The euphoria sweeping the Bharatiya
Janata Party in the wake of its spectacular success in Gujarat is understandable
and justified. A party that looked forward to the forthcoming polls in
several States with trepidation suddenly feels vindicated and vitalised.
But there is no straight road from Gandhinagar to other State capitals
and, if the BJP hopes to give a credible fight in any of these elections,
its leadership will have to stop day-dreaming and get down to brass tacks.
.....
The euphoria sweeping the Bharatiya
Janata Party in the wake of its spectacular success in Gujarat is understandable
and justified. A party that looked forward to the forthcoming polls in
several States with trepidation suddenly feels vindicated and vitalised.
But there is no straight road from Gandhinagar to other State capitals
and, if the BJP hopes to give a credible fight in any of these elections,
its leadership will have to stop day-dreaming and get down to brass tacks.
.....
What is the connection between
A K Antony, the Congress defeat in Gujarat, and the future of 'secularism'
as defined by the Left in India? Second, why did Sonia Gandhi's call of
'Vikas ya Vinash' ('Development or Destruction') find so few takers in
Gujarat? .....
A Hindu couple has adopted an "illegitimate
Muslim child" who had become a thorn in the side of the minority community
in a small village about 36 km from here, providing one bright spark of
amity in the gloom of communal polarisation. .....
In a build-up to the elections,
BJP Rajya Sabha member Dilip Singh Judeo held a ''de-conversion'' camp
for 250 Christian families in Chattisgarh today. .....
The alleged spiritual head of the
terror group blamed for the October 12 Bali bombings has been named "Man
of the Year" by an Indonesian Islamic magazine. .....
So, who, after all, turned out
to be right? On December 7th, the Kolkata-based The Telegraph noted that
"faint furrows have started creasing the BJP's brow with several opinion
polls in Gujarat predicting a close finish and the most rosy forecast scaling
down the party's tally". .....
A leading Pakistani nuclear scientist,
barred by his government from talking to reporters, has made it known through
his son that Osama bin Laden approached him before the Sept. 11 attacks
for help in making nuclear weapons. .....
Pakistani police on Sunday ended
the house arrest of militant leader Maulana Masood Azhar, wanted in India
on charges of terrorism, police officials said. .....
Q. What is the aim of Sewa International?
A. Sewa International is a non-governmental
and nonsectarian voluntary organisation, ever ready in lending a helping
hand to the needy, offering all assistance to the unfortunate and underprivileged
by helping them reconstruct their life. .....
In the recent months, the English
media in India and the Western media have started attacking the organisations,
which are working for the Hindu interests abroad. The "hate campaign" against
India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) recently is a good example. The
donations from the USA for the noble cause of serving the victims of natural
calamity or for any service-based projects to uplift the poor masses in
the remote areas of our country has been named as "Saffron Dollar" a section
of the English media. .....
A report called "The Campaign to
Stop Funding Hate" was released on November 20, 2002, before the media
in New Delhi. The English media lapped up the totally biased and politically
motivated report ever ready to bash organisations related in any way to
Hindutva movement, The report targeted India Development and Relief Fund
(IDRF), a US-based charity organisation, which focusses mainly on five
areas such as education, healthcare, women, children and tribal welfare.
The IDRF is a registered organisation in USA, which allots funds to the
NGOs that are duly approved by the Government of India. .....
In a starling revelation, a former
ISI Chief has claimed in his petition that Pakistan defied the United Nations
ban on supply of arms to the Bosnian Muslims and sophisticated anti-tank
guided missiles were air lifted to them by ISI. .....
The warhawks have recently had
to revise their shucking and jiving routine on television. It turns out
that Kim Jung Il has nukes and Saddam Hussein doesn't. .....
Omar al Khadr worshipped Allah
and Tintin. Even after he hit puberty and discovered American action films
and Nintendo, Omar, a conscientious Islamic student, still loved to quote
from the adventures of the Belgian cartoon reporter, which he seemed to
know by heart. .....
That the election results in Gujarat
have irrevocably altered the contours of secular discourse in this country
is apparent not so much in the exultation of the religious right but in
the response of professional secularists: They are either into denial or
are sheepishly sidestepping failure by resorting to obfuscatory logic.
.....
A group of Toronto Muslims reacted
with outrage yesterday after hearing that an Etobicoke mosque issued a
warning to followers that wishing someone a Merry Christmas is like congratulating
a murderer. .....
Citing a security threat, the US
Pacific territory of American Samoa has banned nationals from 23 countries,
including Pakistan, unless they have specific permission to visit, officials
said. .....
Austere mosques, women relegated
to the background and a puritanical faith that rejects change. A brand
of Islam that drives the Taliban and influenced the young American who
fought by their side has taken root in the Mecca of modernism, America.
The mosques and women in question are in Dearborn, Michigan, the fruits
of America's "special relationship" with the most rigid totalitarian dictatorship
in the world. Welcome to the Saudi connection, one of the best-kept secrets
inside the Beltway. .....
French authorities dismantled a
terror cell with ties to Chechen rebels and al-Qaida that planned bomb
or toxic gas attacks in France and Russia, the Interior Ministry said Friday.
.....
Pakistani police have detained
at least six people, including a radical Muslim cleric, in connection with
a Christmas Day attack on a church that killed three girls and wounded
14 others. .....
Making a strong plea for channelling
the ``Gujarat energy,'' the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, has said
that the real face of secularism has come out in the open after the recent
elections in the State. .....
I am desperately searching for
some human rights activists-even one will do-who can take up the cause
of the children being killed by terrorists in Kashmir. These do-gooders
seem to have suddenly vanished into thin air. Perhaps it is the season:
Christmas day and less than six days to New Year's eve. There are plenty
of things to do. .....
Famous French writer and politician
Andre Malraux once said that "unless the 21st century is spiritual, then
it will not be". What he meant was that the world has now come to such
a stage of unhappiness, of stress, of natural resources wastage, of religious
and ethnic conflicts, that it seems doomed - ecologically, politically
and socially. .....
Apart from dealing with extremism
and terrorism, the State police are now trying to figure out why there
has been a sudden upsurge in militant activities and an expanding network
of extremist organisations. .....
The City police today claimed to
have arrested nine activists of the Muslim Defence Force (MDF), including
a `key member' of the Force, who was allegedly involved in providing physical
training to its members. .....
Al-Qaeda and two other Middle East
terrorist groups have established operations and are leading a holy war
against U.S. and British interests from the tiny Caribbean nation of Trinidad
and Tobago, Insight has learned from U.S. government sources and officials
inside the government of Trinidad and Tobago. .....
Pakistan defied the United Nations
ban on supply of arms to the Bosnian Muslims and sophisticated anti-tank
guided missiles were air lifted by the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI,
to help Bosnians fight the Serbs, an ex-ISI Chief has officially admitted
in a written petition submitted before a court in Lahore. .....
It's good to find that Sardar Patel
has re-emerged in the Congress Party's offices, at least in Gujarat. It
will be interesting to know that in the offices of the Deputy Prime Minister
L K Advani and BJP president Venkaiah Naidu, one does not find portraits
of either Shyama Prasad Mookerji or Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, but of Sardar
Patel. .....
It is said that in any aspect of
life, the difference between the numbers one and zero is greater
than the difference between the numbers two and one; nowhere is it as clearly
illustrated as in the case of education, where a little bit can go a long
way in improving the quality of life. .....
When the two Qaeda operatives arrived
at Los Angeles International Airport around New Year's 2000, they were
warmly welcomed. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar would help hijack American
Airlines Flight 77 and crash it into the Pentagon a year and a half later,
but that January in Los Angeles, they were just a couple of young Saudi
men who barely spoke English and needed a place to stay. .....
Frequently we are facing one common
accusation from the Islamists, semi-Islamists and even from the moderate
(ignorant) Muslims-which is "why only critiquing Islam" and why not critiquing
also other religions? This is of course a very prudent question. And this
question needs to be answered by the group of critics. .....
Criminals went on the rampage at
a Bharat Sevashram Sangha temple here today and damaged the altar, an idol
of Krishna and some artefacts. Temple staff caught one of them, Afzal Haq,
and handed him over to police. .....
The Muslims in the country are
not unduly worried over the victory of Hindutva in Gujarat. Though disappointed,
or even saddened over the outcome of the poll, they are certainly not frightened.
They take it in their stride and hope both the Gujarat Chief Minister and
the BJP would really act on the policy declaration of "justice for all",
and that in the future, the party shall take even its opponents along while
working towards development. .....
That the grammar of Indian politics
would change if Narendra Modi won the elections had been predicted repeatedly
over the past months. A number of commentators had made this prognosis
but the bugle was sounded by the Congress when the electoral campaign began.
.....
A German man under investigation
for links to top figures of Al Qaeda slipped out of the country last month,
withdrawing his four children from school, terminating his lease and obtaining
visas for Saudi Arabia without attracting any attention from the police,
according to German officials. .....
