Comment by Riaz Haq on March 8, 2018 at 9:02am

We don’t have to fear that Pakistan will split up India – we’ll do it ourselves
March 8, 2018, 3:43 PM IST Jug Suraiya in Juggle-Bandhi

https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/jugglebandhi/we-dont-have...

One of the main obstacles to finding a lasting solution to the ‘Kashmir problem’, as it’s long been tagged, is that India fears that the Pakistani demand for an ‘azad Kashmir’ is only Islamabad’s first move in its ultimate aim at balkanising India, splitting it into small states the way it was before Independence.

This suspicion of Pakistani ‘salami tactics’ of slicing up India is what makes New Delhi even more wary than it would otherwise have been of granting any further concessions regarding greater autonomy for Kashmir.

Indeed, ever since India and Pakistan were created, Islamabad has always wanted to split up India. This resolve has been strengthened after 1971, and the transformation of East Pakistan into Bangladesh, which would not have happened without India’s help.
But despite this we shouldn’t really fear Pakistan’s designs of splitting us up. For the simple reason that we’re increasingly likely to do this ourselves, without external intervention.

Even as the saffron right wing espouses a Hindu-Hindi supra-nationalism, an equal an opposite force of sub-nationalism, or regionalism, has gained greater force and stridency.

Following the exposure of the PNB scam, yet another parliamentary log jam was created, with the opposition assailing the NDA government about the Rs 12,000 crore fraud, and the treasury benches retaliating by flank attacking the Congress by bringing up the charges of bribery levelled against the son of the former finance minister, P Chidambaram.

Meanwhile, Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP has threatened to walk out of its alliance with the NDA as its demands for a special status for Andhra have not been met, as promised.

Another increasingly restive ally of the BJP, the Shiv Sena, added to the din in Parliament by demanding classical status for the Marathi language.

The revived talk about forming a non-Congress, anti-BJP ‘Third Front’ to fight the 2019 general elections will further strengthen the growing assertion of regionalism.

With the prime minister more busy on whirlwind campaigning tours of the country, it’s anyone’s guess as to who, and how, India is being run.

Pakistan should be pleased. It seems to have been relieved of the chore of balkanising us, a task which we appear to have taken up for ourselves. Jai Hind. Or, Jai many Hinds?

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 12, 2018 at 4:54pm

Study: One in two #Indian #Muslims fears being falsely accused in #terrorism cases. #Modi #Hindutva #Islamophobia

https://theprint.in/governance/one-in-two-indian-muslims-fears-bein...

A survey by NGO Common Cause and Lokniti shows Adivasis are most afraid of being framed for Maoist activities, while Dalits are afraid of being falsely accused of petty thefts.

New Delhi: The sense of being discriminated against by police is strongest among Muslims, especially those in Bihar, said a study that seeks to analyse the perception about police along state and community lines.

The survey was carried out by NGO Common Cause and Lokniti, a research initiative of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), among 15,563 respondents across 22 states in June and July 2017.

“Among the total number of respondents, 26 per cent of Muslims were of the view that police discriminated on the basis of religion, while less than 18 per cent of Hindus and 16 per cent of Sikhs thought the same,” the report added.

The researchers also discovered that as many as 44 per cent of Indians were fearful of being beaten up by police, a finding reported by ThePrint Monday in the first of its series of reports on the study.

According to the survey, over 47 per cent of Muslims across the country said they feared being falsely accused of terrorist activities. Trying to explain the perception, the researchers cited the “large proportion” of Muslims in the country’s jails. This sentiment was said to be most widely prevalent in Telangana.

The percentage of Muslims in jails is higher than the community’s share in the population of India, a fact, critics said, that stems from an alleged “systemic bias” against them.

The 2011 census pegged the Muslim population at 14.23 per cent; and, in 2014, the government told Rajya Sabha that people from the community comprised 16.68 per cent of convicts and 21.05 per cent of undertrials.

What Adivasis and Dalits fear
The report suggested a similar fear among the Scheduled Tribes (Adivasis) and the Scheduled Castes (Dalits). According to the survey, 27 per cent of the Adivasis said they feared being framed for anti-state Maoist activities, while 35 per cent of Dalits held a similar fear regarding petty thefts.

