … that false evidences were cropped up against the present accused to involve them in this case. The case … is not proved and hence the accused are acquitted [7].

On June 27th, 2003, the twenty-one defendants were freed, and Zaheera Sheikh felt the court has given her “all the justice she wanted.”

In the interests of a community

But all were not satisfied. A former Chief Justice of India, A.S. Anand, Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission decided that the Vadodara judgement was a “miscarriage of justice” and the twenty-one “not-guilty” people were actually guilty and therefore should be punished. Now this honourable person should have been aware that seated in Delhi at the helm of this “human rights” affair, he would have been the first target of a number of dubious NGOs with vested political interests. Strangely, Justice Anand did not even consider it important to send his own team of independent inquiry before questioning the judgment of another court of law.[8]

Consequently, just after the fast-track court acquittals, three members of Zaheera’s community “barged into her home” around midnight, and told her she would have to change her statement “in the interests of the community.”

This meant that Zaheera had to declare that she had lied to the court (which is a criminal offence [9]). Did she have a choice?

Along with her mother and brother, she was taken to Mumbai “without their consent,” and brought to Teesta Setalvad,[10] an activist of the much-vaunted “human rights.” The activist took them under her wing for several months, accommodated them in a rented apartment while providing assistance for a living. In the meantime she(Teesta) prepared affidavits (in English which Zaheera does not read) for the girl to sign before the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), in which she “confessed” to having lied to the Vadodara trial court, “trembling with fear and threatened” by BJP MLA Madhu Shrivastav (who had nothing to do with her area and whom she did not even know). And Zaheera now designated as guilty, the twenty-one people she had considered innocent. All media were ready with their cameras, mikes and pens to splash the news.

The Gujarat High Court dismissed the appeal, rightly suspecting that the witness had been pressured to turn hostile, and upheld the acquittals.

But the Supreme Court accepted the retraction and, as demanded by NHRC and Setalvad, ordered the retrial of the case outside Gujarat. The acquittal of the twenty-one people was quashed.

In 2004, Zaheera “managed to flee” from her confinement by the activist, and in November, seized by remorse for having allowed innocent people to be accused, stated that whatever she had told the Supreme Court, was done under duress from Teesta Setalvad and her associate Rais Khan; and whatever she told the NHRC was a lie. “Ramzan is on and I want to state the truth,” she said. “What I had said in Vadodara Court during the trial was my true statement. The judgement was correct and had given me all the justice I wanted.” She sought police protection from Teesta Setalvad.[11]

The Supreme Court judge called the girl “flip-flop Zaheera,” accepted a “high-powered committee” report which indicted Zaheera Sheikh as a “self-condemned liar,” and awarded the girl with a simple one-year imprisonment for contempt of court, as well as a fine of Rs. 50,000. Activist Teesta Setalvad was cleared.

Now, who took the court for a ride? Especially in light of the new revelation that “a host of Gujarat riot case victims were misled into signing affidavits giving false information,” for which as many as ten of them had received 100,000 rupees from Teesta Setalvad NGO.[12]

As it stands today, nine persons among the twenty-one passer-bys picked up, have been condemned to life imprisonment and are languishing in jail.

In December 2004, a fatwa was issued against Zaheera by the Muslim Tayohar Committee, excommunicating her with the approval of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, “for having constantly lied.” In other words, for having stood by the twenty-one wrongly accused Hindus neighbours.

Let us pursue our investigation.

Premeditated files

Human Rights Watch Smita Narula’s report (April 30th, 2002) was titled “ ‘We have no order to save you’ — State participation and complicity in anti-Muslim violence.” From US shores, its words were lapped up by the Indian elite and politicians:

What happened in Gujarat was not a spontaneous uprising, it was a carefully orchestrated attack against Muslims … planned in advance and organized with extensive participation of the police and state government officials.[13]

But where are the facts to corroborate such an allegation, which of course was instantly peddled the world over? Can a “carefully orchestrated attack” happen overnight? And how can someone sitting in the U.S., gauge the “spontaneity” of such an outbreak?[14]

Authentic inquiry

By contrast, a genuine, on-the-spot investigation was conducted under the aegis of the New Delhi-based Council for International Affairs and Human Rights.[15] Its findings were made public as early as April 26th, 2002, through a press conference held in Delhi. Running counter to the politically correct line of an “orchestrated attack,” they were largely ignored by the media.