The echo of Moscow's theater siege
reverberated loudly in the unheated, unfinished mosque where Zvenigorod's
500 Muslims come to pray. Two Central Asian men, sitting here wrapped in
coats against the winter chill, heard it in the hatred of the town drunks
and the scorn of the militia, which confiscated their passports and vowed
to kick them out of the country. .....
Dear Abby: I am a Hindu woman living
in the Bible Belt. Many of my friends and acquaintances are Christian,
and they are all wonderful -- except for one thing. Some try in small,
subtle ways to convert me to their faith. .....
The man suspected of helping to
build the car bomb that killed nearly 200 people in Bali last month said
yesterday that he was delighted with the outcome. .....
I remember the first time someone
suggested I try yoga. They came at me with enough zeal to impress a Jesuit
missionary and the reticence of an anti-smoking bore. I knew all the benefits
of yoga to health, posture and attitude to life but as far as I was concerned,
it was about as appealing as tofu. .....
Pakistan's military regime last
night abruptly postponed the inaugural meeting of the first parliament
since the 1999 coup as an anti-army coalition of parties looked like forming
a government. .....
In the time of Ayatollah Khomeini
Friday prayers at Teheran University were like a religious rock show where
thousands flocked to hear the mullah's sermons. .....
Vice-President Hamzah Haz of Indonesia
warned Australia yesterday that an anti-terrorism offensive against Indonesian
Muslims in Australian cities could damage relations between the two countries.
.....
While the number of dead hostages
was climbing on Monday, a Moscow newspaper had a headline that read: "At
last, we have something to be proud of". Was it right? On balance, I think,
yes. .....
Every now and again the politics
and culture of race in America simply take you by surprise. To coin a phrase,
what's black can sometimes seem white and what's white can sometimes seem
black. Racism goes backwards and forwards in dizzying degrees of cultural
complexity and perspective. .....
For the past three decades, New
Delhi has been preaching the world the inequities of the Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), but it is unlikely to derive any pleasure from the revelation
that Pakistan is providing nuclear weapon-making technology to North Korea.
.....
In one of the most brutal acts,
the Pakistan Army tortured six Indian soldiers, including a young Lieutenant,
gouged their eyeballs, burnt them with cigarette butts and chopped off
noses, ears and genitals." Thus ran the news report on June 11, aptly
head-lined, 'Barbarians'. That was the state of Lieutenant Saurav
Kalia and five of his men from 4 Jats who had gone on a patrol on May 14
in the Kaksar area. .....
Thai Muslim communities in the
South provided support to Jemaah Isalamiyah militants since some members
of the communities were educated in the same places in Afghanistan and
Libya, the Secretary-General of National Security Council Gen. Vinai Pathriyakul
said yesterday. .....
Preliminary investigations have
revealed that the Catholic church which was attacked and robbed was involved
in converting the area's residents to Christianity, police here said today.
Police suspect that the attack was pre-planned and carried out by local
villagers because they were against conversions and also wanted to disrupt
the Christmas party. .....
Saddam Hussein was an active partner
in Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme not just once, but twice. Iraq
funded Pakistan's clandestine nuclear weapons project in the early 1980s
in return for uranium-enrichment technology. A decade later, the two were
back in bed. This time they were busy trading money for an A-bomb design.
.....
Police have arrested three persons
in connection with the Christmas plunder of Maliapota Catholic church
in Tehatta and suspect the raid was carried out by a gang comprising
criminals from Nadia and Meherpur and Rajshahi districts in Bangladesh.
.....
Pakistan has secretly informed
the United States that a number of its scientists and military officers
were "personally" involved in providing nuclear arms technology to North
Korea, Japanese media reported on Wednesday. .....
"We are going to take your head
if you don't part with your land." Faced with the grim choices she had,
Shefali Ray ran. She started on her journey - from Madra village of Khulna
district in Bangladesh to a place near Gobrapur village of North 24-Parganas
in India - before dawn the evening after she learnt what fate had in store
for her. .....
The two-day national executive
meet of the Bharatiya Janata Party concluded on Tuesday with Deputy Prime
Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani endorsing party president Venkaiah Naidu's
proposal of "replicating the Gujarat experience in the next series of assembly
and Lok Sabha elections." .....
North Korea's decision this weekend
to remove international controls from its nuclear reactors and from a large
supply of weapons-grade fuel is as much a political challenge as a military
one, experts on the country's behavior say. .....
North Korea warned today of an
"uncontrollable catastrophe" unless the United States agreed to a negotiated
solution to a standoff over its nuclear energy and weapons programs. .....
The recent disclosures of secret
nuclear facilities in Iran and North Korea -- combined with the North's
threat this week to resume plutonium production -- have presented the United
States with its most serious nuclear challenge since the early 1990s. The
episodes have not only forced a reassessment of when the two countries
could become nuclear powers but also exposed widening gaps in the international
fire walls built decades ago to halt the spread of nuclear materials and
technology, weapons experts say. .....
Around 1,000 mourners, including
the national health minister, paid their last respects here to a pioneering
South African Indian doctor who served as a role model to hundreds of students.
.....
I extend a very warm welcome to
all of you at this important meeting of our Party National Executive. It
is a meeting to rejoice, to celebrate - and to re-dedicate ourselves to
the tasks ahead. .....
Muslim groups in Andhra Pradesh
have threatened to intensify protests against the killings by police of
two youths from the community if a judicial probe is not initiated. .....
VHP leader Praveen Togadia today
clashed out at the ban imposed by Congress-led DF government in Maharashtra
on his speaking at public meetings and said the state could go the Gujarat
way. .....
Two cops abducted by the outlawed
People's War were set free on Saturday night after the police released
13 Naxalite sympathisers from its custody in Guntur district in Andhra
Pradesh. .....
With the police receiving information
that a Pakistani also is associated with the Saudi Arabia- based leader
of the Muslim Defence Force (MDF), whose members were arrested in the State,
investigators are to probe the organisation's possible links with the banned
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the ISI of the neighbouring country. .....
In a bold move, villagers of Kamareddy
mandal raised a voice of protest against the outlawed People's War naxalites
for obstructing development in the villages by destroying public property.
.....
Pakistan had deflected and frustrated
a U.N. probe into an offer made by Islamabad to Iraq of nuclear weapons
know-how, allegedly made in the 1990s on behalf of Abdul Qadeer Khan, father
of Pakistan's atomic bomb, former U.N. weapons inspectors were today quoted
as saying. .....
The Gujarat election result has
hit the 'seculars' like a thunderbolt. They are howling 'harvest of the
hate', 'Moditva at work' 'pogrom on minorities' and so on. Days before
the Gujarat elections, the secular media had virtually written off the
BJP. But the results were an electric shock. It demonstrated not just the
rift between the 'seculars' and the Hindus but also that the seculars were
blind to a rising tornado of Hindu reaction -not against the Muslims, but
the seculars themselves. .....
China stepped up its battle against
Muslim separatists on Monday as President Jiang Zemin (news - web sites)
agreed to a pact with neighbouring Kazakhstan to fight terrorism and religious
extremism. .....
If attacks such as Sept. 11 and
the Bali bombings have any positive spin-off, it is that governments from
Indonesia to Pakistan are finally conceding that they have a terrorism
problem. Not so Bangladesh. When four simultaneous bombs exploded in crowded
cinemas in Mymensingh on Dec. 7, killing 17 people and injuring 200, home
minister Altaf Hossain Chowdhury didn't blame al-Qaeda or any home-grown
movement but his government's political opponents. .....
Of the total number of Congress
candidates for the December Gujarat Assembly elections, as many as 65-that
is, 36 per cent-were not from the original ranks of the Congress. A few
months before the Assembly elections, Shankersinh Vaghela was appointed
the State Congress President. Vaghela was expelled from the BJP. Both these
instances explain that the Congress has snapped itself from its roots.
.....
In the course of the December 13
Parliament attack trial, issues of admissibility of certain types of evidence
that could benefit some accused were raised. The decision on whether such
evidence could or could not be admitted was to be decided by the Judge,
S.N. Dhingra. .....
Professor Michael Walzer of Princeton
University has intellectually engaged with democratic values like justice
and toleration as much as Just and Unjust Wars. Last Saturday, he spoke
about the justness of the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 and how unjust
it is of Pakistan to support cross border terrorism in J&K. In the
second and concluding part of an interview with Ajit Kumar Jha, Walzer
deals with the problem of religious sectarianism and intolerance towards
minorities in both United States and India after 9/11. .....
He's no pacifist but he's opposed
to the United States waging war on Iraq. He considers the liberation of
Bangladesh in the 1971 Indo- Pakistan war as ''a justified military intervention.''
Meet Michael Walzer, the author of the classic Just and Unjust Wars and
professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
.....