“Nearly two in every five… respondents said police falsely implicated members of backward castes such as Dalits in petty crimes including theft, robbery, dacoity,” the report said.

“One in four… was of the opinion that such a false implication of Adivasis and Muslims did occur,” it added.

The results of the survey also suggested a perception that caste-based discrimination among police personnel was most prevalent in Bihar, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.

It said people were more likely to report class-based discriminatory attitudes of police, followed by gender- and caste-based discrimination.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 13, 2018 at 4:42pm

What were we smoking then?

Pritish Nandy

1 August, 2018

We’ve voted to power people who believe intellectuals must be shot, minorities packed off, and Dalits and farmers don’t count for anything. Will we make the same choice in 2019?

 

https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/pritish-nand...

 

 

Last Thursday, a BJP MLA from Karnataka, Basanagouda Patil Yatnal declared at a Kargil Vijay Diwas function that India was facing a grave danger from within, from its intellectuals and liberals who were nothing but a drain on the State. They were all, he said, anti-nationals and had he been the home minister, he would tell the police to line them up and shoot them.

 

Luckily, he is not. But, well, four intellectuals, including journalist Gauri Lankesh, have already been shot dead in Karnataka and neighboring Maharashtra. No, not by the police but by hired assassins — hired by those who, I presume, think like Yatnal. All of these four were respected figures — and five others are currently living under police protection in Karnataka because it is believed they could be the next targets.

 

Yatnal is the same guy who had said earlier, in a viral video, that his party corporators will not work for Muslims, that burkha-clad women and men who wear skull-caps should not follow him around. For he will only work for Hindus. He is not alone. We have heard similar views from some others in his party who see thinking people, liberals, seculars, minorities, farmers, Dalits and tribals and women as their enemy, people to be put down. They may say it in different ways but it is clear that such people offend them, as also do those who speak the language of modern science. For them, these are The Others — and they must be taught a lesson in nationalism.

 

They want to change the textbooks, too. If they had their way, the Mughal period would vanish from our history. So would the British rule. In Rajasthan’s class X textbooks, students are being taught that Maharana Pratap won the battle of Haldighati, while others elsewhere learn that he lost to Akbar’s army. Akbar himself has been erased from Rajasthan’s textbooks, where he was once extolled as a great Mughal emperor. Another leader fighting for his existence is Tipu Sultan who died fighting the British. He has been designated a villain, black as black can be, and every attempt is now being made to wipe out his legacy.

 

But it’s not just the history books. They also disapprove of Darwin. The junior minister of HRD, the ministry in charge of the schools and colleges where our children study, has sworn to take Darwin’s theory of human evolution off textbooks because he claims “nobody, including our ancestors, in written or oral, have said they saw an ape turning into a man”. (I presume the next target will be Einstein for, by the same logic, no one has actually seen ‘e’ become ‘mc’ squared.) But Satyapal Singh, a former top cop who often boasts he is the most educated man in the ministry, is not alone. There are many more in his party who are in a tearing hurry. They are in a hurry to change our Constitution. They are in a hurry to pack off Muslims to Pakistan — and, now, Bangladesh. They are in a hurry to stop all inter-caste, inter-faith marriages. They are in a hurry to stop Dalits from going horse-back to their weddings. They are in a hurry to take the Mahatma off the pedestal and replace him with his assassins.

 

We even have a governor in Tripura who described the killing of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 as positive action. The chief minister of Tripura is no less. He has advised the youth of his state not run after government jobs but to stay at home and milk cows or open paan shops. He wants only civil engineers in the civil service for their qualifications match the job.

 

As we get closer to the 2019 election, I am sure the rhetoric will become louder, coarser, more provocative because there’s no one to stop it. Interestingly, the allies of the ruling faction — the few that still remain — are quietly distancing themselves. But the problem is the rules of the game have changed. Everyone’s looking for money to fight the coming elections and, as we all know, money is always with the ruling dispensation. So unless the Opposition gets its act together, both in terms of political alignments and in terms of resources, they will get outmanoeuvred if not in the hustings, then in the post-election scenario when horse trading begins in full earnest.

