| All’s Not Well With Your Home, Minister NARENDRA MODI HAD ONCE BRAZENLY UPHELD SOHRABUDDIN’S FAKE KILLING. NOW, AS THE CBI THE ARRESTS TOP COPS,THE DIRT BEGINS TO UNRAVEL IN
Indeed, so thoroughly alarmed are the Bjp, Modi, and others implicated in the Muslim massacres and the encounter killings, that there is a clear last-ditch attempt at preventing the CBI from establishing the truth. The latest round started on january 12 this year when the supreme Court ordered the CBI to reinvestigate the 2005 encounter killing of Gujarat businessman sohrabuddin shaikh, his wife Kauserbi, and an associate of his, tulsi prajapati. sohrabuddin, a small time extortionist, was killed in a joint encounter by the Gujarat and Rajasthan police in November 2005 when he was travelling with his wife Kauserbi, on charges of being a Lashkar-e-tayyeba member on his way to Sohrabuddin’s brother, Rubabuddin, had earlier moved the supreme Court, virtually accusing Modi’s police of killing his brother in cold blood. Modi’s administration has been accused of attempting to derail the trial of the several police officers who have been jailed on charges of killing sohrabuddin, his wife and others over nearly three years since 2002. In its january order, the Supreme Court (sC) slammed the Chudasama was one of the most well connected police officers in
Few have risen to be as powerful under Modi as Shah has, especially since Modi’s confidant-turned-foe, Haren Pandya, was murdered in 2003. After Chudasama’s arrest, hoardings ?appeared across Ahmedabad overnight, slamming the Congress party for trying to project “Sohrabuddin, the terrorist” as a hero. They suggested that the cbi’s arrests were an attack on the Gujarati nation. The bjp promised a state-wise agitation if the arrests did not stop. The very next day, the Gujarat Police cid arrested two police ?officers that the cbi was about to arrest, prompting the speculation that Modi ?didn’t want cbi to get hold of them.
Indeed, Chudasama’s arrest also puts a question mark on the claim that he had “solved” the July 2008 serial bomb blasts in Ahmedabad. (More than 60 Muslims accused of the bombings are currently being tried.) In fact, the cbi claims that Chudasama knew Sohrabuddin, a gangster-for-hire, and ran an extortion racket through him, allegedly collecting Rs 40 lakh in 2001 alone. The cbi says Chudasama also ordered Sohrabuddin to ?organise a shootout in CBI officers from Mumbai have travelled to Gujarat, The CBI says it now has recordings of phone calls between Chudasama and a few high-profile names in the So why hasn’t the CBI yet arrested this Meanwhile, the CBI has moved the sc to access telephonic conversations of various police officers on the night they were involved in Sohrabuddin’s killing. It is said that these same police officers could also be behind the murder of Prajapati. The CBI officials say that the CID, in its report, had submitted that the third person who was travelling with Sohrabuddin and his wife was Kalimuddin, who dig Vanzara had taken to the spot were they were killed. However the cbi investigation has found out that the person travelling with Sohrabuddin was not Kalimuddin but Prajapati — killed a year later, most likely because he was the sole witness to the Sohrabuddin encounter.