A few years after trying its best
to unsettle the Ramakrishna Mission-run primary school at Baranagar for
daring to teach English at the primary level when the Left Front government
was yet to be convinced about its benefits, a Cabinet minister owned up
that the education policy was riddled with mistakes. .....
For the past two decades, the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia has been engaged in an extensive effort "to spread Islam
to every corner of the earth."[1] This has meant supporting or creating
schools with a curriculum primarily based upon the teachings of Sheikh
Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, the 18th century founder of the Islamist Wahhabiyya
movement. .....
The Orissa High Court has ruled
that a Muslim husband is obligated to pay a reasonable maintenance for
his divorced wife beyond the three-month 'iddat' period. .....
At least five women and a girl
belonging to the Hindu community were gangraped by an armed gang
at Gopalpur village under Kachua upazila in Bagerhat district on
November 16, some of the victims and their family members alleged
while talking to this correspondent on Thursday. .....
A 17-year-old Dalit was allegedly
lynched yesterday at Bhilai for his affair with a Muslim girl. Om Prakash's
body was found hanging from the ceiling of a cattle shed which was locked
from outside. .....
Recently, news about two canonisations
or the conferring of sainthood by the Vatican, has hit the headlines. One
is of the late Spanish priest Josemaría Escriva (1902-1975), the
founder of Opus Dei, the 85,000-strong controversial revivalist wing of
Catholicism. .....
Though the Titwala police ignored
it in its remand application in the Kalyan court today, Colonel Chitale's
Maharashtra Commando Academy has recruited a second batch of youngsters
to give military training. However, the training couldn't begin as both
Chitale and his commando trainers Sanjeev Atre were arrested by the police.
.....
It started as a trickle, developed
into a steady stream and is now threatening to turn into a tide spilling
over the borders of Bangladesh into India's northeastern states. Thousands
of Hindus and hundreds of Muslims who support the defeated Awami League
party have crossed over the border to India, carrying endless tales of
rape, torture and murder as well extortion and destruction of property.
.....
No society of global consequence
today is more in a state of irreconcilable contradiction than the People's
Republic of China. A vast and overpopulated nation in the midst of a fevered
but precarious transition, its leaders have failed to articulate a coherent
development model as a guide for reform. .....
Tales of torture haunted a crime
convention here, as the audience fell silent with horror on hearing
sagas of rape and pillage allegedly by activists of the ruling Bangladesh
Nationalist Party-led government. The convention on "Crimes Against
Humanity" has been organised by the BNP's political rival, the Awami
League, and focuses on post-election atrocities on nearly 20 million
Hindu-dominated minorities in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. .....
Debunking the fundamental Avataar
of the RSS The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is a probably the most
controversial if not hated and reviled organisation in contemporary India.
It has been called every vile name under the sun. Suffronist, communalist,
fundamentalist, fascist and if there can be anything worse, surely, our
'intellectuals' would be most happy top use that to damn the RSS. .....
The tyranny of dogmatic Hinduism
and Islam promotes and sustains cycles of violence in South Asia. The crusade
of Islamic fundamentalism in the region is a recognized fact in response
to which there is an increasing, and often strategically ineffectual, assemblage
of force and political will. Hindu militancy in India is yet to receive
similar scrutiny. .....
Pakistani nuclear scientists should
get their resumes and passports ready to move somewhere else: they are
considered the weakest link in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Elements in Pakistan's nuclear programme are suspected of helping not only
the North Koreans but Iraqis and Iranians as well. .....
A leading American think tank sees
a "serious strategic partnership" unfolding between the US and India at
a time when Washington, in its view, is "starting to turn sour on Islamabad"
because of its growing radicalisation. .....
Perhaps Salman Rushdie is not the
right person to cite here, but in a recent article in the New York Times,
he has asked a very pertinent question: why aren't Muslims more critical
of the many awful things that happen with such dreadful frequency in the
Islamic world? .....
Fear grips Pakistanis living in
the United States as Washington screens hundreds of thousands of Muslim
immigrants, looking for possible terrorists. .....
A fast track court here today convicted
all the eight accused in the 1997 murder of traffic constable Selvaraj
and reserved the pronouncement of sentence for December 23. .....
Police in New Delhi on Saturday
stopped around 150 Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists from performing prayers
at a mosque which they claim was built over 27 demolished Hindu temples,
police said. .....
The other day I visited a tribal
village, which was only 20 kms away from Bhubaneswar. The poverty I witnessed
there was appalling: no drinking water, no proper housing, the children
to whom we distributed food packets were sickly looking, undernourished,
dirty and badly clothed. .....
It was a chance remark made by
a Gujarati Hindu colleague to his Muslim colleague. "Thank God Modi won
otherwise I don't know what would have happened to the Hindus." .....
So the Bharatiya Janata Party has
won the Assembly elections in Gujarat. Won? It has not just won; it has
totally demolished the bogus party called the Congress. The people of Gujarat
have given a resounding slap to the secularists that they will not forget
for a long, long time. For months our secularists sought every manner of
means to run down Gujarat, Gujaratis, the Gujarati police, the Gujarati
Administration and the Gujarati ethos. .....
The ultra Islamic coalition government
of Bangladesh's Prime MInister Khaleda Zia includes as it's partner the
Islamic supremacist Jamaat-E-Islami. For many years, the Janaat was led
by Golam Azam, a rabid communalist, who had returned from Pakistan when
General Zia, Khaleda ZIa's husband was still alive and in power as the
nation's president. .....
When we immigrated from Jerusalem,
Jordan in January, 1967, little did I imagine that Islam would become center-stage
in world news. As my sincere interest in the growth of Islam in America
intensified, I began to discuss, dialogue, and then debate Muslim leaders
throughout the world from an Arab Christian's view of Islam. .....
The latest conflict in Kashmir
between the Mujahideen (those who fight in righteous jihaad) and India
brings to mind the ahadeeth regarding the conquest of India prior to the
day of Judgment. .....
Churches are getting a bad rap
these days. Some pollsters say at best, religion is losing its grip on
American society; at worst, growing amounts of Americans are finding the
institution irrelevant. .....
Reacting sharply to justice Krishna
Iyer's Tribunal report indicting Gujarat caretaker chief minister Narendra
Modi and others as responsible for post-Godhra riots, VHP today charged
"Leftists and secularists" for "siding with radical Islamic movements like
the Tableegh Jamaat to defame the Hindu community". .....
What about the men who inflicted
those wounds? They have gone back to their mothers, wives, daughters and
sisters with the calm of a storm that has spent its force. What will they
do? Will they ever feel guilty for what they did? How will they cope with
the love for their own women if the contorted face of their victims flash
in their minds? Perhaps the rapists have a way to deal with it because
they are different men. For the rest of us, it is hard to believe that
they were men at all. .....
Who's Ashrafuzzaman Khan? Why is
it so important that we now know the content of his dairy? Please be patient
and read this write-up. I will let you draw your own conclusion regarding
the culpability of this man. .....
Intoxicated, or perhaps exhausted,
by its exuberant diplomacy with the US for a share of the action against
international terrorism, the BJP-led government has failed to take note
of the orchestrated violence against Hindus in Bangladesh, and the dangerously
rising levels of Islamic fundamentalism there. Over three weeks after the
victory of the Bangladesh National Party- Jamaat e Islami alliance resulted
in virtual genocide against Hindus, and to a lesser extent Buddhist Chakmas
and Christians, the Vajpayee regime has reacted to the sordid events with
deafening silence. .....
During the infamous Noakhali riots
of 1946, where the Hindu minority was ravaged, the visit of Gandhiji, along
with Sucheta Kripalini, Renuka Roy and Sneharani Kanjilal, greatly helped
restore peace. Gandhiji went to a village called Kadihati and planted a
jackfruit sapling as a symbol of peace in the compound of the Kadihati
High School. .....
The Bihar police has announced
a reward of Rs 25,000 for the arrest of Sultan Mian, who reportedly forced
a woman named Kanchan Mishra into marrying him, provoking controversy.
.....
The Congress party is in danger
of being isolated by the handful of parties that were prepared to break
bread with it just before the Gujarat polls. .....
A Pakistani scientist approached
Iraq soon after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait to offer nuclear weapon designs
and help in procuring bomb components, according to a document found by
United Nations weapons inspectors. .....
Three Asian youths hailing from
Pakistan have been sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of murder
of a white teenager in Peterborough, England, soon after the September
11 attacks in the US. .....
Three girl students were shot dead
by militants in Thanamandi area of Rajouri district late last night, just
a day after posters appeared ordering women to wear `burqas'. .....
An Indian government dossier documenting
the growth of Dawood Ibrahim's empire in Pakistan, Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia
and the UAE says D-Company is pumping money into Gujarat to heighten communal
tensions. .....
Two veteran FBI investigators say
they were ordered to stop investigations into a suspected terror cell linked
to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Sept. 11 attacks. .....
