Press Release from Teesta Satelvad - Citizens for Justice and Peace

PRESS RELEASE ---

With tears of happiness choking them Women Victim Eye witnesses (Jannatchachi, Shakilabano, Faraznabano, Ishrat Jahan, Zuleikha appa and Fatima appa offer Shukrana namaz in Ahmedabad. They wil address a press conference with team of lawyers of Citizens for Justice and Peace and its Secretary Teesta Setalvad at Prashant at 3 pm today August 29, 2012 Press Release Hailing the historic verdict in the Naroda Patiya mass murder case delivered by Judge Jyotsnanbehn Yagnik. Special Sessions Judge in Ahmedabad today by which one senior politician and several conspirators and ring leaders have been convicted, Victim Survivors and CJP welcomed the verdict. In all 32 persons have been convicted including former BJP MLA and minister in the Narendra Modi cabinet, Smt Maya Kodnani, Babu Bajrangi, Bipin Panchal, Ashok Sindhi and Kishan Korani (sitting corporator, accused No 20) have  been convicted. Twenty-nine of the accused were acquitted. Most of the accused have been charged with Sections 143, 144, 147, 148 with 149, 295, 427, 435, 436, 440, 153, 153a, 153a(ii), 323-326,302, 307 (attempt to murder) read with 149 read with 120(b) and BP Act 135(1). Accused No 22 Suresh Langda Chara has also been convicted under Sections 354 and 376 (sections that deal with rape and gender violence). Quantum of sentence will be pronounced on August 31. Smt Kodnani had been convicted under Sections 295, 427, 435, 436, 440, 153, 153a, 153a(ii), 323, 324, 325, 326, 302, 307, 120-B of the IPC. Babu Bajrangi has been convicted under sections 143, 144, 147, 148 with 149, 295, 427, 435, 436, 440, 153, 153a, 153a(ii), 323,324,325,326, 302, 307 read with 149 read with 120-B. The raw courage of the victim witnesses, especially women witnesses who deposed fearlessly while still residing in Naroda Patiya is a reflection of the confidence generated after the Supreme Court monitoring and the protection from Central Paramilitary forces provided by the Supreme Court. CJP had applied to the apex court for protection of eye witnesses. CJP through its legal team advocates Altaf Jidran and Raju Shaikh supervised by senior Adv Yusuf Shaikh provided legal aid to about 70 eyewitnesses since 2009. CJP would like to publicly acknowledge their contribution, also the seniors advocate MM Tirmizi (Gujarat High Court), Mihir Desai (Mumbai) and advocates Kamini Jaiswal (Supreme Court), Sanjay Parikh (Supreme Court), Aparna Bhat (Supreme Court) and Ramesh Pukhrambam (Supreme Court). Eleven eyewitnesses have deposed in eye witnesses testimonies assigning in detail the role played by Smt Maya Kodnani, in inciting the mob to murder, fifteen witnesses deposed through eye witness testimonies against Babu Bajrangi, 48 witnesses testified to the crimes committed by Suresh @ Langda Chara including the offences of gender violence and rape. (Annexed are the list of witnesses with a brief of their testimonies). The CJP would like to state that it was the evidence through eye witness testimonies that enabled convictions. Corroborative evidence was provided through the phone call records provided by police officer Rahul Sharma and Tehelka’s Operation Kalank. Without eye witness testimonies whoever convictions could not have taken place. Victim witnesses supported by CJP had also filed separate applications under Section 319 praying for police officer and then first PI KK Mysorewala to be arraigned as accused along with former Commissioner of Police PC Pandey and SRP official Dhantaniya. While the Judge rejected these applications, she has observed in the victim application for compensation for rape and gender violence that the application would be considered in the final judgement. Names of accused who have been convicted. Naresh Agarsinh Chara (accused 1); Murlibhai Naranbhai Sindhi (accused 2); Ganpat Chanaji Deedawala (accused 4); Vikrambhai Maneklal Rathod (accused 5); Haresh @ Hariyo S/o Jivanlal @ Agarsinh Rathod (accused 10); Babubhai @ Babu Bajrangi Rajabhai Patel (accused 18), Kishan Khubchand Korani (accused 20); Prakashbhai Sureshbhai Rathod (Chara) (accused  21); Suresh @ Richard @ Langdi Kantibhai Dedawala (Chara) (accused 22); Premchand @ Tiwari Conductor (accused 25); Suresh @ Sehjad Dalubhai (Marathi, Charo) (absconding) (accused 26); Nawab @ Kalu Bhaiyo Harisinh Rathod (accused 27); Manubhai Keshavbhai Maruda (Bhangi) (accused 28); Shashikant @ Tiniyo Marathi Yuvraj Patil (accused 30); Babubhai Jethabhai Salat (accused 33); Lakshmanbhai @ Lakho Budhaji Thakor (accused 34); Dr. Mayaben Surendrabhai Kodnani  (accused 37);  Ashok Hundaldas Sindhi (accused 38); Harshad @ Mungda Govind Chara (Parmar) (accused 39); Mukesh @ Vakil Ratilal Rathod (accused 40); Manojbhai @ Manoj Sinhi Renumal Kukrani (accused 41); Hiraji @ Hero Marwadi @ Sonaji Danaji Medhwan (Marwadi) (accused 42); Bipinbhai @ Bipin autowala Umedray Panchal (accused 44); Ashokbhai Uttamchand Korani (Sindhi) (accused 45); Vijaykumar Takhubhai Parmar (accused 46); Ramesh Keshavlal Dedawala (Chara) (accused 47); Sachin Nagindas Modi (accused 52); Vilas @ Viliyo Prakashbhai Sonar (accused 53); Dinesh @ Tiniyo Govindbhai Barange (Marathi) (accused 55); Santoshkumar Kodumal Mulchandani  (accused 58); Pintu Dalpatbhai Jadeja (Chara) (accused 60); Kirpalsinh Jagbahadursinh Chabda (accused 62).  Eight charge sheets were filed in this historic case that lasted several months. It was one of the nine cases being supervised by the Supreme Court and was investigated by the SIT. Teesta Setalvad, Secretary & Trustee Other Trustees:  IM Kadri (President), Nandan Maluste (Vice President), Arvind Krishnaswamy (Treasurer), Alyque Padamsee, Cyrus Guzder, Javed Anand, Anil Dharker, Javed Akhtar, Ghulam Pesh Imam, Rahul Bose, Cedric Prakash __________________________________________________________________________ Nirant, Juhu Tara Road, Juhu, Mumbai – 400 049. Ph: 2660 2288 email: cjp02in@yahoo.com, teesteesta@gmail.com 4 attachments — Download all attachments   View all images   Share all images   Raje-Mohammad-A-Shaikh.jpg 13K   View   Share   Download   Adv Yusuf Shaikh photo.jpg 20K   View   Share   Download   Altaf-Khan-I-Jidran.jpg 13K   View   Share   Download   120829 annexures to press release.doc 183K   View   Download