On March 3rd, 2002 the five-member fact-finding team under Justice Tewatia’s direction went to Godhra and spent six days visiting three affected areas in Ahmedabad and some of the relief camps. At all places, team members interacted with the two communities freely, without intervention of any officials. Five delegations from both communities presented their facts and views. The team then went to the Godhra railway station and interviewed officials, survivors and witnesses of the burning of the S-6 coach, as well as the fire brigade staff. They met the Godhra District Collector, along with other officials.

On April 4th, the team was in Vadodara (Baroda) visiting five relief camps of both communities, and seven areas which were the scenes of violence in the preceding month, as well as a number of sensitive areas. To have exposure to the ground realities they visited some areas still under curfew and also met the Commissioner of Police and District Collector along with other officials. Thirteen delegations consisting of 121 citizens met the team and presented their testimonies; they included not only members of both communities, but ranged from the Association of Hoteliers to a group of Gujarati tribals (Vanavasis).

“Indisputable” facts

Let us quote some findings of Justice Tewatia’s Inquiry Commission, which its report described as “indisputable”:

• The attack on Sabarmati Express on 27.02.02 was pre-planned and pre-meditated. It was the result of a criminal conspiracy hatched by a hostile foreign power with the help of local jehadis … carried out with the evil objective of pushing the country into a communal cauldron.

• The plan was to burn the entire train with more than two thousand passengers in the wee hours of February 27th, 2002.

• There were no quarrels or fights between the vendors and the Hindu pilgrims on the platform of Godhra Railway Station.

• Firebombs, acid bulbs and highly inflammable liquid(s) were used to set the coaches on fire that must have been stored [the day before] already for the purpose.

• The fire fighting system available in Godhra was weakened and its arrival at the place of incident wilfully delayed by the mob with the open participation of a Congress Councillor, Haji Balal.

• Fifty-eight passengers of coach S-6 were burnt to death by a Muslim mob and one of the conspirators was a Congress Councillor, Haji Balal.

• Someone used the public address system exhorting the mob “to kill kafirs and enemies of Bin Laden.”

About the police:

• Police was on many occasions overwhelmed by the rioting mobs that were massive and carried more lethal weapons than the police did.

• [They] did not have the training and know-how to manage situations of communal strife witnessed in the state in recent weeks.

• In many places, … [they] made a commendable work in protecting life and property. Barring a few exceptions, it was not found to be communally motivated.

Army deployment:

• Available information shows that the Army was requisitioned and deployed in time.

After Godhra

The involvement of the “tribal” communities or Vanavasis, in the post-Godhra riots added a new dimension to the communal violence, as Justice Tewatia’s report reveals:

• In rural areas the Vanvasis attacked the Muslim moneylenders, shopkeepers and the forest contractors. They used their traditional bows and arrows as also their implements used to cut trees and grass while attacking Muslims. They moved in groups and used coded signals for communication. Apparently, the accumulated anger of years of exploitation … had become explosive.

About the media:

• Gujarati language media was factual and objective. Yet its propensity to highlight the gory incidents in great detail heightened communal tension.

• English language newspapers … appeared to have assumed the role of crusaders against the State [Gujarat] Government from day one. It coloured the entire operation of news gathering, feature writing and editorials. They distorted and added fiction to prove their respective points of view. The code of ethics prescribed by the Press Council of India was violated … with impunity. It so enraged the citizens that several concerned citizens in the disturbed areas suggested that peace could return to the state only if some of the TV channels were closed for some weeks.[16]

A few healing voices

It would be unfair not to mention a few voices that rose from among the journalists themselves, against this enormity.