It is time the print media started
some rigorous monitoring of editorial content before the State feels compelled
to initiate remedial action. While press freedom is indisputably integral
to a democracy, it should not be misused by undiscerning editors to publish
seditious reports, under incendiary headlines. A leading daily, which prides
itself on its over century old tradition of making and breaking news, committed
a terrible gaffe in its Sunday section (December 15). .....
The conviction of the Delhi University
(DU) lecturer, Syed Abdul Rahman Gilani, in Parliament attack case has
become a major issue in the upcoming Executive Council (EC) and Academic
Council (AC) election. .....
In a bid to check religious fundamentalism,
the Union Government is contemplating to make legislative intervention
to regulate unseemly activities inside places of worship and religious
instructions. .....
The man who wryly calls himself
the media's favourite dartboard, Mr Narendra Modi, made a keen observation
in an interview following the announcement of the Gujarat poll results.
He had been noting, he said, the media spin being given to the landslide
victory he had crafted, in order to denigrate it. .....
The Federation of Indian American
Christian Organizations of North America (FIACONA) is "deeply concerned"
about the outcome of the election results in Gujarat, India over the weekend.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a two third majority in just concluded
elections. The outcome is seen as a major blow to the 'pluralist
democracy' and the future of over 40 million Indian Christians and 130
million other religious minorities living in India. .....
Bangalore, India I made separate
trips from Bangalore recently that revealed, within a span of 48 hours,
two different but related facets of India. Late one night I set out on
a four-hour drive with my mother to the well-lit and orderly town of Puttaparthi
in Andhra Pradesh. .....
Ludwig Wittgenstein, the renowned
Cambridge philosopher and exponent of Logical Positivism, has said that
language is a game with words as tools like the pieces of chess and there
are not any fixed, atomic and simple elements of reality corresponding
to words. .....
Hindus in India are astounded when
they hear that one or another temple in America or England has bought or
rented an unused Christian church. The Church of England has so many unused
facilities that they have a web site, http://england.anglican.org/rcsale/redchhome.html,
to solicit "successful and sympathetic conversions of and uses for redundant
church buildings." Since the 1960s, the Church has put to new use about
1,500 buildings, and has a fairly constant listing of 20 to 25 more available
each year. .....
Bradford's Hindu cultural society
submitted a proposal in mid-2002 to the Bradford City Council to allow
a small stretch of the River Aire at Apperley Bridge to be used for the
scattering of ashes after a traditional Hindu funeral. A spokesman for
the cultural society says, "Most of our community still travel to India
for the purpose. But using the River Aire would allow those who can't afford
it to also scatter ashes." .....
I met with a committed group of
young Hindus, the organizers of the Get Connected 2002 Festival, in Wembley.
These were by no means somber, religious conservatives, but fun-loving,
vital young professionals whose goal is to put the energy and magic back
into religion for the younger generation. .....
Now that the United Nations has
approved a new resolution on Iraq, one with disarmament provisions that
Saddam Hussein apparently accepts, the diplomatic dances between the United
States and its European allies have entered a new phase: the quick, swing-your-strategic-partner
square dance hoped for by the Bush administration has given way to the
sort of elaborate minuet favored in continental capitals. .....
The spring of 2003 will mark the
100th Anniversary of the first arrival of South Indians to Fiji from Chennai.
To commemorate the occasion, the India Sanmarga Ikya Sangam has set aside
a half-acre parcel of land where they plan to build a museum. .....
This goes back to the time when
seventy-five million people of the erstwhile province of East Pakistan
were engaged in a life and death struggle against an army bent on genocide
to preserve the power and privileges of ruling elite hailing from the opposite
end of the subcontinent. Mr. Enayet Karim, a career diplomat in the Pakistani
Foreign Ministry, had just defected from the service in protest against
the genocidal military campaign in East Pakistan. .....
For seven-year-old Shreema, 13th
Jan 2002 was a special Sunday. All through the year, the girl had awaited
the dawn of this day. For, that was the day one goes out and purchases
new clothes, new toys and sweets, as the next day would be Makar Sankranthi
-- the harvest festival celebrated throughout India. The Singicherra Bazar
was bustling with activity. .....
Father Joseph Pallath's hunger
strike to protest against his dismissal by the Jesuit society has inspired
many others in Kerala to speak out against the wrongs of their congregation
leaders. First came the bold statement of the Catholic Priests Conference
of India's Kerala chapter that it would no longer remain silent if its
members' rights are violated. .....
As we began our journey as an independent
nation we were told that our polity would be based on three pillars. First,
that it would be classless. Next, that it would be casteless. Third, that
it would be secular. .....
Everything is lost; tragedy has
struck; the heavens have fallen; after this it could only be the deluge;
God - if there be one - save the country; the BJP under Narendra Modi has
won a thumping two-thirds majority in the elections to the Gujarat Assembly.
.....
December 31, 1999, the last day
of the 20th century, will be remembered as the day on which the Government
of India meekly caved in to terrorist demands. Seated along with three
hardcore terrorists whose proclaimed aim was the disintegration of India,
the then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh travelled to Kandahar,
the spiritual capital of the Taliban, to publicly shake hands with representatives
of that regime and hand over the three terrorists in exchange for passengers
of the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC 814. .....
Oriana Fallaci, her once-famous
face framed by clouds of smoke curling from a black cigarette, is sitting
in her antique-filled Manhattan hide-out, talking about threats against
her life. .....
Despite assurance by the then American
president Richard Nixon to the Congress that the United States does not
"support or condone" Pakistan's military repression in the then East Pakistan
[Bangladesh] in 1971, Washington did nothing to stop genocide, according
to a summary of declassified documents. .....
I wish I could crawl into the head
of British historian Karen Armstrong, whose comments about Islam
and the prophet Muhammad are astonishing. In good conscience, how does
she say the things she does? .....
A civil court has summoned Pakistani
cricket star and ex-captain Wasim Akram for contravening Islamic law by
modelling in a liquor advertisement, court officials said Thursday. .....
While India is the world's most
populous democracy, Israel is the Middle East's most notable. Relations
between democratic countries can be strained on particular issues, but
the underlying strength remains resilient. Judaism and Hinduism are among
the world's ancient civilizations and "root faiths" that have given birth
to other major religions. .....
Hollywood star and reborn Buddhist
Richard Gere on Wednesday evening presented the 'Light of Truth Award'
to the "people of India" for the unparalleled contribution to those displaced
by the Tibetan diaspora. .....
A high alert has been sounded in
Ayodhya in view of reports that Pakistan-based terrorists organisations
might blow up the makeshift Ram Janmabhhomi temple to avenge the victory
of the BJP in Gujarat elections. .....
The outcome in Gujarat clearly
stunned everyone. The winners did not expect this kind of victory and the
losers this kind of defeat. But the voters did. Otherwise, the results
would have been different. Of course, the media pundits and other analysts
would come up with `hazaar' rationalizations for their failure to read
the voter mood right. .....
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
said on Tuesday India has taken a serious view of attacks on minority Hindus
in Bangladesh and asked authorities in Dhaka to guard their safety. .....
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday
described Bangladesh as an "emerging terrorist State along with Pakistan",
and urged the United States to attack Pakistan instead of Iraq. .....
The BJP on Thursday sought withdrawal
of the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to Pakistan as that country was
not extending the same benefit to India. .....
Contact between the East and West
probably began more than 5,000 years ago - 3,000 years earlier than previously
thought, according to Chinese archaeologists. .....
This is not an instance of the
Monday morning quarterback's after-the-fact wisdom. I wrote, in these columns
on March 21, 'The 1995 BJP victory in Gujarat was the harbinger of its
national ascendancy. .....
The release of Masood Azhar, the
head of Jaish-e-Mohammad, by the Lahore High Court from preventive detention
comes a month after the same court released Hafeez Mohammad Saeed, the
chief of the banned terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Toiba. .....
Canadian intelligence officers
believe an Algerian man arrested in the capital Ottawa last week is connected
with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, reports say. .....
Much as I despise Narendra Modi,
I cannot help but be overawed by the BJP's clean sweep of the Gujarat polls
riding on the crest of a Hindutva wave. .....
Shaukat Guru and his wife Navjot
Sandhu alias Afsan Guru, two of the four convicted in the Parliament attack
case, had a tiff before Special Judge S N Dhingra could begin hearing arguments
on the quantum of sentence to be awarded to them. .....
I don't really care for foxhunters.
Despite growing up in the countryside surrounded by foxes, I rarely met
those who kill them for fun. I don't believe their spin about its economic
importance. I am against cruelty to animals, and all things being equal
I would support a ban. .....
Americans are fixated on Iraq,
where they expect the ground to shake with war before long. But in the
process, most are missing the fact that an equally momentous event may
be taking shape next door in Iran, where the ground already is shaking
because of another powerful force: young Iranians. .....
Osama bin Laden has asked America
to stop supporting India in Kashmir in a detailed new message reported
to he circulated among British Muslim terrorists. .....