When cops behaved worse than rioters - By Zeeshan Shaikh - Free Press Journal, Mumbai

http://fpj.co.in/news/81772-When-cops-behaved-worse-than-rioters.html



When cops behaved worse than rioters

26- year- old Abbas Ujjainwala was picked up by cops for no rhyme or reason and seven of his teeth knocked out. Later, CCTV footage established he was in Kurla at the times riots erupted at Azad Maidan.

ZEESHAN SHAIKH Mumbai

 

On August 11, it was not just the rioters who behaved like hooligans but the law enforcers too behaved like rioters, going on mindless rampage of their own and breaking seven teeth of a young boy who wasn't even part of the riots.

The Rapid Action Force allegedly beat up 26- year- old Abbas Ujjainwala on the night of August 11 when he went to Azad Maidan looking for a friend. Abbas, who was at home when the riots took place early in the evening, had gone to Azad Maidan at 9: 30 PM after the riots stopped, to look for his friend who hadn't returned from the protest meet.

On seeing him, the RAF men thrashed him with batons, knocking out seven of his teeth. He was arrested and, incidentally, acquitted by the court on Tuesday. A CCTV installed in Taxi Mens Colony, Kurla, where he resides, came to his rescue. The footage showed Ujjainwala shopping near his house at the time vandals were wreaking havoc at Azad Maidan.

'I was in the colony when the riots erupted. At 9.30 PM, I was at Azad Maidan searching for a friend when the police apprehended me. They thrashed me, broke my teeth and hit me hard on the head.

I was arrested even though I told them I was not part of the protest,'Ujjainwala said, who is hardly able to speak.

'How can the police first beat up a person and later pronounce him innocent?'exclaimed Hussain Ujjainwala, father of Abbas.

 

Apart from Abbas, three more acquitted youth were allegedly beaten black and blue by the RAF and the Arthur Road Jail authorities before being set free nearly 14 days later.

All the 23 accused, who were acquitted owing to lack of evidence, were to be sent for an immediate medical check up after Advocate Khalid Azmi filed an application on Saturday on behalf of their family members stating that they d were beaten up in Arthur Road Jail.

However, the police have still not sent the acquitted and the accused for medical check up.

Further, Abbas claimed he was verbally abused and threatened by the Arthur Road Jail authorities. 'I was beaten up in such a manner that they left no visible injuries on my body. 

They mostly assaulted us with punches and kicks,'Abbas added.

FPJ had first reported Abbass torturous ordeal on Monday. However, when Deputy Police Commissioner, Nisar Tamboli, was called for the police version, he said he was unaware of the incident and asked us to contact crime branch officials. Additional Police Commissioner Niket Kaushik was unavailable for comment.

Another acquitted youth, Anees Dawaray ( 23), a garage mechanic, also claims the police at Arthur road jail beat him up. Aslam Ali Shaikh ( 19), a FYBcom student at MD College in Dadar, who was also wrongly picked up by the police on the eve of the riots, has a harrowing account to narrate.

'Immediately after releasing me from Taloja jail on Tuesday, I had to be rushed to a private nursing home for dressing of wounds. I can barely walk. They beat me on my legs with a stick at Arthur Jail road,'said a visibly shaken Shaikh.

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Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai adds: The torture of the innocents arrested by Mumbai police was widely reported by Mumbai's Urdu Press, without Police, Government or English media taking any note. A court plea was filed and all the victimised prisioners were asked to be presented in court. Mumbai police caught on wrong foot, tried to save their faces, shifted them to far off Taloja and delayed presenting them in court for 3 days, till the judge came heavily agianst them. They then had no choice, but to free some who had suffered the most and could have resulted in court hauling the police to prosecute the torturers.

US Preparing for a Post-Israel Middle East? - By Franklin Lamb - Foreign Policy Journal

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/08/28/us-preparing-for-a-post-israel-middle-east/

US Preparing for a Post-Israel Middle East?

by Franklin Lamb

August 28, 2012

BEIRUT — Congresswoman Illena Ros-Lehtinen will have her hands full as she makes the political and social rounds at this month’s Republican National Convention.  Illena is the only female committee chair in the House of Representatives and arguably Israel’s most ardent agent.  She is a constant thorn in the Obama administration’s side, regularly castigating the president for playing “political games with U.S. foreign policy” and being “soft on Iran” and undermining the legitimacy of Israel.  Ros-Lehtinen is a congressional cheer leader also for her Jewish voters in Florida—a key battleground in the rapidly approaching US presidential election. Most recently, Ros-Lehtinen helped shepherd through Congress yet another bill tightening sanctions against Iran while calling for US military action against the Assad regime in Syria.

The Congresswomen’s focus will likely not be on pushing the republican’s talking points regarding her party’s nominee, Mitt Romney, the former “moderate Massachusetts governor” who she is aware is unlikely to win the White House. Nor, according to a source at the Democratic National Committee, frantically putting together final touches on their own Convention, to be held the week of September 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina, will Ileana spend much time with or promoting Mitt’ running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan. Ryan, an Ayn Rand (author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged as well as founder of the Objectivism movement) follower, regularly tells audiences that “Ayn Rand’s teachings have been one of the most profound philosophical influences of my life”—well, except for religion and abortion, as Ayn who passed away in 1982 was an avowed atheist and strongly pro-abortion,  the opposite of  what Ryan tells audiences he is.