Till now, the CBI has questioned at least 12 IPS officers in The CBI is also investigating if Geeta Johri, the then cid head, had deliberately modified records of telephone calls made to each other by the policemen the night of Sohrabuddin’s killing. Johri had handed over these allegedly doctored call records to Rajnish Rai, who took over the probe from her. The CBI now believes that the records were doctored to protect two ministers — in the CBI officers claim they have evidence that Chudasama and one of the two above-mentioned ministers had illegal bank accounts and shareholding in two real estate projects in Possibly with a view to slowing down the CBI charge, Gujarat Chief Secretary AK Joti and DGP SS Khandwawala met CBI director Ashwini Kumar in This minister also happens to be an arch rival of the Gujarat Revenue Minister Anandiben Patel, who is looking to become Modi’s number two. Patel controls numerous educational institutes and trusts in
The CBI should, in fact, broaden its scope and investigate the role of more policemen, according to retired IPS officer RB Sreekumar. The former DGP of Gujarat has gone on record claiming to have witnessed the role of Modi’s administration in allowing the killing of Muslims in the 2002 riots, and who claims that Modi’s officers killed innocents in encounters and passed them off as terrorists. “Many such officers superseded others and are today at the top,” Sreekumar says. “The cbi should investigate them.” If the line of investigation and the forensic tests are taken into cognisance, then some of the big names in the | |||||||||||||
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Saturday, May 29, 2010
All’s Not Well With Your Home, Minister -By Rana Ayyub _TEHELKA Magazine
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
An open letter to Jaswant Singh By Ghulam Muhammed
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
An open letter to Jaswant Singh
It may not be in public knowledge but the way you have taken up the matter of India /Pakistan partition and the role of Jinnah, and the way you were mistreated by your erstwhile party, the BJP, for supposedly committing the unpardonable sin of having a soft corner for Jinnah as a secular person, there has been a feeling in Muslims circles, that you could be a suitable candidate, in the same manner as Late V.P. Singh was, to lead all communities other than Brahmins, to chart a new coarse for India, that should try to wipe out the deep misapprehensions of the past and bring a fresh atmosphere in Indian politics, where the old Brahminical agenda appears to have run its coarse.
It is difficult for RSS and its political serfs, to ever get over their existential compulsions and usher India into a new future of unitedIndia, friendly and cooperating with its neighbours, as the core country to unite the subcontinent. Your reception in Pakistan, in Lahore and Karachi, on the occasion of the release your book in both politically aware cities of Pakistan, gives a hint that your bona fide as a genuine votary of a united subcontinent that had been arbitrarily divided by vested interests to cater to their own narrow communal agenda, could become a focus of like minded well-wishers on both sides, to come together and think about the future of India without being bogged down by constraints of the Brahminical Idea of India. India’s attempt to close its borders to outside world has miserably failed and the earlier 40 years of Free India, was at best a defensive exercise that compromised with India’s full potential, in all sphere of its polity, be that political, economic or cultural. In India, where caste is still a reality that is thriving for some and suffocating for others, your own caste seems to find it easy to claim leadership from the Brahmins and prepare to give proper justice and fairplay to those disadvantage in the Age of Brahmins. If you had gathered courage, like V. P. Singh in the past, it could have been possible for a core group of Muslims to ignore your tactical alliance with the Saffronites and extend a hand of support to see you as a possible candidate for the Prime Ministership of India with the hope that India can be blessed with a new beginning that will ensure justice for all and favour to none. The Idea of India, then could have a new and broader, inclusive definition that will better suit its destiny, as under the Brahmins, its tryst with its destiny had been seriously derailed.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Many Faiths, One Truth - By The Dalai Lama - The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Many Faiths, One Truth
By TENZIN GYATSO
Published: May 24, 2010
Related
Times Topics: Buddhism |Christians and Christianity |Islam | Jews and Judaism
Though intolerance may be as old as religion itself, we still see vigorous signs of its virulence. In Europe, there are intense debates about newcomers wearing veils or wanting to erect minarets and episodes of violence against Muslim immigrants. Radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold to religious beliefs. In the Middle East, the flames of war are fanned by hatred of those who adhere to a different faith.
Such tensions are likely to increase as the world becomes more interconnected and cultures, peoples and religions become ever more entwined. The pressure this creates tests more than our tolerance — it demands that we promote peaceful coexistence and understanding across boundaries.
Granted, every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity. Even so, I believe there is genuine potential for mutual understanding. While preserving faith toward one’s own tradition, one can respect, admire and appreciate other traditions.
An early eye-opener for me was my meeting with the Trappist monk Thomas Merton in India shortly before his untimely death in 1968. Merton told me he could be perfectly faithful to Christianity, yet learn in depth from other religions like Buddhism. The same is true for me as an ardent Buddhist learning from the world’s other great religions.
A main point in my discussion with Merton was how central compassion was to the message of both Christianity and Buddhism. In my readings of the New Testament, I find myself inspired by Jesus’ acts of compassion. His miracle of the loaves and fishes, his healing and his teaching are all motivated by the desire to relieve suffering.