An English vicar has banned yoga
from his church because he fears the exercise classes could lead participants
on a path to "eastern mysticism", The Telegraph reported today. .....
I don't really care for foxhunters.
Despite growing up in the countryside surrounded by foxes, I rarely met
those who kill them for fun. I don't believe their spin about its economic
importance. I am against cruelty to animals, and all things being equal
I would support a ban. .....
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)
is all set to bring the Ayodhya issue to the centre stage again to
cash in on the Hindutva wave begun in Gujarat. .....
Forget print, go to film. Put together
a handsome documentary with an original musical score that presents Islam's
prophet Muhammad in the most glowing manner, indeed, as a model of perfection.
Round up Muslim and non-Muslim enthusiasts to endorse the nobility and
truth of his message. Splice in vignettes of winsome American Muslims testifying
to the justice and beauty of their Islamic faith. Then get the U.S. taxpayer
to help pay for it. .....
Irrespective of whether Godhra
impacted the result of last week's Gujarat assembly poll, post Godhra happenings
have moved a well-known Muslim scholar of India to facilitate an earthquake
in his community. .....
The Third World War began a decade
ago. We have been losing it because we have failed to comprehend it. The
world is approaching a pinnacle of instability with conflicts in Afghanistan,
southern Asia, West Asia and the Caucasus. To varying extents, all of these
crises have been provoked in the service of a single cause. A common enemy
confronts diverse nations, many of which are antagonistic toward one another,
and some of them are becoming more antagonistic because they fail to grasp
their situation. .....
The Murud-based Maharashtra chief
of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Venkatesh Abdev, said Narendra Modi's
victory in Gujarat need not spell fear for Muslims. .....
Challenging the Tamil Nadu government
legislation banning forceful conversion, Dalit groups had proposed a mass
conversion of 3,000 people on Friday morning. But the much-publicised programme
turned out to be a damp squib as only 40 changed their religion to Buddhism
and Christianity. .....
Hard, cold facts are more important
to Russian President, Vladimir Putin than diplomatic niceties or vague
statements. On the eve of his state visit to India, the Russian leader
told Indian media persons in clear terms that he saw a clear danger in
the likelihood of Pakistan's nuclear arms falling into the hands of Islamic
fundamentalists. Such a happening would have a disastrous consequence not
only in the subcontinent but the entire world, he warned. .....
President Khatami of Iran stoked
growing tensions between the country's hardline judiciary and reformists
yesterday, when he condemned the death sentence imposed on a liberal academic
for criticizing the Islamic faith. .....
Harvard University yesterday cancelled
a reading by Tom Paulin, the Irish poet, after he allegedly said Jewish
settlers born in the US but living in the Israeli-occupied territories
were Nazis who should be "shot dead". .....
Sometimes one small word can tell
us more, than a lengthy speech. Among the many thousands of words which
will be written about the Criminal Justice Bill, I wonder how many will
focus on the fact that we always refer to the criminal justice system rather
than the criminal justice service. .....
A year Ago, Kabul was a bleak,
sad place. No one would dare speak to a foreigner for fear of attracting
the attentions of the police from the Ministry for Promoting Virtue and
Destroying Vice. You could blithely step off the pavement into the street
and would be very unlucky to be knocked down by anything other than a bicycle.
Men and women went from place to place like mice. The silence was rarely
broken. .....
On Friday evening, October 11,
2002, a 20-year-old chemistry student carefully tidied his backpack before
leaving for the city's main shopping mall. On arrival, he cast a quick
glance around before making his way to the local McDonalds's. The place
was full of families enjoying a Friday night out. .....
A Loud crash in the jungle brought
the villagers running. As they dashed to the clearing close to the forest
cave, they found labourers pounding the rock face with hammers, hewing
off chunks of stone to sell for silica. .....
The joke, during the endless presidential
election recounts in Florida two years ago, was that Russia and Albania
would send poll monitors to help the United States with its unexpected
bump on the road to democracy. Now, the joke has become reality. .....
The controversial BCCI had 'questionable'
relationships with officials from all over the world, including India,
a U.S. Senate sub-committee investigating the bank has reported, according
to PTI. .....
For several years now there has
been a concerted effort by certain organisations to malign Hindus and Hindu
organisations. These organisations and individuals are at pains to associate
Hindus with fundamentalism and terrorism. This onslaught has intensified
following the recent riots in Gujarat, with pressure being put on the British
Government, and other agencies like Inter-Faith to ban VHP-UK. It is now
common practice to denounce Hindus whenever and wherever possible. .....
The nightmares that haunted a 24-year-old
mother when she received love notes from a man linked to multiple murders,
abductions and dacoities came true on a November evening when Sultan Mian
descended on the beauty parlour where Kanchan Mishra worked. .....
India's crimebusters can't recall
where they have kept the fingerprints of Dawood Ibrahim's brother but they
have put a finger on his sprawling business interests in Dubai. .....
The Gujarat debacle should prove
to the Congress that bribing the messenger is about as bad as shooting
down the poor fellow. In both cases, the purpose of having a messenger
is defeated. .....
More than three million Muslim
devotees from 52 countries gathered along the bank of the Turag river,
30 kilometres north of Dhaka, at Tongi, Gazipur, for the three-day annual
Biswa Ijtema (World Congregation) between December 14 and 16, 2002. .....
In Gujarat, it was not the Congress
that was pitted against the BJP but the 'secular' media composed of national
dailies with their notional agendas and the Stars for whom even the sky
was not the limit when it came to BJP-bashing or Modi-baiting. The election
results have come as a crushing defeat for them, the true opposition, the
ones who actually fought the battle day in day out and at every nook and
cranny of the beleagured State. .....
Speakers at a Justice and Peace
Commission workshop on democracy and human rights on Sunday did not see
much hope for democracy in a country which was directly or indirectly ruled
by the army and where state institutions were used in the interest of a
privileged few rather than the people at large, reports Dawn. .....
In spite of our government's stepped
up efforts to combat the flow of money to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's
army of terrorists continues to receive the funding it needs to remain
threatening. It has been over a year since 9/11 and only a handful of al
Qaeda's U.S. financial backers have been curtailed. Information about who
funds al Qaeda and how they do so largely remains a mystery. .....
It would be a pointless exercise
to bash the forces of Hindutva without adequately concentrating our gaze
on Islam in India. Part of the "communal" problem today in the country
is a result of the increasing perception in a growing section of the Hindu
urban and rural populace of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. .....
As the Watergate scandal of 1973-1974
diverted attention from the far greater tragedy unfolding in Southeast
Asia, so, too, the scandal of predator-priests now afflicting the Catholic
Church may be covering up a far greater calamity. .....
Archaeologists at world-famous
Taj Mahal in Agra have found a formula to save the marble monument from
the corrosive effects of industrial pollution - Multani mitti, an ancient
face-pack recipe consisting of soil, cereal, milk and lime. .....
While the media spotlight has been
focused on Pakistan and Afghanistan, the rise of Islamic extremism in nearby
Bangladesh has not attracyed sufficient notice. Minority Hindus, Buddhist,
Christians, Tribals, and liberal minded Muslims are under threat as religious
intolerance takes hold following the victory of the Bangladesh National
Party (BNP) in the October 2001 elections. .....
Police today seized a consignment
of explosives from the residence of an army Subedar in Ward No. 1 of the
town while a terrorist was killed in an encounter with army and police
in Surankote tehsil of Poonch district. .....
Now it can be told. Tehelka
Commission was derailed by those who feared that it would soon unravel
their own dirty doings. Fearing exposure of their get-rich-quick
scam in the name of public service journalism, a conspiracy was hatched
to embarrass the Chairman of the Commission, Justice Venkataswami, with
the sole objective of provoking him to quit in a huff. .....
On Dec. 14, B. K. S. Iyengar will
celebrate his 84th birthday the same way he celebrates every day. He will
bend and pull his body into a series of asanas, or postures, that most
men one-fourth his age could not match. .....
If today Narendra Modi unfurls
the banner of victory in Gujarat it will be partly my fault. For I am what
I call a two-rupee liberal. Almost daily I face the two-rupee dilemma,
in the form of two elderly gents who sit on the steps of the pedestrian
subway outside the office. .....
So who's to be believed: India
Today or Outlook? As is well-known, they are competitors for the middle-class
English readership and have their own ideology - or whatever it is they
profess - to sell. The former in its November 25 issue carried the results
of an exclusive poll in Gujarat conducted by Aaj Tak-ORG-MARG on how the
state was likely to vote at the forthcoming Assembly elections. .....
Is Islam an inherently violent
religion? A debate on this subject has received much attention in the United
States. The question is absurd. It is like asking whether Christianity
is a religion of peace. Well, there is Francis of Assisi. And there is
the Thirty Years' War. Which do you choose? .....