Rather, Ros-Lehtinen will be meeting with local, national, and international Jewish leaders in this must win state where she has been assigned the task of reassuring them that the Republican Party is Israel’s best friend and that a recent US government draft report urging a US re-think of its relationship to Israel is the responsibility of none other than Barack Obama, and it reveals his true disdain for Israel.

Helping her smear the White House with the findings in the draft  analysis will be  William Kristol, publisher of the neoconservative Weekly Standard and Director of the New American Century, an “Israel first” Washington-based lobby “promoting joint Israeli and American political and military leadership across the globe, while bringing democracy to the Middle East”.

So what is all the fuss about?

It’s a paper entitled “Preparing For A Post Israel Middle East”, an 82-page analysis that concludes that the American national interest in fundamentally at odds with that of Zionist Israel. The authors conclude that Israel is currently the greatest threat to US national interests because its nature and actions prevent normal US relations  with  Arab and  Muslim countries and, to a growing degree, the wider international community.

The study was commissioned by the US Intelligence Community comprising 16 American intelligence agencies with an annual budget in excess of $ 70 billion. The IC includes the Departments of the Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Defense Intelligence Agency, Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, State, Treasure, Drug Enforcement Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency commissioned the study.

Among the many findings that Ros-Lehtenin and Kristol and other unregistered agents of Israel will likely try to exploit politically between now and November 6, by using them to attack the Obama Administration are the following:

• Israel, given its current brutal occupation and belligerence cannot  be salvaged any more than apartheid south Africa could be when as late as 1987 Israel was the only “Western” nation that upheld diplomatic ties with South Africa and was the last country to join the international boycott campaign before the regime collapsed;
• The Israel leadership, with its increasing support of the 700,000 settlers in illegal colonies in the occupied West Bank is increasing out of touch with the political, military and economic realities of the Middle East;
• The post Labor government Likud coalition is deeply complicit with and influenced by the settlers’ political and financial power and will increasingly face domestic civil strife which the US government should not associate itself with or become involved with;
• The Arab Spring and Islamic Awakening has to a major degree freed a large majority of the 1.2 billion Arab and Muslims to pursue what an overwhelming majority believe is the illegitimate, immoral and unsustainable European occupation of Palestine of the indigenous population;
• Simultaneous with, but predating, rapidly expanding Arab and Muslim power in the region as evidenced by the Arab spring, Islamic Awakening and the ascendancy of Iran, as American power and influence recedes,  the US commitment to belligerent oppressive Israel is becoming impossible to defend or execute consistent given paramount US national interests which include normalizing relations with the 57 Islamic countries;
• Gross Israeli interference in the internal affairs of the United States through spying and illegal US arms transfers. This includes supporting more than 60 ‘front organizations’ and  approximately 7,500 US officials who do Israel’s bidding and seek to dominate and intimidate the media and agencies of  the US government which should no longer be condoned;
• That the United States government no longer has the financial resources, or public support to continue funding Israel. The billions of dollars in direct and indirect aid from US taxpayers to Israel since 1967 is not affordable and is increasingly being objected to by US taxpayers who oppose continuing American military involvement in the Middle East. US public opinion no longer supports funding and executing widely perceived illegal US wars on Israel’s behalf. This view is increasingly being shared by Europe, Asia and the International public;
• Israel’s segregationist occupation infrastructure evidenced by  legalized discrimination and increasingly separate and unequal justice systems must no longer be directly or indirectly funded by the US taxpayers or  ignored by the US government;
• Israel has failed as a claimed democratic state and continued American financial and political cover will not change its continuing devolution as international pariah state;
• Increasingly,  rampant and violent racism exhibited among Jewish settlors in the West Bank is being condoned by the Israeli government to a degree  that the Israel government has become its protector and partner;
• The expanding chasm  among American Jews objecting to Zionism and Israeli practices, including the killing and brutalizing of Palestinians under Israeli occupation,  are gross violations of American and International law and raise questions within the US Jewish community regarding the American responsibility to protect (R2P) innocent civilians under occupation;
• The international opposition to the increasingly  apartheid regime can no longer be synchronized with American claimed  humanitarian values or US expectations in its bi-lateral relations with the 193 member United Nations;
• The Draft ends with language about the need to avoid entangling alliances that alienate much of the World and condemn American citizens to endure the consequences.

Interestingly, it notes Iran as an example of a country and people that have much in common and whose citizens have a real interest in enjoy bilateral associations (here an apparent reference to Israel and its US lobby) not determined by the wishes of other countries and their agents. It also highlights the need for the US to undertake the repairing of relations with Arab and Muslim countries, including the drastically curtained use of drone aircraft.

The coming days will clarity the success of Israel’s in making an issue of the finding in the soon to be published daft report and the degree to which the Republican Party will gain for its findings in the race for the White House.

How Osmania University’s Journalism Dept. came into being

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/article3815176.ece




 

News » Cities » Hyderabad

Hyderabad, August 24, 2012

How OU’s Journalism Dept. came into being

By Dasu Kesava Rao

It was an American, DeForest O’Dell, who founded the department about 60 years ago

It was the summer of 1954. Looking out of my living room window, opening on Barkatpura chaman, I found a rundown bus stop north of the chaman and offload a foreigner into a heavy downpour. At once I ran to him with an umbrella and brought him in.

“I am O’Dell. DeForest O’Dell from America. I am here to set up a department of journalism at Osmania University,” quaffing an inviting cup of coffee our guest told my father. “What, a department to turn out journalists?” It sounded strange at that time. 

We thought journalists are born, not made. We learnt that journalists like Kotamraju Rama Rao, M. Chalapati Rau, Khasa Subba Rao, C. Y. Chintamani, Kunduri Iswara Dutt did not go to a journalism school.

Journalism was then considered a mission and not a profession. Independent India felt the need to train young men and women in the craft and practice of journalism and also introduce them to its principles and values to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding newspaper readership and industry. P. P. Singh founded the School of Journalism in Lahore in 1941 and shifted it to Chandigarh after India became free. Then followed the Hislop College of Nagpur, a private institution, which introduced a course in journalism in 1952.

The credit for laying a strong foundation for journalism education in the country went to Osmania University. It got in touch with American Universities and academicians for help in setting up a separate department of journalism. O’Dell, a veteran newsman and journalism educator from the US was entrusted with the task.