I’m a firm believer in the power of personal contact to bridge differences, so I’ve long been drawn to dialogues with people of other religious outlooks. The focus on compassion that Merton and I observed in our two religions strikes me as a strong unifying thread among all the major faiths. And these days we need to highlight what unifies us.
Take Judaism, for instance. I first visited a synagogue in Cochin, India, in 1965, and have met with many rabbis over the years. I remember vividly the rabbi in the Netherlands who told me about the Holocaust with such intensity that we were both in tears. And I’ve learned how the Talmud and the Bible repeat the theme of compassion, as in the passage in Leviticus that admonishes, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
In my many encounters with Hindu scholars in India, I’ve come to see the centrality of selfless compassion in Hinduism too — as expressed, for instance, in the Bhagavad Gita, which praises those who “delight in the welfare of all beings.” I’m moved by the ways this value has been expressed in the life of great beings like Mahatma Gandhi, or the lesser-known Baba Amte, who founded a leper colony not far from a Tibetan settlement in Maharashtra State in India. There he fed and sheltered lepers who were otherwise shunned. When I received my Nobel Peace Prize, I made a donation to his colony.
Compassion is equally important in Islam — and recognizing that has become crucial in the years since Sept. 11, especially in answering those who paint Islam as a militant faith. On the first anniversary of 9/11, I spoke at the National Cathedral in Washington, pleading that we not blindly follow the lead of some in the news media and let the violent acts of a few individuals define an entire religion.
Let me tell you about the Islam I know. Tibet has had an Islamic community for around 400 years, although my richest contacts with Islam have been in India, which has the world’s second-largest Muslim population. An imam in Ladakh once told me that a true Muslim should love and respect all of Allah’s creatures. And in my understanding, Islam enshrines compassion as a core spiritual principle, reflected in the very name of God, the “Compassionate and Merciful,” that appears at the beginning of virtually each chapter of the Koran.
Finding common ground among faiths can help us bridge needless divides at a time when unified action is more crucial than ever. As a species, we must embrace the oneness of humanity as we face global issues like pandemics, economic crises and ecological disaster. At that scale, our response must be as one.
Harmony among the major faiths has become an essential ingredient of peaceful coexistence in our world. From this perspective, mutual understanding among these traditions is not merely the business of religious believers — it matters for the welfare of humanity as a whole.
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is the author, most recently, of “Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions Can Come Together.”
Congress perfidy against Muslims over Awkaf ?
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Congress perfidy against Muslims over Awkaf ?
Reports are coming in that while the Prime Minster Manmohan Singh had solemnly assured a visiting Muslim delegation that the bureaucratic move to pass a legislation de-recognizing of all Awkaf unless they are registered with the authorities will not be placed in Parliament, Congress had taken advantage of a thin attendance on Friday, (when all Muslim members of Parliament absent themselves for their compulsory Friday prayers) and reportedly rushed such a bill through Lok Sabha, directly countermanding Prime Minister’s assurance to Muslims.
The reports are sketchy, but a full day session of Muslim Majlis e Mushawarat was highly agitated trying to figure out how to react to this most dangerous act by Congress that would virtually amount to confiscating entire Muslim Awkaf all over the country.
It will also probably affect the case of the title of Babri Masjid as Awkaf property in the ongoing court cases. If the report is true, Congress hand will again be revealed in intervening in Babri Masjid court cases, through legislative route and presenting Muslims with a fait accompli.
Congress move is fraught with serious consequences for the nation as it is highly improbable that Muslim voters will ever stomach this scale of Congress perfidy.
There is a danger that an all India level reaction may ensue.
Government should move promptly to put the full matter in public domain, so that the peace and law and order situation in the land does not come under serious jeopardy.
The longer term consequences for Congress and its stake in Muslim votes in assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and other states, is now an open question, if Congress double-dealing is confirmed.
The role of Salman Khurshid, the Union Minister for Awkaf, in such an underhand dealing with Awkaf is being reportedly openly questioned in Muslim circles.