 

Iwonder why the BJP is so keen to enlarge its pantheon of hate. Some of its leaders want liberals shot, seculars banished. Intellectuals are, for them, antinationals. Muslims are terrorists. Farmers are a constant drain on the economy. So their lands must be grabbed for development — for bullet trains and highways. Activists fighting for tribal rights are all Maoists. Environmentalists are enemies of progress because they disapprove of forests being cut, mangroves being uprooted, rivers being dammed. Journalists are presstitutes. NGOs are funded by global forces inimical to India. Science is the adversary of faith.

 

So, unless you believe Sanjaya watched TV while describing the battle of Kurukshetra to the blind Dhritarashtra or that there was once a golden era of prehistoric India where groundbreaking plastic surgeries that defy imagination were performed, supersonic jets whizzed across the skies and we travelled in intergalactic vehicles far advanced than what Elon Musk is imagining, you are not a nationalist. Of course, the earth is also flat and unless you push all disbelievers off the edge, we will never quite figure why India shines despite its rapes and lynchings and the murder of rationalists.

 

For a nation that has birthed some of the greatest artistic and scientific minds of our time, this must be a bit rich. But then, we have voted these guys into power. I have no idea what we were smoking then but it is perhaps time to switch over to something less potent — even if that drops our GDP a bit and brings our stock market back to terra firma. Perhaps a lesser, safer, saner India may not be such a bad idea after all.

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 14, 2019 at 10:10pm

#WaPo Must Accept #CIA Role in #Pakistan #Polio Crisis. #CIA used #health workers as spies, destroying decades of trust-building by international aid organizations in Pakistan. Stop finger-wagging at those subjected to the cynical ruse for being ignorant.
http://bit.ly/2Hiky2g

If the last three years have taught us anything, it’s that it’s much easier to blame “fake news” than to look in the mirror and see how one’s own country, and their powerful institutions, may bear responsibility for a social ill. This jingoistic narcissism is on full display in a Washington Post editorial (5/10/19) that blamed a recent upsurge in polio in Pakistan on “guns, fear and fake news”—while ignoring the CIA’s central role in the crisis entirely.

The editorial, “The World Is Close to Conquering Polio. Humans Are Holding Us Back,” started off naming the Official Oriental bad guys:

The world’s long and ambitious quest to conquer polio has come tantalizingly close to success, only to slip away because of unforgivable behavior by thugs and exponents of ignorance.

The “thugs” named by the Post are “hard-line Islamist forces,” fueled by nebulous “social media.” While no doubt Islamist forces and their ability to communicate amongst themselves contribute to the problem, the other party primarily responsible for the recent surge in anti-vax sentiment in Pakistan—the US Central Intelligence Agency—is notably unmentioned.

Reading the scolding editorial, one would never imagine that anti-polio efforts in Pakistan (as well as Afghanistan), according to numerous reports—including the New York Times (4/29/19) last month—have been severely undermined by the 2011 revelation (Guardian, 7/11/11) of a secret ruse cooked up by the CIA to use a hepatitis B vaccine drive to gather DNA in an effort to track the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden (efforts, it’s worth nothing, that didn’t actually help in finding bin Laden).

Not only did the vaccine drive have an ulterior motive, it wasn’t even a real vaccine drive. While the hepatitis vaccine doses themselves were real, the undercover CIA operators administering them did not return a month after the first dose to give the necessary second inoculation, rendering the whole process inert—meaning that the rural Pakistanis who were promised immunization were lied to, and left vulnerable to a life-threatening disease.

After the revelation, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) harshly criticized the CIA ruse, with MSF’s international president Unni Karunakara telling the Guardian (7/14/11):

The risk is that vulnerable communities—anywhere—needing access to essential health services will understandably question the true motivation of medical workers and humanitarian aid….The potential consequence is that even basic healthcare, including vaccination, does not reach those who need it most.