During operation Desert Storm a
Christian man was beheaded for his faith by Saudi officials in front of
a group of U.S. soldiers. This unidentified Saudi had been a Muslim and
had converted to the Christian faith. This conversion put him in violation
of Saudi Arabian law. As a consequence he was sentenced to be beheaded
under sharia, the strict Islamic law. .....
As compared to paltry budgets of
Indian intelligence agencies, Pakistan's all-powerful Inter Services Intelligence
(ISI) has billions of dollars at its disposal and a significant contribution
- of $ 1 billion - comes from underworld don Dawood Ibrahim every year.
.....
Mrs. Rabri Devi, the Chief Minister
of Bihar, certainly has a flair for shooting her mouth off when things
get too complicated for her. Instead of showing any sympathy for the family
of the kidnapped victim, the CM, on the first day of the winter session
of the Assembly, said that the BJP MLA Pradeep Das was hiding his nephew
in his own home while fabricating the kidnapping story. .....
It's good to find that Sardar Patel
has re-emerged in the Congress Party's offices, at least in Gujarat. It
will be interesting to know that in the offices of the Deputy Prime Minister
L K Advani and BJP president Venkaiah Naidu, one does not find portraits
of either Shyama Prasad Mookerji or Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, but of Sardar
Patel. .....
Suicide squads are being trained
in Pakistan by al-Qaida operatives to hit targets in Afghanistan and the
bombers' families are being promised $50,000, say Afghan and Pakistani
sources. .....
The Dalit Ethnic Liberation Organisation
(DELO) headed by D.Periyasamy. an erstwhile associate of DPI leader Thirumavalavan,
is organising a programme in Tiruchi on April 13 next year to re-convert
Christians to Hinduism. In a media briefing,he claimed that about
5000 Christians would get converted to Hinduism on the occasion. .....
Last week, I contrasted two official
U.S. responses to news that the Saudi ambassador's wife possibly funded
the 9/11 hijackers: The Bush administration pooh-poohed it, while leading
U.S. senators expressed outrage. I argued that this difference results
from a Saudi-induced "culture of corruption" that pervades the upper reaches
of the executive branch but does not extend to the Congress. .....
The suspected spiritual leader
of Jemaah Islamiah, Abu Bakar Bashir, preached of establishing an Islamic
state in Australia in his sermons to Sydney Muslims. .....
Before handing over to Bangladesh
a demarche on the use of its territory as a launching pad for the ISI's
operations against India, the government collated details of such activity
in that country, based on Intelligence and other sources. .....
Sheikh Hasina Wajed today threatened
to sue the government for linking her New Delhi visit with Indian leaders'
recent comments about ISI and Al-Qaida activities in the country. She dismissing
the charges levelled against her as "total lie". .....
India is likely to serve a demarche
(formal letter) on Dhaka detailing information that was presented in Parliament
by external affairs minister Mr Yashwant Sinha. Due next week, the demarche
would provide details of Al-Qaida operatives and activities in Bangladesh
and assistance provided by it to insurgents in the North- east. .....
The reasons for India's growing
anger and frustration with Bangladesh survive even the fluid morals of
diplomacy. New Delhi has seen Dhaka go from celebrating its liberation
from Islamic/military orthodoxy to first flirting with and now virtually
embracing the same obscurantism. More important, Bangladesh hasn't kept
its rediscovery of militant theocracy to itself. .....
I wonder if the whole report is
based on the kind of evidence I quote from the tribunal report: "It 'appears'
that on its onward journey to Ayodhya, there was an incident at Dahod station
where kar sevaks indulged in vandalism and terrorising of Muslim vendors.
According to another version, the incident took place on the return journey.
There is no clear evidence of the date of the incident but it is clear
that it took place." The basis here, clearly, is not eyewitness accounts,
but pure rumour! .....
Whether Narendra Modi is a criminal
or not is one question. But what are the qualifications of those who accuse
him (Leads From Purgatory, December 2)? It's like the pot calling the kettle
black. When Indira Gandhi was convicted on four electoral malpractices,
her lawyer asked for an unconditional stay in the Supreme Court. .....
The Thomas More Law Center has
filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of New York, the
Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, and another school
official, alleging that the City's policy regarding "Holiday Displays"
unlawfully discriminates against Christians. The lawsuit was filed on behalf
of Andrea Skoros and her two children, elementary school students in the
New York City public school system. .....
The suspense ended on the last
day of China's 16th Communist Party Congress in Beijing when the nine chosen
ones emerged in the Great Hall of the People. Hu Jintao, freshly appointed
general secretary of the party, was leading his eight comrades. China had
a new leadership. Hu's presence was not much of a surprise as the world
knew he had been groomed for years by his mentor and China's last emperor
Jiang Zemin. However, there was speculation about who Hu, the 'grey man
of the party,' really was. .....
One in a series of articles adapted
by Robert Locke from Dr. Serge Trifkovic's new book The Sword of the Prophet:
A Politically-Incorrect Guide to Islam. .....
One is the ordinary situation of
maintaining law and order, where the major allegations about the police
have been those of torture, deaths in police custody etc. In some places
there is also talk of fake encounters with criminals. .....
When one drops mud in water, it's
not the mud that becomes clean, but the water that becomes muddy. This
is the simple lesson that Khaleda Zia may grudgingly be learning after
bomb blasts in four cinemas in Mymensingh claimed more than 20 lives and
left 100 injured. .....
The story behind the US demarche
to India on Afghanistan on behalf of Pakistan gets curiouser and curiouser.
It now seems that Washington, which installed the US-educated Hamid Karzai
in power in Kabul-and knows his writ doesn't run much beyond the Afghan
capital-is said to have made its own enquiries about India's growing presence
in Afghanistan. .....
With the arrest of 14 Bangladeshi
nationals, the North-West District police on Sunday, successfully busted
a gang of dacoits. The Bangladeshi gang used to send the looted money to
Bangladesh through hawala channels. The Bangladeshi nationals were arrested
from Saraswati Vihar area. .....
The United States has approved
military funding for six Iraqi opposition groups, including an Iran-based
organization that maintains close ties to that country's hard-line Islamic
clerical leadership. .....
India and Pakistan are both nuclear
powers. But Pakistan has exported uranium enrichment technology to North
Korea in exchange for missiles, while India has refused to sell nuclear
weapons know-how to any other state. Despite India's consistent record
of honoring international nonproliferation norms, the United States clings
to an increasingly obsolete policy that bans U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation
with New Delhi. .....
Every Tom, Dick, Harry and I too
were given Rs 400 to cover Congress president Sonia Gandhi's rally
here on Sunday. Four crisp Rs 100 bills were packed inside each white envelope
handed to reporters along with the regular publicity material of the Congress,
a writing pad and a pen. .....
Both critics (Mani Shankar Aiyar
in The Indian Express, November 26) of and commentators on Deputy Prime
Minister L K Advani's recent speech in Parliament on Gujarat are missing
the point when they assume that there's something new in his statement.
Advani is credited with having said that India will never be a ''Hindu
Rashtra'' when the text of his speech shows that he didn't use those words
anywhere. .....
With or without dialogue, an India-Pakistan
rapproachment is not in sight: the prospect is one of cold peace while
General Pervez Musharraf remains at the helm in Islamabad. .....
A new militant outfit called 'Hindu
Liberation Army of Assam' (HLAA), have been formed somewhere here in Sonitpur
district in order to protect the Hindu community from the increasing activities
of Pakistan Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and other Islamic militant
outfits. .....
The State-level conference of the
Jamatia Hoda, the highest body of the community, has decided to ban payment
of all kind of tax to the militants. They also decided to carry on the
struggle against the insurgents, specially against the National Liberation
Front of Tripura, who are interfering with the religious and social affairs
of the community. .....
For centuries, young men have gathered
at Islamic seminaries to escape Western influences and quietly study Islamic
texts that have been handed down unchanged through the ages. But over the
last two decades, revolution, Great Power politics, and poverty have combined
to give the fundamentalist teachings at some of these Madrasas a violent
twist. And now, in one of globalization's deadlier ironies, these "universities
of jihad" are spreading their medieval theology worldwide. .....
What is called paganism, heathenism,
and polytheism is in fact the Natural religion of humanity. In areas where
it has survived the onslaught of anti-human ideologies with their ego gods,
it has retained its self-respecting name. In Japan it is Shinto, in Taiwan
Confucianism And Taoism, and in India as Hinduism. .....
In our work with children, women
and men from the villages, and young people who teach in the schools and
outside, the Society for Integrated Development of the Himalayas (SIDH)
has learnt some important lessons. We have been compelled to address fundamental
questions of 'who is education ultimately serving' or 'what is education'.
.....
In October 1931 Mahatma Gandhi
made a statement at Chatham House, London, that created a furore in the
English press. He said, "Today India is more illiterate than it was fifty
or a hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators,
when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were,
began to root them out. They scratched the soil and left the root exposed
and the beautiful tree perished". .....