It is supposedly an old Congress practice to try to capture Muslim vote bank, by putting the Muslim community under serious pressure, either through security mismanagement or threatening their livelihood, and at later stage to appear to relent and to side with the community in half measures in open bargain with Muslim leaders for their votes. This time-honored and trusted Congress trickery, may not deliver Muslim community this time around. The stakes are too high in both Babri Masjid and Awkaf, for Muslim community to trust Congress again. UP will be the real battle ground.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
Monday, May 24, 2010
Was a Muslim journalist deliberately gagged when Door Darshan (DD) telecast resorted to go off the air at Indian Prime Minister's Press Conference? - By Ghulam Muhammed
Monday, May 24, 2010
Letter to the Editor:
Was a Muslim journalist deliberately gagged when Door Darshan (DD) telecast resorted to go off the air at Indian Prime Minister's Press Conference?
Was a deliberate gag manufactured to silence Masoom Moradabai of Urdu newspaper Akhbar e Jadid, when he asked the most crucial question engaging the 200 million Indian Muslims as to how Prime Minister will act on the recommendations of Sachar Commission and Justice Ranganathan Misra Commission reports.
The Urdu journalist was the fifth journalist in the line to be given the chance to address the questions to the Prime Minister. However when he posed the sensitive question about Muslim plight, all of a sudden the DD telecast went dead. Can one imagine a national TV Channel to be so inefficient and callous about breakdown in its telecast of Prime Minister’s Press Conference, without some sanction from the authorities? Was the breakdown of the telecast was designed specially to shield the Prime Minister from replying to embarrassing questions about the abject failure of his government?
One can see the last flashes of Prime Minister's instant distress while the Muslim journalist reeled out the question on behalf of his Urdu newspaper, when the telecast went off the air. Later, TIMES NOW's Arnab cited one more gag by technical breakdown in the same Press Conference telecast when TIMES NOW representative posed a very uncomfortable question that Prime Minister probably would have found difficult to reply to.
These sequences will point to a possibility towards a deliberate policy by Indian Government that had arranged a rare public relations event of the current Prime Minister’s Press Conference, was to run away from public scrutiny on major issues by blanking out the very live telecast, when Prime Minister was supposed to reply. That is most reprehensive and Prime Minister should clear the air, by appearing to press again and respond to these two blocked out questions that Government is bound to reply in able to take the press and general public in confidence.
As it is Muslims are most worried that Indian National Congress under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is merely playing with the community and has no intention of giving an inch to Muslim’s rightful demands. The recent meeting of Muslim community leaders, including from Jamiat ul Ulama, Jamat e Islami, Majlis e Mushawarat and others with both, the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi is reported to be a dodging game that Congress is old past master of. Both leaders have been arrogant as if they would be doing a favour to the Muslim leaders by even giving them the time to press their demands and that should be the end of it.
India is a democracy, but the way the Prime Minister replied about a job given to him which is not yet complete and unless that is complete, he is not going to retire or resign. The TV channels were agog as to who was the ‘real’ authority that had given him the ‘job’ and apparently he was categorical about Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi not being in the picture, as far as his stay as PM is concerned. It will be a big gaffe, if a perception is formed by press and public that he was referring to an outside power that could have given him the ‘job’ and India’s democracy is just a sham.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Who Lives in Sheik Jarrah? By Kai Bird - The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Who Lives in Sheik Jarrah?
By KAI BIRD
Published: April 30, 2010
AS a boy, I lived in Sheik Jarrah, a wealthy Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Annexed by Israel in 1967 and now the subject of a conflict over property claims, my former home has come to symbolize everything that has gone wrong between the Israelis and Palestinians over the last six decades.
Despite talk of a slowdown in Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, Jerusalem’s mayor, toured Washington earlier this week and told officials that the expansion into Arab neighborhoods is going ahead at full speed.
As a result, “The battle line in Israel’s war of survival as a Jewish and democratic state now runs through the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” writes David Landau, the former editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz. “Is that the line, at last, where Israel’s decline will be halted?” I hope so.
My family lived in Israel from 1956 to 1958, when my father, an American diplomat, was stationed in East Jerusalem. We lived in the Palestinian sector, but every day I crossed through Mandelbaum Gate, the one checkpoint in the divided city, to attend school in an Israeli neighborhood. I thus had the rare privilege of seeing both sides.