Man of many parts

Born in Atlanta on January 1, 1898, he was actively involved with the campus newspaper and yearbook at Butler University from where he graduated in 1921. He went on to head its journalism department. He earned a Master’s degree and Ph. D. from Columbia University in New York City. During his college years, O’Dell worked for various newspapers in Indiana and New York. He had worked as a copy boy and reporter on The Indianapolis News and The Indianapolis Times. He later became city editor of The Crawfordsville Review.

Besides writing for various New York newspapers, he served as a copy editor at Associated Press in New York City for a long time. He also taught and headed journalism departments at six colleges and universities in the US.

Dr. O’Dell came to India in 1954 as the founder-head of the department. He started with the introduction of diploma and certificate courses mainly benefitting reporters and sub-editors working in various English and language newspapers in Hyderabad. Osmania was the first University in the country to introduce such a course.

From the very first year the department ran a journal The Osmania Courier founded and edited by my brother Krishnamoorty who enrolled for the first batch of 1954-55. The Courier served as a laboratory newspaper serving the campus community. A month-long internship in a major newspaper in New Delhi, Bombay or Madras was integral to the course and gave the students a lot of exposure as well as avenues for employment.

The Journalism department was the envy of others in the University as it boasted of a rich collection of copies of foreign newspapers like The Daily Mirror, The Daily Telegraph, (Manchester), Guardian, etc, thousands of books gifted mostly by the World Literacy Inc. and a good number of brand new portable typewriters (dream possession of any reporter of the times) and cameras.

Dr O’Dell stayed on as head of the department until 1956 to ensure that the department stood on a strong foundation and returned to Butler University. He died in Indianapolis on June 19, 1958. The OU Department of Journalism grew from strength to strength over the past 60 years adding courses at post-graduate and master’s level (BCJ and MCJ), M. Phil and Ph. D.

(The writer belongs to the 1970-71 batch of BJ and

1980-81 batch of MCJ)

Keywords: Journalism Dept, OU

More In: Hyderabad

The sham “terrorism expert” industry By Glen Greenlwald

Thursday, Aug 16, 2012 02:59 AM IST

The sham “terrorism expert” industry

A highly ideological, jingoistic clique masquerades as objective scholars, all to justify US militarism

By Glenn Greenwald

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(Credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson)
Shortly prior to the start of the London Olympics, there was an outburst of hysteria over the failure to provide sufficient security against Terrorism, but as Harvard Professor Stephen Walt noted yesterday in Foreign Policy, this was all driven, as usual, by severe exaggerations of the threat: “Well, surprise, surprise. Not only was there no terrorist attack, the Games themselves came off rather well.” Walt then urges this lesson be learned:

[W]e continue to over-react to the “terrorist threat.” Here I recommend you read John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart’s The Terrorism Delusion: America’s Overwrought Response to September 11, in the latest issue of International Security. Mueller and Stewart analyze 50 cases of supposed “Islamic terrorist plots” against the United States, and show how virtually all of the perpetrators were (in their words) “incompetent, ineffective, unintelligent, idiotic, ignorant, unorganized, misguided, muddled, amateurish, dopey, unrealistic, moronic, irrational and foolish.” They quote former Glenn Carle, former deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats saying “we must see jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are,” noting further that al Qaeda’s “capabilities are far inferior to its desires.”

In the next paragraph, Walt essentially makes clear why this lesson will not be learned: namely, because there are too many American interests vested in the perpetuation of this irrational fear:

Mueller and Stewart estimate that expenditures on domestic homeland security (i.e., not counting the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan) have increased by more than $1 trillion since 9/11, even though the annual risk of dying in a domestic terrorist attack is about 1 in 3.5 million.

Using conservative assumptions and conventional risk-assessment methodology, they estimate that for these expenditures to be cost-effective “they would have had to deter, prevent, foil or protect against 333 very large attacks that would otherwise have been successful every year.”

Finally, they worry that this exaggerated sense of danger has now been “internalized”: even when politicians and “terrorism experts” aren’t hyping the danger, the public still sees the threat as large and imminent.  As they conclude:

… Americans seems to have internalized their anxiety about terrorism, and politicians and policymakers have come to believe that they can defy it only at their own peril.  Concern about appearing to be soft on terrorism has replaced concern about seeming to be soft on communism, a phenomenon that lasted far longer than the dramatic that generated it … This extraordinarily exaggerated and essentially delusional response may prove to be perpetual.”

Which is another way of saying that you should be prepared to keep standing in those pleasant and efficient TSA lines for the rest of your life, and to keep paying for far-flung foreign interventions designed to “root out” those nasty jihadis.

Many of the benefits from keeping Terrorism fear levels high are obvious. Private corporations suck up massive amounts of Homeland Security cash as long as that fear persists, while government officials in the National Security and Surveillance State can claim unlimited powers, and operate with unlimited secrecy and no accountability. In sum, the private and public entities that shape government policy and drive political discourse profit far too much in numerous ways to allow rational considerations of the Terror threat.

* * * * *

But there’s a very similar and at least equally important (though far less discussed) constituency deeply vested in the perpetuation of this fear. It’s the sham industry Walt refers to, with appropriate scare quotes, as “terrorism experts,” who have built their careers on fear-mongering over Islamic Terrorism and can stay relevant only if that threat does.

These “terrorism experts” form an incredibly incestuous, mutually admiring little clique in and around Washington. They’re employed at think tanks, academic institutions, and media outlets. They can and do have mildly different political ideologies — some are more Republican, some are more Democratic — but, as usual for D.C. cliques, ostensible differences in political views are totally inconsequential when placed next to their common group identity and career interest: namely, sustaining the myth of the Grave Threat of Islamic Terror in order to justify their fear-based careers, the relevance of their circle, and their alleged “expertise.” Like all adolescent, insular cliques, they defend one another reflexively whenever a fellow member is attacked, closing ranks with astonishing speed and loyalty; they take substantive criticisms very personally as attacks on their “friends,” because a criticism of the genre and any member in good standing of this fiefdom is a threat to their collective interests.