One in a series of articles adapted
by Robert Locke from Dr. Serge Trifkovic's new book The Sword of the Prophet:
A Politically-Incorrect Guide to Islam. .....
Last week's federal raid of a Massachusetts
software firm raises many questions about U.S. security - not least about
our "allies" in Saudi Arabia. .....
Beginning Dec. 9, the Communist
Chinese general who threatened to incinerate Los Angeles with nuclear weapons
will visit Washington D.C. Gen. Xiong Guangkai, the People's Republic of
China's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, has been absent from the
Washington scene since the Clinton era. .....
Persuaded by its faithful friend
and ally Pakistan, the United States has recently issued a demarche to
India, suggesting that New Delhi go slow on its political and reconstruction
activities in Afghanistan because these were, in turn, having an adverse
impact on a weakened President Musharraf in Islamabad. .....
In the midst of rising tensions
with India over the issue of cross- border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir,
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan
Jamali and leaders of Pak-based terrorist groups have vowed to continue
with their pro- active Kashmir policy. .....
Is Islam an inherently violent
religion? A debate on this subject has received much attention in the United
States. The question is absurd. It is like asking whether Christianity
is a religion of peace. Well, there is Francis of Assisi. And there is
the Thirty Years' War. Which do you choose? .....
In his recent writings on NRO (here
and here) and elsewhere, and in his new book, The Two Faces of Islam,
Stephen Schwartz appropriately draws the attention of policymakers and
the public at large to the dangerous, unsavory interactions between the
Saudi royal family, Wahhabi Islam, and international terrorism. .....
Strange though it may sound, Mufti
Mohammed Sayeed himself has come to be in a siege. His much publicised
but controversial programme of releasing some of those in jail, a promise
which helped him come to power, is being severely tested. The day he released
Yaseen Malik the separatist leader shouted severe condemnation of Mufti,
even questioning his representative capacity and challenging him to fight
an election against him. .....
One in five British Muslims feels
little loyalty towards Britain. A minority of them are also not prepared
to condemn the terrorist attacks carried out by Osama bin Laden nor acknowledge
Al-Qaeda as the perpetrators. .....
It is gratifying to see Hindustan
Times coming out strongly with an editorial condemning the communal riots
in Nigeria and the threat of murder held out against a journalist in that
country (One- dimensional man, November 28). .....
Rajeev Vora, 54, was born in Anjaar,
Kutch, into a family of staunch Gandhians. After studying in Gujarat he
joined Jayaprakash Narayan's movement in Bihar and became convener of the
Bihar Satyagraha Sanchalan Samiti. During the Emergency he went to jail
along with other Gandhian leaders. .....
As a disclaimer I want to say that
I dont know anyone from IDRF and haven't donated a single penny to it.
The kind of work they do doesn't even inspire me much, as I have entirely
different concept of charity/development work. But the above report does
make me rise to their defense for them getting labeled as hate/terror funding
organization. .....
If knowledgeable al Qaeda sources
are to be believed, the Saudi government seized an al Qaeda terrorist
mastermind and placed him in their custody, only to abruptly and illogically
release him in mid-1999. Now, that individual, Abu Asim Al-Makki (a.k.a.
Muhammad Hamdi Al-Ahdal, Muhammad al-Hamati), is figuring prominently in
the investigations of multiple terrorist attacks attributed to al Qaeda,
including both the suicide-bombing of the USS Cole and the recent copycat
terror attack on the French supertanker Limburg. .....
Even 48 hours after a terrorist
outfit - operating from Bangladesh, remote controlled by the ISI - threatened
to liquidate a host of dignitaries including the State Governor Biren J
Shah, the State police appeared clueless regarding the whereabouts of the
senders of the threatening letter to the State BJP office. .....
The CPI-M may believe it can 'reform'
the corrupt amidst its ranks by holding classes on Marxist-Leninist ideology,
but some comrades in the heart of the city believe that classes of any
kind just can't stem the rot. And they are voting with their feet. .....
This article by Dr. Walid, a top
scholar at the Islamic University, exposes our so-called secular Indian
Muslims. By the doctrine of Al-Taqiyah, Muslims dominate crime syndicates,
increase population by massive Bangladeshi infiltration and make temporary
alliances with Dalits, Christians, etc. .....
It has been reported that a broad-based
platform comprising 65 Dalit organisations, religious minority fora and
civil rights groups has decided to take their opposition to the anti-conversion
law to a higher political platform. So they also want to rope in the Left
parties. Each of these in its own perception seeks political gains out
of the whole opposition strategy. .....
Jihad can mean striving to be a
better Muslim. The most common meaning, however, is fighting for Allah.
In this sense Jihad is the struggle for the cause of spreading Islam, using
all means available to Muslims, including force. This kind of Jihad is
often referred to as "Holy War." .....
The ruling four-party alliance,
led by the Prime Minister, Begum Khaleda Zia, has launched a campaign to
try the Leader of the Opposition, Sheikh Hasina, who has just returned
from India, for her alleged "remarks against the country". .....
I always like the bit in the Bond
movie where 007 and the supervillain meet face to face - usually at the
supervillain's marine research facility or golf course or, in this latest
picture, his Icelandic diamond mine. Bond knows the alleged marine biologist
is, in fact, an evil mastermind bent on world domination. .....
The cynical use of two young boys
dressed as suicide bombers with cardboard cut-out dynamite sticks strapped
to their chests to lead a march in support of the Palestinian cause through
the streets of Cape Town, has sent shockwaves around the country. .....
The Lieutenant Governor of Pondicherry,
K.R. Malkani, today claimed that a committee appointed by the Congress
in 1931 had recommended that the colour of the flag of independent India
should be saffron. .....
Speaking to the Democratic Leadership
Council recently, former President Bill Clinton advised fellow Democrats
to boost the war with al-Qaeda but downplay the war with Iraq. From a military
standpoint this strategy is akin to saying that the way to get rid of wasps
is to ignore the nest and chase each wasp individually. .....
Some years ago a seminar was held
at a conference for Christian doctors, and about 30 were each asked their
opinion on whether doctors should evangelise their patients. 25 of them
thought that we should not. .....
After Neem, turmeric and jamun,
now it is cow's urine, traditionally used for medicinal purposes in India,
which has been patented in the United States as a distilled bio-enhancer.
.....
Muslims since the events of September
11. Other than initial condemnations of the attacks by prominent Islamic
scholars in the Middle East and in the West, many Muslims appear to have
acquiesced in the hijacking of their religion by extremists like Osama
bin Laden. .....
The well-oiled Saudi PR machine
chugged into action this week with foreign-policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir
at the helm. "For too long Saudi Arabia has been wrongly accused of being
uncooperative or ineffective in combating terrorism," al-Jubeir proclaimed
to an audience of newsmen at the Saudi embassy, "the unfounded charges
against Saudi Arabia have gotten out of control." .....
If knowledgeable al Qaeda sources
are to be believed, the Saudi government seized an al Qaeda terrorist
mastermind and placed him in their custody, only to abruptly and illogically
release him in mid-1999. Now, that individual, Abu Asim Al-Makki (a.k.a.
Muhammad Hamdi Al-Ahdal, Muhammad al-Hamati), is figuring prominently in
the investigations of multiple terrorist attacks attributed to al Qaeda,
including both the suicide-bombing of the USS Cole and the recent copycat
terror attack on the French supertanker Limburg. .....
Russian security officials suspect
that the Chechens who seized a Moscow theatre in October had wealthy Arab
sponsors in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states and have sought Washington's
support in finding the financiers. .....
Pakistan is apparently becoming
even more of an 'epicentre' of terrorism than before. For one thing, Russian
President Vladimir Putin has articulated what is probably widely feared
in all the world capitals - Pakistan's nuclear arms falling into the hands
of terrorists. .....
A few months ago the Bihar Public
Service Commission (BPSC) caused a flutter with its pro-Laloo and anti-BJP
questions in the mains examinations. Apparently no lessons were learnt
and, on Tuesday, students appearing for Class VIII examinations ran into
another Laloo panegyric in their Hindi test. .....
The government has compiled and
published, probably for the first time, a comprehensive report on cross-border
terrorism perpetuated by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence through
various terrorist outfits in Jammu and Kashmir. .....
The Iranian news agency, IRNA,
reported that the Shahi Imam Syed Abdullah Bukhari had addressed Muslims
in Delhi's (India) congregational mosque on Friday November 29, 2002, the
last Friday of the Muslims holy month of Ramadan, known as international
Quds day. In his sermon, Imam Bukhari said "The US, the Zionist regime
[Israel], and the United Kingdom will be defeated and expelled to hell
and the liberation of Palestine is as certain as the shining of the sun
in the sky at midday". .....