At the time Sheik Jarrah was a sleepy suburb, a half-mile north of Damascus Gate. One of my playmates was Dani Bahar, the son of a Muslim Palestinian and a Jewish-German refugee from Nazi Europe. Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, such interfaith marriages were uncommon, but accepted. Another neighbor was Katy Antonius, the widow of George Antonius, an Arab historian who argued that Palestine should become a binational, secular state.
The Sheik Jarrah of my youth is gone; Mandelbaum Gate was razed by Israeli bulldozers right after the Six-Day War in 1967 that united Jerusalem. But the city remains virtually divided. Few Jewish Israelis venture into Sheik Jarrah and the other largely Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, and few Palestinians go to the “New City.”
Today East Jerusalem exudes the palpable feel of a city occupied by a foreign power. And it is, to an extent — although much of the world doesn’t recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to halt the construction of new housing units for Jewish Israelis in the Arab neighborhoods. “Jerusalem is not a settlement,” he recently told an audience in Washington.
Not all Israelis agree with this policy. For over a year, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Israelis and Palestinians have been gathering in Sheik Jarrah on Fridays to protest the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. Israeli courts have deemed these nonviolent demonstrations to be legal, but this has not stopped the police from arresting protesters.
In a cruel historical twist, nearly all of the Palestinians evicted from their homes in Sheik Jarrah in the last year-and-a-half were originally expelled in 1948 from their homes in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Talbieh. In the wake of the Six-Day War, Israeli courts ruled that some of the houses these Palestinian refugees have lived in since 1948 are actually legally owned by Jewish Israelis, who have claims dating from before Israel’s founding.
The Palestinians have stubbornly refused to pay any rent to these “absentee” Israeli landlords for nearly 43 years; until recently, their presence was nevertheless tolerated. But under Mr. Netanyahu, a concerted effort has been made to evict these Palestinians and replace them with Israelis.
This poses an interesting question. If Jewish Israelis can claim property in East Jerusalem based on land deeds that predate 1948, why can’t Palestinians with similar deeds reclaim their homes in West Jerusalem?
I have in mind the Kalbians, our neighbors in Sheik Jarrah. Until 1948, Dr. Vicken Kalbian and his family lived in a handsome Jerusalem-stone house on Balfour Street in Talbieh. In the spring, the Haganah, the Zionist militia, sent trucks mounted with loudspeakers through the streets of Talbieh, demanding that all Arab residents leave. The Kalbians decided it might be prudent to comply, but they thought they’d be back in a few weeks.
Nineteen years later, after the Six-Day war, the Kalbians returned to 4 Balfour Street and knocked on the door. A stranger answered. “He was a Jewish Turk,” Dr. Kalbian said, “who had come to Israel in 1948.” The man claimed he had bought the house from the “authorities.”
That year the Kalbians took their property deed to a lawyer who determined that their house was indeed registered with the Israeli Department of Absentee Property. Under Israeli law, they learned, due compensation could have been paid to them — but only if they had not fled to countries then considered “hostile,” like Jordan. Because in 1948 they had ended up in Jordanian-controlled Sheik Jarrah, the Kalbians could neither reclaim their home nor be compensated for their loss.
The Kalbians eventually emigrated to America, but their moral claim to the house on Balfour Street is as strong as any of the deeds held by Israelis to property in Sheik Jarrah.
If Israel wishes to remain largely Jewish and democratic, then it must soon withdraw from all of the occupied territories and negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. And if not, it should at least let the Kalbians go home again.
Kai Bird is the author of “Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978.”
Despite talk of a slowdown in Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, Jerusalem’s mayor, toured Washington earlier this week and told officials that the expansion into Arab neighborhoods is going ahead at full speed.
As a result, “The battle line in Israel’s war of survival as a Jewish and democratic state now runs through the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” writes David Landau, the former editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz. “Is that the line, at last, where Israel’s decline will be halted?” I hope so.
My family lived in Israel from 1956 to 1958, when my father, an American diplomat, was stationed in East Jerusalem. We lived in the Palestinian sector, but every day I crossed through Mandelbaum Gate, the one checkpoint in the divided city, to attend school in an Israeli neighborhood. I thus had the rare privilege of seeing both sides.