The most eloquent one was Vir Sanghvi’s, usually part of the “secular” establishment, ever ready to portray Muslims as victims, Hindus as aggressors. Vir Sanghvi’s crisis of conscience suddenly gave him intellectual clarity. Some extracts from his article “One-way ticket” in The Hindustan Times of Feb. 28th, 2002:

There is something profoundly worrying in the response of what might be called the secular establishment to the massacre in Godhra. …

There is no suggestion that the karsewaks started the violence … there has been no real provocation at all … And yet, the sub-text to all secular commentary is the same: the karsewaks had it coming to them.

Basically, they condemn the crime; but blame the victims …

Try and take the incident out of the secular construct that we, in India, have perfected and see how bizarre such an attitude sounds in other contexts. Did we say that New York had it coming when the Twin Towers were attacked last year? Then too, there was enormous resentment among fundamentalist Muslims about America’s policies, but we didn’t even consider whether this resentment was justified or not.

Instead we took the line that all sensible people must take: any massacre is bad and deserves to be condemned.

When Graham Staines and his children were burnt alive, did we say that Christian missionaries had made themselves unpopular by engaging in conversion and so, they had it coming? No, of course, we didn’t.

Why then are these poor karsewaks an exception? Why have we de-humanised them to the extent that we don’t even see the incident as the human tragedy that it undoubtedly was …

I know the arguments well because — like most journalists — I have used them myself. And I still argue that they are often valid and necessary.

But there comes a time when this kind of rigidly ’secularist’ construct not only goes too far; it also becomes counter-productive.

When everybody can see that a trainload of Hindus was massacred by a Muslim mob, you gain nothing by blaming the murders on the VHP[17] or arguing that the dead men and women had it coming to them.

Not only does this insult the dead (What about the children? Did they also have it coming?), but it also insults the intelligence of the reader.

There is one question we need to ask ourselves: have we become such prisoners of our own rhetoric that even a horrific massacre becomes nothing more than occasion for Sangh Parivar-bashing?[18]

S. Gurumurthy in The New Indian Express (March 2nd), Jaya Jaitley, in The Indian Express (March 7th), Rajeev Srinivasan in Rediff on Net (March 25th), Arvind Lavakare in Rediff on Net (April 23rd), T. Tomas in Business Standard (April 26th), François Gautier in The Pioneer (April 30th), M.V. Kamath in The Times of India (May 8th), Balbir Punj in Outlook (May 27th), each one expounded the absurdity of a situation where the majority of Indians — the Hindu community — are looked down upon as second class citizens.

A negligible lot taken for granted because it is harmless, non-aggressive, and unable to speak and act as one coherent, organized group.

A farcical interlude

Two and a half years after the events, on Sept. 3rd, 2004, the cabinet of the Central Government (ruled by the UPA coalition[19]) approved the setting up of a committee constituted by the Railways Minister Lallu Prasad Yadav, and headed by Justice U. C. Banerjee, former judge of the Supreme Court, to probe the causes of the conflagration in the Sabarmati Express.

“The blaze is an accident,” Justice Banerjee coolly concluded in January 2005. There was “no possibility of inflammable liquid being used,” said he, and the fire originated “in the coach itself, without external input.” The Cabinet ministers were fully satisfied.

Now among the few survivors, Neelkanth Bhatia, was not one. He gathered enough strength to challenge the formation of this committee, and in October 2006, the Gujarat High Court quashed the conclusions of the Banerjee Committee. It declared its formation as a “colourful exercise,” “illegal, unconstitutional, null and void,” and its argument of accidental fire “opposed to the prima facie accepted facts on record.”

Moreover, one high-level commission conducted by Justice Nanavati-Shah had been appointed by the Gujarat Government to probe the incident, two months earlier.

The Court also did not miss the point that the interim report was released just two days before the elections in Bihar — the State of the Railways minister, well-known for his political ambitions and notorious for his histrionics.

Politicians know no common sense or shame. But what about the judiciary?