On a more substantive level, any argument (such as Walt’s) that puts the Menace of Islamic Terror into its proper rational perspective — namely, that it pales in comparison to countless other threats (including Terrorism from non-Muslim individuals and states); that it is wildly exaggerated considering what is done in its name; and that it is sustained by ugly sentiments of Islamophobic bigotry — is one that must be harshly denounced. Such an argument not only threatens their relevance but also their central ideology: that Terror is an objective term that just happens almost always to mean Islamic Terror, but never American Terror.
Thus, Walt’s seemingly uncontroversial article was published for not even 24 hours when it was bitterly attacked for hours on Twitter this morning by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, and it’s not hard to see why. Looking at Gartenstein-Ross’s reaction and what drives it sheds considerable light onto this sham “terrorism expert” industry.
Gartenstein-Ross’ entire lucrative career as a “terrorism expert” desperately depends on the perpetuation of the Islamic Terror threat. He markets himself as an expert in Islamic Terror by highlighting that he was born Jewish, converted to Islam while in college, and then Saw the Light and converted to Christianity. 

During his short stint as a Muslim, he worked at the al-Haramain charity foundation in Oregon — the same one that was found to have been illegally spied upon by the Bush NSA — but became an FBI informant against the group because — as he claimed in a book,”My Year Inside Radical Islam”, which he subsequently wrote to profit off of his conduct — he was horrified by “the group hatreds and anti-intellectualism of radical Islam.”

He is now listed as an “expert” at the neocon Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (the group’s list of “experts” is basically a Who’s Who of every unhinged neocon extremist in the country). Gartenstein-Ross is specifically employed by the Foundation as something called “Director of the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization.” According to his own bio, he also “consults for clients who need to be at the forefront of understanding violent non-state actors and twenty-first century conflict” including for “major media companies, and strategic consultations for defense contractors” and “also regularly designs and leads training for the U.S. Department of Defense’s Leader Development and Education for Sustained Peace (LDESP) courses, the U.S. State Department’s Office of Anti-Terrorism Assistance, and domestic law enforcement.”

Unsurprisingly, Gartenstein-Ross — like so many “terrorism experts” in similar positions — is eager to depict Islamic Terror as a serious threat: he knows where his bread his buttered and does not want the personal cash train known as the War on Terror ever to arrive at a final destination. If you were him, would you?
In 2009, he wrote a study entitled “Homegrown Terrorists in the U.S. and U.K.” which, needless to say, was only about Muslims: an “examination of 117 ‘jihadist’ terrorists in the United States and the United Kingdom” which “concludes that religious beliefs” — namely, Islam –”play a role in radicalization.” In 2011, he wrote a book entitled Bin Laden’s Legacy: Why We’re Still Losing the War on Terror, which argues that “despite the death of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda remains a significant threat.” He has hyped the ludicrous alleged Iranian Quds Forces plot against the Saudi Ambassador (explaining that ”Holder weighing in on the plot’s connection to Iran means the administration is deadly serious about it”), and recently touted Nigeria as the “next front in the war on terror.”

To be sure, Gartenstein-Ross is more nuanced and sophisticated than the standard neocon “terror expert” cartoon — his 2011 bin Laden book argues against wasteful counter-terrorism programs that are out of proportion to the actual threat, and he has, to his credit, publicly opposed some of the more crass Islamophobic attacks — but if the War on Islamic Terror disappears, so, too, does his lucrative career as a “terrorism expert.” In that regard, he’s a highly representative figure for this industry.

Walt’s clearly expressed and uncontroversial argument about the exaggerated Terror threat prompted hours of angry derision and personal mockery today from Gartenstein-Ross (who ironically often holds himself out as the Beacon of Civil Discourse). It began this way:

Gartenstein-Ross then demanded that Muslim Terror be taken more seriously than Walt suggests: “terrorists actually put 3 bombs on passenger planes since 2009.” He was then joined by fellow “natsec” clique members for hours of swarming group mockery aimed at Walt (that’s how they typically behave). Gartenstein-Ross continued: Foreign Policy ”should rename Walt’s blog ‘An Ideologue in an Ideological Age.’ The idea he transcends ideological blinders is laughable.” Professor Walt, he then said, is “far less rigorous than his reputation suggests” and “the gap between perception & reality is rather astounding.” Then: “when an academic starts blogging it’s often easy to tell if that ‘authority’ is undeserved.”

All this public impugning of Walt’s reputation, scholarship and character over the crime of pointing out that the threat of Islamic Terror is wildly overstated by people who have an interest in perpetuating the threat. It’s as though Gartenstein-Ross and his friends were eager to jump up, wave their arms, and prove Walt’s argument by identifying themselves as precisely the fear-mongering culprits he was criticizing.

Exactly the same thing happened this week in response to Juan Cole’s superb post entitled “Top Ten differences between White Terrorists and Others,” pointing out all the revealing differences in how white perpetrators of violence are talked about versus non-white (especially Muslim) ones. Cole’s argument was every bit as threatening to the vested interests of the “terror expert” industry as Walt’s was, as it reveals the ugly truth that the hysteria over the Muslim Threat is motivated far more by Islamophobic bigotry and subservience to U.S. Government militarism than any rational policy assessments or high-minded scholarship.

This was too much to bear for J.M. Berger, a self-described “specialist on homegrown extremism” and author of “Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam,” which, in his words, “uncovers the secret history of American jihadists” — meaning Muslims, of course. “American Muslims have traveled abroad to fight in wars because of their religious beliefs,” says the book’s summary. (Symbolizing how relentlessly incestuous this clique is, Gartenstein-Ross randomly took a moment out of his attack on Walt today to pimp what he called Berger’s “valuable book”). Like Gartenstein-Ross, Berger avoids the more overt forms of anti-Muslim rhetoric, often stressing the need to distinguish between Good Muslims and the Terrorist kind, but he spends his time doing things like shrieking about the Towering Menace of Anwar al-Awlaki and generally hopping on whatever Muslim-Terrorism-is-a-Grave-Danger train that comes along.
Berger denounced Cole’s piece as “80 percent BS, 20 percent fair points” and said it was composed of “lazy generalizations.” Specifically, Berger complained that when a Muslim launches a violent attack, there are “whole stories dedicated to AQ being fringe and Islam being peaceful,” but when there’s a violent attack by a white shooter, “no one does stories about how white people are mostly peaceful and non-racist” (apparently, the true victims of unfair media coverage of Terror attacks are white people, not Muslims). He insisted, needless to say, that white perpetrators of violence are depicted as lone nuts while attacks by Muslims are depicted as part of a broader Terror threat only because it’s so true. It’s vital to Berger that Islamic Terror continue to be perceived as a vital, coordinated national security threat or else J.W. Berger and his “expertise” will cease to matter.
The key role played by this “terrorism expert” industry in sustaining highly damaging hysteria was highlighted in an excellent and still-relevant 2007 Washington Post Op-Ed by Zbigniew Brzezinski. In it, he described how the War on Terror has created an all-consuming Climate of Fear in the U.S. along with a systematic, multi-headed policy of discrimination against Muslim Americans based on these severely exaggerated threats, and described one of the key culprits this way:

Such fear-mongering, reinforced by security entrepreneurs, the mass media and the entertainment industry, generates its own momentum.The terror entrepreneurs, usually described as experts on terrorism, are necessarily engaged in competition to justify their existence. Hence their task is to convince the public that it faces new threats. That puts a premium on the presentation of credible scenarios of ever-more-horrifying acts of violence, sometimes even with blueprints for their implementation.

It’s very similar to what Les Gelb, in expressing his regret for supporting the attack on Iraq, described as “the disposition and incentives [in America's Foreign Policy Community] to support wars to retain political and professional credibility.” When I interviewed Gelb in 2010 regarding that quote, he told me that D.C. experts know that they can retain relevance in and access to key government circles only if they lend theoretical support to U.S. militarism rather than oppose it.

(Notably, people in these insular, government-subservient D.C. enclaves try to suppress and delegitimize any discussion of who funds them and what their careerist and cultural incentives are by denouncing any such discussion as illegitimate ad hominem; that’s all a way of demanding that they be accepted at face value as “experts” and that the financial and institutional pressures and groupthink precepts shaping their world and their views never be assessed).

Similarly to Brzezinski’s Op-Ed, Ken Silverstein recently wrote an excellent June, 2012 Harpers article examining the fraud known as Matthew Levitt, Ph.D., who heads the “Counterterrorism and Intelligence Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,” where he tracks “global jihadist movements” (as usual, “terrorism experts” fixate on Muslims). Levitt has been repeatedly used by the U.S. Government as a “terrorism expert” witness in the prosecution of dozens of Muslims accused of Terrorism despite a history of discredited claims and extremely dubious grounds for claiming “expertise”. Silverstein writes:

That is a description that applies generally to the sham “terrorism expert” industry.

* * * * *

Not all of these “terror experts” are driven primarily by careerist relevance. Some are actually vapid enough to be True Believers, addicted to the excitement and sense of purpose that Terrorism provides. Fran Townsend — Bush’s former Homeland Security adviser, CNN’s “national security expert,” and a paid supporter of the Iranian Terror group MEK — provided a small but telling example this morning. She was apparently at New York’s LaGuardia Airport when a very exciting episode happened which she “reported” on Twitter as it unfolded. First was this:

Code words! Security breaches! How scary! And exciting! Moments later:

The mystery builds! Then:

Here, things start to palpably deflate. The depressing realization starts to set in that nothing of any significance has happened, that it’s all just some routine, banal event of no consequence. Then: the inevitable, deeply disappointing denouement:

In other words, nothing — all that breathless excitement over absolutely nothing: a perfect little microcosm of America’s Terrorism policies and its “terror expert” industry over the last decade.
* * * * *
But the most pernicious attribute of this “terror expert” industry, the aspect that requires much more attention, is its pretense to non-ideological, academic objectivity. In reality, these “terror experts”, almost uniformly, have a deeply ideological view — a jingoistic, highly provincial understanding — of what Terrorism is and is not. They generally fixate on Muslims to the exclusion of all other forms of Terror. In particular, the idea that the U.S. or its allies now commit Terrorism is taboo, unthinkable. Their views on what Terrorism is track the U.S. Government’s and, by design, justify U.S. government actions. They are not “experts” as much as they are ideologues, rank propagandists, and servants of America’s establishment power centers.

The reason the term “terrorism experts” deserves to be put in quotation marks is not as some ad hominem insult (something the mavens of the “terror expert” clique are incapable of understanding, as they demonstrated with their ludicrously personalized outrage when I applied this critique to one of their industry’s most cherished Patron Saints, Will McCants). Rather, it’s because — as I’ve written about many times before — the very concept of Terrorism is inherently empty, illegitimate, meaningless. “Terrorism” itself is not an objective term or legitimate object of study, but was conceived of as a highly politicized instrument and has been used that way ever since.

The best scholarship on this issue, in my view, comes from Remi Brulin, who teaches at NYU and wrote his PhD dissertation at the Sorbonne in Paris on the discourse of Terrorism. When 
I interviewed him in 2010, he described the history of the term — it was pushed by Israel in the 1960s and early 1970s as a means of universalizing its conflicts (this isn’t our fight against our enemies over land; it’s the Entire World’s Fight against The Terrorists!). The term was then picked up by the neocons in the Reagan administration to justify their covert wars in Central America (in a test run for what they did after 9/11, they continuously exclaimed: we’re fighting against The Terrorists in Central America, even as they themselves armed and funded classic Terror groups in El Salvador and Nicaragua). From the start, the central challenge was how to define the term so as to include the violence used by the enemies of the U.S. and Israel, while excluding the violence the U.S., Israel and their allies used, both historically and presently. That still has not been figured out, which is why there is no fixed, accepted definition of the term, and certainly no consistent application.

Brulin details the well-known game-playing with the term: in the 1980s, Iraq was put on the U.S. list of Terror states when the U.S. disliked Saddam for being aligned with the Soviets; then Iraq was taken off when the U.S. wanted to arm Saddam to fight Iran; then they were put back on again when the U.S. wanted to attack Iraq. The same thing is happening now with the MEK: now that they’re a pro-U.S. and pro-Israel Terror group rather than a Saddam-allied one, they are magically no longer going to be deemed Terrorists.  