The Leader of the Opposition in
Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, said today that a ``series of attacks'' against
the minority community had swept her country after the October 1, 2002,
election in which the Awami League lost power. Delivering the Sixth Dinesh
Singh Memorial lecture, she said the BNP Government had let loose a reign
of terror in Bangladesh. .....
Few countries have improved their
standing in American eyes as dramatically as Pakistan has in the past two
years. Long shunned by Washington for its links to terrorism, its nuclear
weapons program and autocratic military rule, Pakistan became a valued
ally, mainly by abandoning its support of the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan
after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. .....
Like former West Pakistan (now
known as "Pakistan"), former East Pakistan, now known as Bangladesh, was
created in 1947 out of British India only to appease Muslim League leader
Mohammad Ali Jinnah. .....
The Special Task Force of Uttar
Pradesh Police and the Central intelligence agencies unravelled an ISI
plot to recruit fanatic Muslim boys from Uttar Pradesh for terror acts
in various European countries. .....
The present global village has
forced even the European countries to form a Union to survive, while we
are trying our best to destroy the beautiful well-knit country into bits
and pieces, as if the previous invaders had not done enough to damage the
Indian culture. .....
The discovery of long-forgotten
underwater settlements off the coast of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu by
American marine archaeologists has pushed the antiquity of civilisation
in South India by a few millennia and showed a link with Vedic civilisation.
.....
I find it shameful that in Italy
there should be a procession of individuals dressed as suicide bombers
who spew vile abuse at Israel, hold up photographs of Israeli leaders on
whose foreheads they have drawn the swastika, incite people to hate the
Jews. And who, in order to see Jews once again in the extermination camps,
in the gas chambers, in the ovens of Dachau and Mauthausen and Buchenwald
and Bergen-Belsen et cetera, would sell their own mother to a harem. .....
Despite the recent attack by suspected
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) terrorists on Hindu pilgrims in a temple in Gandhinagar
and periodic reports of the activities of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) in its territory, Gujarat is not yet a terrorism-affected State.
.....
Geologists in India say they have
found an elephant fossil in the Thar desert of Rajasthan, supporting earlier
theories that the vast desert was once a fertile area. .....
Despite Pakistan's support for
the U.S.-led war against terrorism and President Bush's public expressions
of support for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, U.S. diplomats and
other officials are increasingly dissatisfied with Islamabad, which they
say is complicating the antiterrorism effort and straining a crucial alliance.
.....
Recently there has been a flood
of articles demonizing Narendra Modi - the Chief Minister of Gujarat. The
main thrust of such articles is that the Chief Minister Modi and the Gujarat
government stood by when the Muslims were being killed in the aftermath
of Godhra train episode where 58 Hindu pilgrims were burnt to death. .....
It came as a surprise, even by
Bihar's lawless standards. Sultan Mia, a gangster with political connections,
abducted a married woman, Kanchan Mishra, with her four-year-old child
in broad daylight in the heart of Patna and forced her to marry him. The
woman's only fault: her beauty. .....
Southern Dalits consider Tamil
Nadu the home of the anti-Brahmin movement, where non-Brahmins dislodged
the upper caste from power and drove them out of the countryside. E Ramaswami
Nicker Periyar is considered the ideological architect of that "great"
game. But in the northern Dalits' consciousness, Periyar's stature is only
next to Dr Ambedkar. .....
Pakistani ISI agent, Abdul Kasim
of Bangladesh, who was arrested in Rajasthan recently and brought to Assam
after he was taken to West Bengal, had recruited an ULFA cadre from Nagaon,
Prabin Das, who is currently under police custody, as the in-charge of
ISI activities in Assam and the North-east. .....
A day after Bangladesh again denied
the existence of militant bases on its soil, the Border Security Force
(BSF) revealed plans to create an "eastern theatre" with 31 additional
companies exclusively for deployment along the Indo-Bangladesh border.
.....
The Foreign Office's decision to
go public with its sharp criticism of Bangladesh reflects a growing pessimism
here about bilateral relations with its important eastern neighbour. After
waiting nearly a year to see if the Khaleda Zia Government is prepared
to demonstrate a measure of good faith, New Delhi appears close to giving
up on Dhaka. .....
The Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister,
Digvijay Singh, has written to the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee,
urging an immediate ``ban on two controversial books titled `Ramayan ke
Mahapatra' and `Mahabharat ke Mahapatra'' published from Lucknow. .....
Nearly a decade ago, the Long Island
Muslim Society bought two small houses on a busy street in East Meadow
and began holding prayer services there. Now the Islamic group of about
40 families, mostly of Bangladeshi origin, wants to tear down the houses
and build a new mosque and school in their place. .....
With Israeli and American authorities
casting suspicion on al-Qaida or its allies, Kenyan authorities investigating
the twin assaults on Israeli targets there focused quickly on foreign suspects,
reporting Friday they had arrested six Pakistanis, four Somalis, an American
and a Spaniard. .....
Mir Zafrullah Khan Jamali, the
58-year-old Baloch politician has pledged to continue President Pervez
Musharraf's foreign and economic policies. Within the first few days of
his new government taking office, that is already proving extremely difficult
especially in the realm of foreign policy. The self-effacing Jamali faces
a fractured ruling coalition and the most aggressive anti-military opposition
in the country's parliamentary history. .....
For two long years women in West
Bengal's North 24 Pargana's district were terrorised by a group of men
allegedly affiliated to the two main political parties in the state, the
CPI (M) and Trinamool Congress. .....
Several Australian kindergartens
have banned Santa Claus this Christmas for fear that he may offend minority
groups, the Herald-Sun newspaper said today. .....
The FBI has organized some former
Pakistani army officers and others into a band known as the "Spider Group"
to locate Taliban and al Qaeda fugitives hiding in tribal areas along the
Afghanistan border. .....
It is sad but true that movements
launched by various organisations in the name of championing the cause
of Indian Muslims have in fact not only kept them in a closed society but
also have caused tremendous harm to them. .....
Interested in knowing more about
"The Rug Producing Bazaaris of the Holy City of Qum"? Curious about the
"Ceramic Production & Consumption in Almohad Seville"? Fascinated by
the latest scholarship on "Changes in Religious Celebrations among Moroccan
Immigrant Women in the Netherlands"? .....
The careful study of a bulky register
of a guesthouse in Godhra has added an entirely new dimension to the investigation
into the Godhra carnage. The new findings led to the arrest of Ali Mohammad
and Ghulam Nabi Dingoo of Anantnag district in Jammu and Kashmir in the
last week of October. .....
On November 15, 2002, a new a post-Revolution
generation of younger leaders assumed the reins of power of the Communist
Party of China (CPC) and 59-year old Hu Jintao, currently vice-President,
took over the party's secretaryship from his mentor and long-time leader
(1989-2002) Jiang Zemin. .....
This is being recorded barely an
hour after the first reports started coming in of a car bomb explosion
outside an Israeli-owned hotel 27 kms from Mombasa in Kenya causing a large
number of casualties, some of them reportedly fatal, and an abortive attempt
to bring down a chartered Israeli plane carrying Israeli tourists returning
home from Mombasa by firing two missiles at it from the ground. .....
The French police have arrested
a Pakistani man who is allegedly the head of the French operations of terrorist
group Lashker-e-Taiba that has reportedly been involved in several terror
attacks in India. .....
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir
Mohamad said the Government suspended funds to Sekolah Agama Rakyat temporarily
as it does not want to see the creation of society with Muslims knowledgeable
in religious matters only. .....
A Christian research organization
has decried what it called the "disturbing trend" of media and politicians
to blame those who arouse Muslim violence, rather than those who actually
carry out that violence. .....
The Communist Party of India, Marxist
Leninist Liberation, will honour the kin of about 1000 Naxalites, known
as 'comrade martyrs', from Bihar who have been killed over the last three
decades of the peasant struggle. The ceremony will take place in Patna
on November 30, the final day of the seventh party congress. .....
Below, Matt Cherry, executive director
of the Council for Secular Humanism, interviews Christopher Hitchens about
his book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice
(Verso, 1995) and his television program, which strongly criticized Mother
Teresa. The interview recapitulates the most devastating critiques of Mother
Teresa ever made. It also gives a very telling account by a leading journalist
into the U.S. media's great reluctance to criticize religion and religious
leaders. .....
Mohammed's decision to relocate
his new movement from Mecca to Medina presented an economic challenge.
He had to find a method of supporting himself and his followers that would
also provide an adequate base to finance the ever- increasing demands of
the Muslim movement. The traditional method for acquiring wealth among
the Arabs at the time was attacking other tribes and seizing their possessions.
Muslims living in Medina found no easier way than doing that. They started
to make raids (Ghaswa) on other tribes and passing caravans. .....
He is asking for your hand in marriage,
and you have fallen in love with his bronze Middle Eastern complexion.
He is intelligent, rich, well-educated and well-mannered. So, what more
can a woman ask for?...THIS MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELOR IS ALSO A MUSLIM! .....