The Nanavati Report

The first part of Justice Nanavati-Shah Inquiry Commission report was released in September 2008, after four years of thorough investigations.[20] It lifted the cloak of blame that had been wrapped around the Gujarati people all those years. It also cleared the most blackened Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi.

There is absolutely no evidence to show that either the Chief Minister and/or any other Minister(s) in his Council of Ministers or Police officers had played any role in the Godhra incident or that there was any lapse on their part in the matter of providing protection, relief and rehabilitation to the victims of communal riots or in the matter of not complying with the recommendations and directions given by National Human Rights Commission. There is no evidence regarding involvement of any definite religious or political organization in the conspiracy. Some individuals who had participated in the conspiracy appear to be involved in the heinous act of setting coach S/6 on fire.

The policemen who were assigned the duty of travelling in the Sabarmati Express train from Dahod to Ahmedabad had not done so and for this negligent act of theirs an inquiry was held by the Government and they have been dismissed from service.

On the basis of the facts and circumstances proved by the evidence the Commission comes to the conclusion that burning of coach S/6 was a pre-planned act. In other words there was a conspiracy to burn coach S/6 of the Sabarmati Express train coming from Ayodhya and to cause harm to the Karsevaks travelling in that coach. All the acts like procuring petrol, circulating false rumour, stopping the train and entering in coach S/6 were in pursuance of the object of the conspiracy. The conspiracy hatched by these persons further appears to be a part of a larger conspiracy to create terror and destabilise the Administration.[21]

According to Justice Nanavati, Maulvi Hussain Umarji from Godhra was the brain behind the events. Two of the main accused, Salim Panwala et Farukh Bhana, are absconding, very likely having fled to Pakistan.

The report named a few others, with various degrees of involvement in the events, but they are unlikely to be troubled in view of their political connections.

Heartstrings for whom?

It is easy to see why the Nanavati Report was frowned upon by Citizens for Justice and Peace, namely Activist Teesta Setalvad who asked the Supreme Court “to restrain the Gujarat Government from acting upon, circulating and publishing this report.”

Fortunately on October 13th, 2008, the highest court sharply turned down the petition, thus making the testimonies and inquiries available to all (the Nanavati Report is available on the Internet).

However, under pressure from the UPA Government and pestered by the National Human Rights Commission and Citizens for Justice and Peace NGO, on October 21st, 2008, the Supreme Court directed that the Prevention of Terrorist Act (POTA) could not be used against the 134 accused in the Godhra train burning incident, whose trial was to be held under the provisions of the Indian Penal Code.

This amounted to accepting prima facie that the guilty were not terrorists: we are allowed to call them “militants,” “gunmen” — but not terrorists.

This ruling will have nationwide impact, as other State governments may have to drop charges under POTA against those accused of indulging in terrorist activities.

The recent terrorist attacks on Mumbai (on November 26th) demonstrate the danger of such a withdrawal.

Pattern for Harmony

This appears to be a pattern: whenever Muslim riots or bomb attacks target Hindus, it is thought acceptable to accuse the victims, in order to avoid possible revolts.

Thus in 1993 in Mumbai, after eleven coordinated bomb blasts in Hindu majority areas, which killed 257 people and injured 713, the then Maharashtra Chief Minister Sharad Pawar quickly cooked up a twelfth explosion … in a Muslim area!

“I have deliberately misled people,” he explained later, to show that both communities had been affected.”[22] And to portray both communities’ potential to behave as “terrorists”! Truth and clarity of mind are the casualties.

We remember the great art historian A.K. Coomaraswamy’s words in 1909:

It is unfortunate that libels upon nations and religions cannot be punished as can libels upon individuals.[23]

Gujarat had greatly suffered throughout all those years. Through a devastating Bhuj region earthquake in January 2001, in which more than 20,000 people died; the pilgrims burned alive at Godhra in Feb. 2002 and just six months later another terrorist attack in the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar, where thirty-three peaceful worshippers were brutally gunned down (with seventy injured). Amidst those tragedies the people of Gujarat seemed to have no doubt whatsoever regarding the sincerity of their Chief Minister, whose administration happens to be among the least corrupt in the whole of India. State elections were held twice since those events: in December 2002 and December 2007. How is it that Narendra Modi won landslide victories on both occasions despite extremely hostile and sustained media campaigns, seeking to demonise him as a blood-thirsty ruler?