Indeed, this is exactly what has happened. As the New York Times (4/29/19) reported last month:

The fact that the CIA used a vaccination team to track down Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani town in 2011 has helped fuel the resistance to vaccination campaigns in the country.

An earlier Washington Post report (3/4/19) from March about the rise of anti-vax sentiment in Pakistan, by Pamela Constable and Haq Nawaz Khan, also conspicuously failed to mention the CIA’s role in creating the crisis. Instead, the 1,150-word dispatch linked to an article that did mention it, but the hyperlinked text dismissed it as “tales of foreign plots,” without noting that it was a very real foreign plot that the Pentagon itself has admitted to.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 5, 2019 at 10:35am

Abrogation of #Indian Constitution's Article 370 on #Indian Occupied #Kashmir by #Modi: It’s the beginning of disintegration of #India, says Former Union Home Minister of India P. Chidambaram. #BJP https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article-370-its-the-beginnin...

‘Every State in the country could be dismembered like Jammu and Kashmir’
Senior Congress leader and former Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram on Monday said the government move to amend Article 370 was “the beginning of the disintegration of India if the current government continues to be in charge.”

Monday was the worst day in the constitutional history and “the idea of India as a union of States is in grave danger,” he said at a press conference. Though he anticipated a misadventure, he didn't expect this 'catastrophic decision'.

“What they have done is a constitutional monstrosity. People of India, people of every State must wake up to the grave danger that was set as an example today by these completely unconstitutional and illegal resolutions. I want to warn every party, every State, every citizen of India that the idea of India as a union of States is in grave danger,” he said.


Mr. Chidambaram accused the government of “dismembering” Jammu and Kashmir, and claimed that every State in the country could be similarly dismembered. “They can dismember every State and break it up. This is the beginning of the disintegration of India. I am sorry to use such strong words but this is the worst day in the constitutional history of India.” 

“All that they have to do is to dismiss the elected government, impose President's rule, dissolve the elected Assemblies, the Parliament takes the power of the State Assembly, the government moves a resolution and Parliament approves it and the State can be broken up,” said Mr. Chidambaram, who is also a noted constitutional lawyer.

“What have they done. They dismembered the State of Jammu and Kashmir by mischievously interpreting both Article 3 and Article 370 of the Constitution. If this can be done in J&K, then let me caution you that it can be done to every other State. Every State can be broken up into two or three or more Union Territories by mischievously misinterpreting Article 3 and Article 370 and they won't stop at that,” he said.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 1, 2021 at 7:34am

#India's #Maharashtra state ruling party Shiv Sena's warning to #Modi: “If the Central government does not realise that they are harming people for political gains, it will not take much time for States in our country to break away like the Soviet Union" https://frontline.thehindu.com/dispatches/shiv-sena-questions-credi...


Relations between the Centre and Maharashtra have been on a slow decline for a while. But, on December 27, Saamna, the Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece, carried a more-than-usual vitriolic attack on the Centre in its editorial, saying that the way the Central government was running the country could result in States breaking away, as it happened in the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The editorial said: “If the Central government does not realise that they are harming people for political gains, it will not take much time for States in our country to break away like the Soviet Union. The year 2020 has to be looked at, creating a question mark on the capacity and credibility of the central government.”

The editorial expressed disapproval at the manipulations of the Centre in the politics of the States. It said that Kailash Vijayvargiya, national general secretary, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had disclosed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made a determined attempt to destabilise the Kamal Nath-led Congress government in Madhya Pradesh. Commenting on this, Saamna said: “What if our Prime Minister is taking a special interest in destabilising State governments? The Prime Minister belongs to the country. The country stands as a federation. Even the States which do not have BJP governments, those States also talk about national interest. This feeling is being killed.”

The editorial pointed a finger at the Centre, saying the same tactics were being used to try and overthrow the Trinamool Congress’ Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal. “Political defeats in a democracy are very common,” the editorial censoriously said, “but the way Central government is being used to oust Mamata Banerjee is painful.”