That is what Terrorism is: a term of propaganda, a means of justifying one’s own state violence — not some objective field of discipline in which one develops “expertise.”

This flaw in the concept of “terrorism expertise” is not a discrete indictment of specific “scholars,” but is a fundamental flaw plaguing the entire field. Even the most decorated and honored “terrorism experts” are little more than ideological propagandists, because that’s what the term necessarily entails. Today, Brulin wrote the following to me regarding U.S. Reagan-era policy in Central America — namely, supporting Terror groups (death squads) while denouncing Terrorism — and the specific “terrorism expert” often held up as the field’s most prestigious, Bruce Hoffman:

One obvious question comes to mind: how do “terrorism experts” deal with US policies in Salvador during the 1980s?

A comprehensive analysis of the two major “terrorism studies” journals, “Studies on Conflict and Terrorism” (simply titled “Terrorism” until 1992) and “Terrorism and Political Violence” shows that overall these journals have dealt with this issue by … being silent about it. More precisely, several authors in fact absolutely accept that the concept of “state terrorism”  is a valid one, and that acts by “death squads” clearly fall under that definition also. They simply never deal with this issue in the context of the real world policies of the United States and of the Reagan years in particular, a silence all the more surprising than Reagan was the first American President to develop a “discourse on terrorism”.

Reacting to Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Exum wrote: “Greenwald makes it seem as if states are never mentioned as terrorist actors, but there is a lot of literature on the use of coercive violence by states and state terrorism”.  This is true of course, but at least when it comes to the conflict of El Salvador studied here, and to US policies in that country, those who did write about this issue have never been published in the major “terrorism studies journals.”
Exum then adds: “Bruce Hoffman published this book in 1999. I’m pretty sure those two guys are terrorism experts without the scare quotes.”

In “Inside Terrorism”, to his merit, Hoffman devotes a full chapter to the question of the “definition of terrorism.” What follows in the rest of his book is naturally dependent on what he decides to include and not include in his definition of “terrorism”. Here is, in full, how Hoffman deals with the issue of “death squads” (emphasis added):
“The use of so-called ‘death squads’ (often off-duty or plain-clothes security or police officers) in conjunction with blatant intimidation of political opponents, human rights and aid workers, student groups, labor organizers, journalists and others has been a prominent feature of the right-wing military dictatorships that took power in Argentina, Chile and Greece during the 1970s and even of elected governments in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia and Peru since the mid-1980s. But these state-sanctioned or explicitly ordered acts of internal political violence directed mostly against domestic populations — that is, rule by violence and intimidation by those already in power against their own citizenry — are generally termed ‘terror’ in order to distinguish that phenomenon from ‘terrorism’, which is understood to be violence committed by non-state entities. (Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 27).

Sadly, Hoffman does not tell his readers who at the time “termed acts by death squads ‘terror’”, or who wishes to do so “in order to distinguish this phenomenon from ‘terrorism.’”

Not only is this argument rather less than convincing, but most crucially no one in Washington, at the time, ever used this argument, and this for obvious reasons. Indeed, as Hoffman himself notes, the “death squads”, “even in elected governments like El Salvador”, were “state-sanctioned”, precisely what the Reagan administration kept denying at the time. Furthermore, Hoffman’s argument makes no sense in the historical context: can one imagine the Reagan administration defending US aid to El Salvador as part of the “fight against terrorism” while stating that the ties between that State and the “death squad” posed no problem because they merely fell under the concept of “terror”?

Thus, the role of “terrorism experts” cannot simply be described as blindly accepting of the official “discourse on terrorism”, although this is already a strong critique. As the case of El Salvador demonstrates, what they have done is to invent arguments aimed at excluding from discussion specific issues, while hiding or being completely silent about the actual debates that took place on this topic at the very heart of Washington. In so doing, they have allowed a “terrorism discourse” to developed and become hegemonic despite the many internal inconsistencies that have been at its heart from the very beginning.

Finally, one will note that Hoffman, in Inside Terrorism, makes no mention of the Contras and their support by the Reagan administration. This is a difficult decision to explain, since aid to the Contras falls under the concept of “state sponsored terrorism”, the validity of which is accepted by all experts. Here, Hoffman uses the technique used by so many other “terrorism experts” in this case: he simply decides to not write about it, with no explanation given.

The entire field is one huge effort to legitimize U.S. state violence and delegitimize the violence by its enemies (along those lines: the court-martial of accused Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan began today, and I asked earlier today on Twitter whether this attack constituted Terrorism given that it targeted a military base and soldiers of a nation at war. My mere asking of this question sparked all sorts of intense outrage from the predictable “natsec” D.C. mavens: Of course it’s Terrorism, as Hasan killed unarmed people including one civilian, exclaimed people who would never, ever dare apply the Terrorism label to the civilian-devastating U.S. attack on Iraq or the use of American drones and cluster bombs to kill innocent civilians by the dozens; that is the discourse of Terrorism: violence by Muslims against a U.S. military base during a time of war qualifies, but violence by the U.S. Government against thousands of innocent Muslim civilians never could).

Brulin is far from alone among scholars in recognizing the true purpose of this sham discipline. Harvard’s Lisa Stampnitzky, whom I interviewed several months ago, is also a leading scholar on the exploitation of Terrorism and the field that calls itself “terrorism experts.” In a superb journal article in Qualitative Sociology, she documents that “‘Terrorism’ has proved to be a highly problematic object of expertise”; in particular, “Terrorism studies fails to conform to the most common sociological notions of what a field of intellectual production ought to look like, and has been described by participants and observers alike as a failure.” She notes that the harshest condemnations have come from those who work in this academic discipline: “Terrorism researchers have characterized their field as stagnant, poorly conceptualized, lacking in rigor, and devoid of adequate theory, data, and methods.” That includes Bruce Hoffman himself, who, she notes, wrote:

Fifteen years ago, the study of terrorism was described by perhaps the world’s preeminent authority on modern warfare as a ’huge and ill-defined subject [that] has probably been responsible for more incompetent and unnecessary books than any other outside the field of sociology. It attracts phonies and amateurs…as a candle attracts moths’… [T]errorism research arguably has failed miserably.