Official India has chosen to forget a millennium of Islamic intolerance and brutality. Millions of butchered Indians have no right to be remembered, not even in history textbooks, where invaders are sometimes turned into heroes. Sadly, this ostrich-like attitude leaves the wounds open and condemns us to relive the past rather than heal it. January 2009 nicole_elfi@yahoo.com

** LTTE-Sonia link ?

indiaview — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 03:36:50 +0000

An LTTE-Sonia family link?

S. Gurumurthy,Newindpress

April 29 2008

The LTTE suicide squad did plan and eliminate Rajiv Gandhi. But, why did the LTTE do it? Was there a larger conspiracy that extended beyond the LTTE as the strike force?

Was the LTTE the author of the crime or the mercenary for some one else or for some purpose that yielded some benefit to it? These questions persisted even after the actual assassins were brought to book.

The Narasimha Rao government appointed the Jain Commission to go into the conspiracy angle to the murder.In its interim report the commission did exceedingly good work to bring on record evidence about the political forces involved in promoting the LTTE in Tamil Nadu that made the crime possible.

Yet it made a mockery of its main work, the conspiracy angle. It floated dubious and wild theories, involving Mossad! CIA! Besides adding confusion, it ended up trivialising a very serious exercise. This also robbed the commission of its credibility.

As the commission’s final report proved a flop, the Vajpayee government appointed a Multi- Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) in 1998 to unearth the conspiracy angle.

But the person who first demanded, but, ultimately made, investigation into the conspiracy to murder Rajiv Gandhi irrelevant was none other than his widow Sonia Gandhi.

Her attitude to the investigation and suspected actors in the murder dramatically changed. Her conduct in 1997 when she was working to enter active politics was a stark contrast to her attitude after taking over the congress leadership on the Jain Commission issue.

In 1997, she demanded that the DMK which, the Jain commission had said, was part of the conspiracy, be sacked as a partner of the UF alliance and pulled down the government when the demand was not met. Her party insisted the entire facts about the conspiracy be investigated and revealed.

Addressing a meeting at Amethi, Sonia hinted that the DMK was a fan of the LTTE and charged that those who doubted the Jain commission report were diverting the attention from the investigation into the conspiracy to murder Rajiv and demanded that the probe be completed expeditiously (Indian Express 2.2.1998).

But, once she took over the party leadership, she not only ceased to evince any interest in pursuing the Rajiv Gandhi murder conspiracy, but also began allying with the alleged conspirators themselves.

The developments, put together, reveal a shocking picture.The year after taking over the Congress, Sonia Gandhi makes a secret move.

In the year 1999, she told then President Dr K R Narayanan privately that ‘neither she nor her son and daughter wanted any of the four convicts’ sentenced to death for Rajiv’s assassination ‘to be hanged’, and pleaded that no child should be orphaned by an act of the State.

Noted the Indian Express (Nov 20, 1999) that before her plea for mercy to the Rajiv killers the Congress party was the leading opponent of mercy to them. This silenced the party once and for all.

What transpired at her private meeting with the President was revealed not by Sonia, but by Mohini Giri (the former chairperson of the National Women’s Commission) and on that basis Nalini’s death sentence was commuted to life. (Frontline Nov 5-18, 2005).