With its typical brand of anger and sarcasm, the editorial pointed out the hypocrisies of the Centre. “Large-scale rallies and roadshows are going on and the country’s Home Minister is leading it. At the same time, night curfew is required in States like Maharashtra to avoid congestion in the context of coronavirus. The rulers break the rules and the public has to pay.” Another example of such hypocrisy, it said, was the manner in which the Modi government had overextended itself to help Republic TV’s Arnab Goswami and the actress Kangana Ranaut recently.

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 30, 2021 at 9:11am

Connect the Dots from Doval and Rawat to Arun Mishra and a Disturbing Picture Emerges
Not only these three statements, but several other actions by the highest in the land as also by the political leaders need to be put under the scanner.

By Admiral (retd) L. Ramdas, former chief of the Indian Navy.

https://thewire.in/government/constitutional-rights-ajit-doval-bipi...

The (Indian) NSA (Ajit Doval) is among those seen to be closest to the ‘Powers that Be’. While addressing IPS probationers at a passing out parade in the Police Academy at Hyderabad on November 11, he reportedly said that “the new frontier of war was civil society”, and equated this to the ” fourth generation warfare”. The freshly minted young police graduates are being openly told that since “civil society can be suborned, manipulated, subverted and divided and thus hurt the interests of the nation”, it is their duty to deal with them. He also implied that the ‘electoral process’ is not paramount, and what is important are the laws made by lawmakers which the police must enforce ruthlessly.

This sits uneasily in the context of the address from the NSA to police trainees when he openly suggests that civil society is the real threat and must be dealt with ‘ruthlessly’. Already we have seen sub-divisional magistrates telling the police to “break the heads of protesting farmers”. A recent report by the National Campaign Against Torture – a platform for NGOs working on torture in India – has highlighted how torture continues to remain a favoured tool in the hands of the police to extract information and confessions, or sometimes just to victimise oppressed sections of society.

Comment by Riaz Haq on April 9, 2023 at 10:25am

#India’s Indigenous people pay price of #Modi's #tiger conservation. Only 1% of over 100 million #Indian #Adivasis have been granted land rights despite gov't forest rights law of 2006, which aims to “undo the historical injustice”. #BJP https://aje.io/szw7n0 via @AJEnglish

Officials were celebrating just hours away from several of India’s major tiger reserves when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in the southern city of Mysuru that the country’s tiger population has steadily grown to more than 3,000 since its flagship conservation programme began 50 years ago over concerns that the numbers of the big cats were dwindling.

“India is a country where protecting nature is part of our culture,” Modi said in his speech on Sunday. “This is why we have many unique achievements in wildlife conservation.”

Modi also launched the International Big Cats Alliance, which he said will focus on the protection and conservation of seven big cat species: the tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, puma, jaguar and cheetah.

But Indigenous people, known as Adivasi in India, say wildlife conservation projects have displaced members of their community over the past half-century. Adivasi communities in Karnataka organised protests last month to highlight how their people, who have lived in forests for centuries, have been kept out of conservation efforts.

Project Tiger began in 1973 after a census of the big cats found India’s tigers were quickly going extinct through habitat loss, unregulated sport hunting, increased poaching and retaliatory killings by people. Lawmakers and officials tried to address these issues, but the conservation model centered around creating protected reserves where ecosystems can function undisturbed by people.

Several Indigenous groups say the conservation strategies, deeply influenced by American environmentalism, have meant uprooting numerous communities who had lived in the forests for millennia.


Members of several Adivasi groups set up the Nagarahole Adivasi Forest Rights Establishment Committee to protest against evictions from their ancestral lands and seek a voice in how the forests are managed.

“Nagarahole was one of the first forests to be brought under Project Tiger, and our parents and grandparents were probably among the first to be forced out of the forests in the name of conservation,” said JA Shivu, 27, who belongs to the Jenu Kuruba tribe. “We have lost all rights to visit our lands, temples or even collect honey from the forests. How can we continue living like this?”

The fewer than 40,000 Jenu Kuruba people are one of the 75 tribal groups whom the Indian government classifies as particularly vulnerable.

Jenu, which means honey in the southern Indian Kannada language, is the tribe’s primary source of income. Its members collect it from beehives in the forests to sell. Adivasi communities like the Jenu Kurubas are among the poorest in India.