At the time Sheik Jarrah was a sleepy suburb, a half-mile north of Damascus Gate. One of my playmates was Dani Bahar, the son of a Muslim Palestinian and a Jewish-German refugee from Nazi Europe. Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, such interfaith marriages were uncommon, but accepted. Another neighbor was Katy Antonius, the widow of George Antonius, an Arab historian who argued that Palestine should become a binational, secular state.
The Sheik Jarrah of my youth is gone; Mandelbaum Gate was razed by Israeli bulldozers right after the Six-Day War in 1967 that united Jerusalem. But the city remains virtually divided. Few Jewish Israelis venture into Sheik Jarrah and the other largely Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, and few Palestinians go to the “New City.”
Today East Jerusalem exudes the palpable feel of a city occupied by a foreign power. And it is, to an extent — although much of the world doesn’t recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to halt the construction of new housing units for Jewish Israelis in the Arab neighborhoods. “Jerusalem is not a settlement,” he recently told an audience in Washington.
Not all Israelis agree with this policy. For over a year, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Israelis and Palestinians have been gathering in Sheik Jarrah on Fridays to protest the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. Israeli courts have deemed these nonviolent demonstrations to be legal, but this has not stopped the police from arresting protesters.
In a cruel historical twist, nearly all of the Palestinians evicted from their homes in Sheik Jarrah in the last year-and-a-half were originally expelled in 1948 from their homes in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Talbieh. In the wake of the Six-Day War, Israeli courts ruled that some of the houses these Palestinian refugees have lived in since 1948 are actually legally owned by Jewish Israelis, who have claims dating from before Israel’s founding.
The Palestinians have stubbornly refused to pay any rent to these “absentee” Israeli landlords for nearly 43 years; until recently, their presence was nevertheless tolerated. But under Mr. Netanyahu, a concerted effort has been made to evict these Palestinians and replace them with Israelis.
This poses an interesting question. If Jewish Israelis can claim property in East Jerusalem based on land deeds that predate 1948, why can’t Palestinians with similar deeds reclaim their homes in West Jerusalem?
I have in mind the Kalbians, our neighbors in Sheik Jarrah. Until 1948, Dr. Vicken Kalbian and his family lived in a handsome Jerusalem-stone house on Balfour Street in Talbieh. In the spring, the Haganah, the Zionist militia, sent trucks mounted with loudspeakers through the streets of Talbieh, demanding that all Arab residents leave. The Kalbians decided it might be prudent to comply, but they thought they’d be back in a few weeks.
Nineteen years later, after the Six-Day war, the Kalbians returned to 4 Balfour Street and knocked on the door. A stranger answered. “He was a Jewish Turk,” Dr. Kalbian said, “who had come to Israel in 1948.” The man claimed he had bought the house from the “authorities.”
That year the Kalbians took their property deed to a lawyer who determined that their house was indeed registered with the Israeli Department of Absentee Property. Under Israeli law, they learned, due compensation could have been paid to them — but only if they had not fled to countries then considered “hostile,” like Jordan. Because in 1948 they had ended up in Jordanian-controlled Sheik Jarrah, the Kalbians could neither reclaim their home nor be compensated for their loss.
The Kalbians eventually emigrated to America, but their moral claim to the house on Balfour Street is as strong as any of the deeds held by Israelis to property in Sheik Jarrah.
If Israel wishes to remain largely Jewish and democratic, then it must soon withdraw from all of the occupied territories and negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. And if not, it should at least let the Kalbians go home again.
Kai Bird is the author of “Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978.”