Then, in February 2004, there were reports, editorially commented by the Island newspaper in Colombo on Feb 20, 2004, that Eduardo Faleiro, her emissary, had a secret meeting with the LTTE chief Prabhakaran at Killinochi. Island had also referred to reports that Sonia’s mother Ms Paula Maino had met Anton Balasingham, LTTE’s point man in London, in connection with the electoral alliance between the DMK and the Congress. While Eduardo Faleiro at least made a feeble attempt to deny the meeting, Paulo Maino would not even deny that.Third, the Paulo Maino meeting preceded, and the Faleiro meeting succeeded, the unbelievable U-turn of Sonia Gandhi to forge alliance with the DMK which was accused by her own party in 1997 of being part of the conspiracy to murder her husband. The DMK-Congress alliance seems to have been agreed upon sometime in December 2003. In January 2004, Sonia met the DMK chief and concretised the alliance.

The coming together of one of the alleged conspirators and the victim of the conspiracy made a mockery of any further investigation into Rajiv Gandhi murder.

For the last four years there is not a single word spoken by Sonia on pursuing the Rajiv Gandhi murderers and on unearthing the conspiracy or for the extradition of Prabhakaran or Pottu Amman.

This is despite the fact that, when, on April 10, 2002, Prabhakaran met the press at Killinochi, he did not even deny that LTTE was involved in Rajiv assassination.

Fourth, the LTTE too responded favourably to signals from Sonia that she was not against LTTE.

On January 27, 2006, Anton Balasingham, told an Indian TV news channel that the Rajiv killing was ‘monumental tragedy’ and asked the people of India to be ‘magnanimous to put the past behind’ and deal with the LTTE.

Fifth, Sonia did not object to the inclusion of the DMK woman MP in whose house Sivarasan the main killer of Rajiv Gandhi had stayed for which she was detained under the TADA, as a minister in the UPA government.

Sixth, the MDMA which was appointed by the NDA government after Sonia rejected the Action Taken Report on the Jain Commission, has virtually become defunct under the UPA regime.

Since 2004, she has not uttered a single word asking what the MDMA is doing.

And finally now in March 2008, Priyanka Vadra, Sonia’s daughter makes a secret visit to Vellore jail and meets the first accused in the murder of Rajiv, for over an hour.

Media reports say that they sat by each other’s side, cried and professed goodwill towards each other! No one knows what transpired between them. The meeting clearly illegal, looks almost a conspiracy, would have remained a secret had the media not exposed it.

Priyanka said that neither Sonia nor Rahul or Priyanka believe in hate or anger, and that the visit was her way of coming to terms with the Rajiv Gandhi murder.

Moral high ground seems to be a cover for undisclosed political strategies. But where was this high moral ground when Sonia angrily pulled down the UF government on the ground that DMK, a suspected co-conspirator with LTTE, was part of the alliance?

Is Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination a personal affair between the Sonia Gandhi family and the LTTE for the former to punish or pardon the latter?

LTTE has neither confessed nor regretted its action for the Gandhis to pardon. The LTTE is even today unrepenting.

The prosecution case is that the LTTE supremo decided to avenge Rajiv Gandhi for sending IPKF to Sri Lanka and betraying the LTTE. But that was no personal decision of Rajiv Gandhi. The assassination was an act against the state of India.

This is how it should be seen and pursued. Neither Sonia nor Priyanka nor the Congress has the right to pardon the criminals who have challenged the sovereignty of India.

QED: Sonia Gandhi family and the LTTE connection is mysterious. Is the maverick Dr Subramanian Swamy right after all in his theory that LTTE and the Maino family have had links before? http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEM20080428231348&Title=Main+Article&rLink=0

RELATED STORIES:

Do you know Sonia : Subramanian Swamy @ http://www.saveindi aforum.com/ dynamic/

Sonia Cong’s blitzkrieg evangelisation thru RBI: V. Sundaram @ http://www.newstodaynet.com/2007sud/may07/230507.htm

She became loyal bit late: by Gurumurthy@ http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2007/06/14/she-became-loyal-to-india-a-trifle-late/

Demo-narchy of India @ http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2007/08/01/de%e2%80%99mo-narchy-of-democratic-india/

Sonia-LTTE link : by Gurumurthy @ http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEM20080428231348&Title=Main+Article&rLink=0