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 15, 2023 at 8:40pm

‘Separation is the only answer’: #Manipur violence fuels calls for separate state in #India. Leaders of the mainly #Christian hill tribes say that living alongside the mostly #Hindu Meitei people is ‘as good as death for our people’ #Hindutva #Modi
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/16/separation-is-the-onl...

Leaders of the mainly Christian hill tribes say that living alongside the mostly Hindu Meitei people is ‘as good as death for our people’

Amrit Dhillon in New Delhi
Mon 15 May 2023 22.23 EDT
In towns and villages across India’s north-eastern state of Manipur, some houses have been reduced to ashes while neighbouring properties stand untouched, after an eruption of ethnic violence in which more than 70 were murdered and 30,000 forced to flee.

The bloodshed which began on 3 May has mostly abated, but there is little hope of a swift return to normality.

Food is scarce; a curfew is still enforced by the army and paramilitary troops; the internet remains suspended; shops, schools and offices are closed; thousands of people remain stranded in crowded and unsanitary refugee camps. And reports of fresh violence over the weekend prompted fresh displacements.

“This is a civil war situation,” said John Mamang, a lawyer and relief volunteer in the town of Churachandpur.

A villager inspects the debris of a ransacked church that was set alight during ethnic violence in Heirokland.
‘Everything is gone’: entire Indian villages burned in ethnic violence
Read more
Shortages of food and medicine are becoming acute, said Mamang, who on Monday was unable to even find rice to donate to a nearby camp.

“People are beginning to starve. Some haven’t eaten for two to three days. When I reached the camp, a woman had just delivered a baby, with no medicines or medical help and in the clothes she’d been wearing for five days,” he said.

Most of the victims were from the mainly Christian hill tribes such as the Kukis, but members of the mostly Hindu Meitei people were also targeted.


And in towns where the two communities once lived warily alongside each other, the idea of a return to such uneasy harmony seems unthinkable after so much violence – when friends and neighbours stood by as men, women and children were killed.

“It’s impossible. They can never be our neighbours. Not after what’s happened,” said Alun Singh, a Meitei in Imphal.

Moses Varte, a Kuki in Churachandpur, said “separation is the only answer”, adding “This was ethnic cleansing of the hill people. Now we can only feel safe as a minority if we have our own state.”

Debory Fimsangpui’s home in the region’s capital, Imphal, was burned down by a mob, and she and her family survived only because they happened to be away at the time.

“If we had been there, we would not be alive today. But we will not forget those who died, the elderly, those who could not run away,” said Fimsangpui, a college lecturer.

The fact that Kukis were targeted in the city – despite the presence of security forces – has for many hill tribe members underlined a sense that they cannot be safe anywhere in the state.

“Before, Kukis used to send their children to Imphal for higher studies,” said Fimsangpui. “I have one son, Daleed who is 24. Do you think I would ever send him to Imphal now? We can never trust the Manipur government or the police again.”


The spark for the fuse
The states of north-east India – wedged between Bangladesh, China and Myanmar – are a patchwork of ethnic groups, many of them shot through with longstanding enmities.

The spark for the latest outbreak of violence in Manipur was a plan to grant the majority Meitei the status of a “scheduled tribe” which would give them access to quotas in government jobs and colleges under India’s affirmative action policy.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 3, 2023 at 6:46pm

#Indian Consulate in #SanFrancisco Set on Fire.
#Khalistan supporters linked to the attack. #Sikhs #US #California

https://www.mirchi9.com/usa-news/indian-consulate-in-san-francisco-...

The Indian consulate in San Francisco was set on fire early Sunday morning, as reported by a local U.S. channel. The incident has been verified by the Consulate General of India in San Francisco. Fortunately, the fire was quickly suppressed by the San Francisco Department, resulting in limited damage and no harm to the staff. Local, state, and federal authorities have been informed. According to the channel, Khalistan supporters have been linked to this act of violence. Matthew Miller, the spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, strongly condemned the reported vandalism and attempted arson, stating that such acts against diplomatic facilities or foreign diplomats in the U.S. are criminal offenses.

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