India acting like an ostrich with its head in sand By Ghulam Muhammed
India cannot act like an ostrich and bury its head in sand, while serious developments in the neighborhood can inflame the whole area. The consequences for US/Israel conspired attack proceed step by step, should alarm our Administration and it should not sit on the fence and see US armed forces once again unleashing blood bath of innocents on contrived pretext. US and Israel's HEGEMONICAL agenda in the oil resource rich Gulf is not hidden to the world. The real reason for the US upping the ante is to manufacture a regime change in Iran. That is openly against the UN Charter's prohibition of interference in the internal affairs of UN member nations. Yesterday, it was Iraq and Afghanistan, tomorrow it will be India, which is already infected by US and Israeli agents in its government and political polity. India had been in colonial bondage for over 150 years and its people have made great struggles and sacrifices to gain independence, which is certainly threatened if India does not cover its bases against US and Israeli moves in Asia. India should work towards 'Asia for Asian' and chuck foreign influences out, before they get further entrenched in the area. The passive and tired leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh is not up to taking longer term measures to secure India's integrity, freedom and honor. A vigorous public debate should give them the required courage to face the uncertain and danger-laden future and bolster its will to stand up for national interest.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>
Cover everyone’s bases
C. Raja MohanTags : crajamohan, columnsPosted:
India’s current diplomatic exertions on Iran, marked by External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna’s anxious outreach to Tehran this week, could get a lot more strenuous if the government does not come to terms with the gravity of the gathering crisis in the Gulf.
India’s current diplomatic exertions on Iran, marked by External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna’s anxious outreach to Tehran this week, could get a lot more strenuous if the government does not come to terms with the gravity of the gathering crisis in the Gulf.
During Krishna’s brief Tehran sojourn, there was much motion, if not movement, in dealing with the nuclear confrontation
between the United States and Iran. The leaders of Brazil and Turkey, who along with India were part of a third world conclave convened by Iran, declared that they got Tehran to agree on a nuclear compromise that would end the impasse. Dismissing the initiative from two of its old allies and partners, Washington quickly wrapped up a draft agreement among the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council on new sanctions against Tehran.
The Gulf crisis will indeed test Delhi’s strategic acumen and diplomatic mettle in dealing with a range of associated issues from a possible breakdown of international efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear aspirations and a radical redistribution of power in the region.
Iran has long been part of Delhi’s security perimeter thanks to Tehran’s historic role in shaping the geopolitics of India’s north-western frontiers, the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus and
Central Asia. Iran is a major producer of oil and natural gas, two commodities that India will need in ever larger quantities. With India’s physical access to inner Asia blocked by Pakistan, Iran offers the alternative route.
Geography alone demands that India cultivate a strong partnership with Iran. Yet, the pursuit of Indian interests in Iran is circumscribed by the political and economic orientation of Tehran’s current ruling elite. Delhi’s difficulties have become acute amidst the power struggles within Iran, Tehran’s sharpening disputes with its Arab neighbours, its prolonged hostility with the US, and its defiance of the nuclear system. India will be able to do no real business with Iran if the
present conflict with the West is not mitigated.
Reports from Tehran say that Krishna has chosen to “explain” India’s votes in the International Atomic Energy Agency against Iran — three of them during the last five years — to the Iranian leadership. If true, these reports are indeed disturbing; for it
reflects a needless nervousness in Delhi. Worse still it reveals a
focus on the peripheral rather than the central issues arising out of the current crisis.
Delhi has no reason to be apologetic because its votes are consistent with India’s principles and interests. India has always maintained that as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran must abide by its legal obligations. Any fudging of this principle would have severely undermined India’s own nuclear interests — especially in winning international endorsement of Delhi’s civil nuclear initiative.
While Delhi owes Tehran no explanation on the IAEA vote, India has every reason to be concerned about the many implications and consequences of the current stand-off between Iran and the international community.
The first is about the credibility of the UNSC itself. Three rounds of UNSC sanctions have not forced Iran to stop its uranium enrichment programme. And Tehran is not trembling at the sight of the draft fourth resolution. Despite its minimalism, the new resolution will have no credibility if it runs into the opposition of Brazil, Turkey and other non-permanent members of the UNSC.
Facing a resolution that has neither teeth nor legitimacy, Iran will be right to hold that the metaphorical emperor of the post-Cold War world — the UNSC — has no clothes.
If the Bush administration gave “unilateralism” a bad name in the handling of the Iraq crisis during 2002-03, the Obama administration might be close to doing the same with “multilateralism” in its handling of Iran. Believing that American decline is real, betting that its military machine is
exhausted after Iraq and Afghanistan, and sensing that the multilateral coalition against Iran is on its last legs, Tehran may be sorely tempted to test the resolve of President Obama. Amidst a growing clamour at home for a tougher policy towards Iran and accusations that he is weak on national security, the Obama administration would be under pressure to act. With Israel straining at the leash for a military solution, Obama is between a rock and a hard place.
In this emerging situation, India’s main task is not about defining a diplomatic position that covers all political bases and potential contingencies. Nor does it involve a return to the old ideological impulses of third world solidarity.
Delhi’s current focus on the minor stakes in Iran — an oil field here or a pipeline there — stands in contrast to the enormity of the current dynamic in and around Iran. Delhi’s immediate task is to join the international effort to avert a war in the Gulf. It must press Washington and Tehran to begin an unconditional bilateral dialogue to address all issues of mutual concern. The world has had enough of shadow play between the two of them.
Looking ahead, India must assess the prospect that the US may not be able to remain for ever the principal provider of security in the arc of crisis stretching from Pakistan to Somalia, via Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and the Gulf of Aden.
Just as the failure of the great powers to act against Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia led to the political demise of the League of
Nations in the ’30s, the Iran crisis has the potential to wreck the post-war international order and destroy the regional equilibrium.
Promoting a new concert of powers that can step into the breach between a weakening America and an irrelevant UNSC is the real long-term challenge before India’s national security planners.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Banning the burqa ... A bad idea ... The Economist, UK
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16108394
Banning the burqa
A bad idea...
...whose time may soon come in parts of Europe
May 13th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
WHEN Jack Straw, a British Labour politician, said a few years ago that he would prefer Muslim women to uncover their faces during appointments with him, because he “felt uncomfortable about talking to someone ‘face-to-face’ who [he] could not see”, liberal opinion was scandalised. He had no more right to request this than he did to ask a teenager to take out a tongue-stud or anything else that might offend middle-aged men: indeed, arguably less because the covering was for reasons of faith, not fashion. Today, however, some European governments are going further than Mr Straw ever wanted to. Starting with Belgium and France, they plan to ban the face-covering niqab or burqa altogether (see article).
Europeans’ hostility to the burqa is understandable. It doesn’t just deprive them of the beauty of women’s faces; it offends the secularism that goes deep in European—and especially French—culture. Its spread goes hand in hand with the growth of a fundamentalist version of Islam some of whose proponents have attacked the secular societies they live in; and, at a time when those societies feel under threat, the burqa makes it harder for police to identify security risks.
For people raised outside the Gulf or Afghanistan, dealing with somebody whose facial expressions are hidden is uncomfortable. Unlike the headscarf, the burqa appears, in itself, to be a restraint on female freedom, and also symbolises what many Europeans see as the repression that women can suffer in Islam. And although many, and probably most, Muslim women wear the headscarf out of choice, some tell the police that they were forced to wear the burqa against their will.
Nor do democracies give absolute rights to citizens to wear what they like. The consensus about what is tolerated and what deemed offensive or dangerous varies. People cannot, in most countries, walk the streets naked. And Europeans clearly favour a ban. A recent poll found that a majority backed one in France (70%), Spain (65%), Italy (63%), Britain (57%) and Germany (50%). In America, with its stronger culture of religious freedom, only a minority (33%) was in favour.
Tolerate the burqa with pride
Yet the very values which Europeans feel are threatened by the burqa demand that they oppose a ban. Liberal societies should let people wear what they want unless there is a strong argument otherwise. And, in this case, the three arguments for a ban—security, sexual equality and secularism—do not stand up. On security, women can be required to lift their veils if necessary. On sexual equality, women would be better protected by the enforcement of existing laws against domestic violence than by the enactment of new laws forcing them to dress in a way that may be against their will. On secularism, even if Europeans would prefer not to have others’ religiosity paraded on the streets, the tolerance that Westerners claim to value requires them to put up with it.
European governments are entitled to limit women’s rights to wear the burqa. In schools, for instance, pupils should be able to see teachers’ faces, as should judges and juries in court. But Europeans should accept that, however much they dislike the burqa, banning it altogether would be an infringement on the individual rights which their culture normally struggles to protect. The French, of all people, should know that. As Voltaire might have said, “I disapprove of your dress, but I will defend to the death your right to wear it.”
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