Stampnitzky adds: “More than 15 years after this assessment, descriptions of the field are rife with similar claims.” Indeed, her forthcoming book from Cambridge University Press is entitled “Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented Terrorism” and, in her words, it “explains how political violence became ‘terrorism,’ and how this transformation led to the current ‘war on terror’.” For that reason, she argues in her dissertation, “those who would address terrorism as a rational object, subject to scientific analysis and manipulation, produce a discourse which they are unable to control, as attempts at scientific discourse are continually hybridized by the moral discourse of the public sphere, in which terrorism is conceived as a problem of evil and pathology.” Indeed, she explains in her journal article, “One of the most oft-noted difficulties has been the inability of researchers to establish a suitable definition of the concept of ‘terrorism’ itself.”

In a recently published journal article in International Security, entitled “The Terrorism Delusion,” Professors John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart (cited by Walt) extensively document what a fraud the concept of “Terrorism” has become over the last decade. Specifically, ”the exaggerations of the threat presented by terrorism and then on the distortions of perspective these exaggerations have inspired— distortions that have in turn inspired a determined and expensive quest to ferret out, and even to create, the nearly nonexistent.”

Richard Jackson is a Professor at the The National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies in New Zealand. He has written volumes on the fraud of “terrorism expertise” and the propagandistic purpose of this field of discipline. He has documented that most self-proclaimed “terrorism experts” simply ignore the primary cause of the violence they claim to study: “most terrorism scholars, politicians and the media don’t seem to ‘know’ that terrorism is most often caused by military intervention overseas, and not religion, radicalization, insanity, ideology, poverty or such like” — even though “the Pentagon has known it for years.” In one article entitled “10 Things More Likely to Kill You Than Terrorism,” he notes that “The chances of you dying in a terrorist attack are in the range of 1 in 80,000, or about the same chance of being killed by a meteor,” and that bathtubs, vending machines, and lightning all pose a greater risk of death.

In a book critiquing the “terrorism expert” field, Jackson argued that “most of what is accepted as well-founded ’knowledge’ in terrorism studies is, in fact, highly debatable and unstable.“ He therefore scorns almost four decades of so-called Terrorism scholarship as ”based on a series of ‘virulent myths’, ’half-truths’ and contested claims” that are plainly “biased towards Western state priorities.” To Jackson, terrorism is “a social fact rather than a brute fact” and “does not exist outside of the definitions and practices which seek to enclose it, including those of the terrorism studies field.” In sum, it means whatever the wielder of the term wants it to mean: something that cannot be the subject of legitimate “expertise.”

* * * * *

There is no term more potent in our political discourse and legal landscape than “Terrorism.” It shuts down every rational thought process and political debate the minute it is uttered. It justifies torture (we have to get information from the Terrorists); due-process-free-assassinations even of our own citizens (Obama has to kill the Terrorists); and rampant secrecy (the Government can’t disclose what it’s doing or have courts rule on its legality because the Terrorists will learn of it), and it sends people to prison for decades (material supporters of Terrorism).
It is a telling paradox indeed that this central, all-justifying word is simultaneously the most meaningless and therefore the most manipulated. It is, as I have noted before, a word that simultaneously means nothing yet justifies everything. Indeed, that’s the point: it is such a useful concept precisely because it’s so malleable, because it means whatever those with power to shape discourse want it to mean. And no faction has helped this process along as much as the group of self-proclaimed “terrorism experts” that has attached itself to think tanks, academia, and media outlets. They enable pure political propaganda to masquerade as objective fact, shining brightly with the veneer of scholarly rigor. The industry itself is a fraud, as are those who profit from and within it.
 
Close

UPA's Tunnel Vision - By M J Akbar - Editorial Director - INDIA TODAY

In choosing Manmohan Singh, rather than Sonia Gandhi, for his target of warning, MJ Akbar could be forgiven for adhering to political correctness. However, the fact is that Sonia is the prime culprit in sidelining all Congress initiatives as and when they are presented to her. After all she is strictly following Nehru-Gandhi line of keeping Muslims at arms length and destabilize them enough, so that they will have no place to go and seek their peace with Congress. She is not ready to give an inch to Muslims. Under the circumstances, though it is very very late, Muslims should promote their own political parties, however small, however ill-funded, however lead by dubious elements coming from various political parties, Muslims must be prepared to junk Congress and even other so called regional secular political formations, to give preferential support to their own Muslim lead secular parties. Without a strong and multi-regional, multi-state beginning, it will be a colossal mistake to depend on Congress, or Sonia and much less on Manmohan Singh, to do any justice to Muslim cause. Muslims should have realised by now, that it is out of all calculations by deep rooted Nehru Gandhi family belief to give any political role for Muslims except for family retainer-ship. That policy is writ large on the hand that is raised to demand their votes under threat of reprisals. Muslims should brace for the consequences of their new political adventures. However, if the recent experiments in UP is any indication, even if Muslim play the game of spoilers, they will strengthen their bargaining positions. Muslims must play the political games, according to the rules of the game, prevailing at this juncture in their country.

Another corollary: It should be understood that US/Israel are now fairly entrenched in India to play their own role in next regime change exercise in India. Muslims should better be on the correct side of these conspirators. They should attend their Iftars, but insist on take-home packages.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

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http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/india-today-editorial-director-m-j-akbar-on-muslim-voters-losing-faith-in-manmohan-singh/1/214546.html

M.J. Akbar  August 24, 2012 | UPDATED 17:18 IST

UPA's Tunnel Vision

India Today Editorial Director M J Akbar on Muslim voter's losing faith in Manmohan Singh

Tags: Muslim voters | Manmohan Singh | 2004 general elections | Sachar Commission

India Today Editorial Director MJ Akbar

Light is too powerful a concept; it suggests hope. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did promise Indian Muslims some solace at the end of a long and silent tunnel. That will probably be recorded as his biggest political mistake. When you raise expectations of a fragile community and then shatter them without remorse, each shard develops a poison edge.

Indian Muslims believe, with good reason, that it was their massive mobilisation in the 2004 General Elections that made Dr Manmohan Singh the most unexpected Prime Minister in India's electoral history. Those whose eyebrow has already risen may want to note a significant truth about Indian politics. It is expected that non-Congress PMs will be unexpected, which makes every surprise very unsurprising. But when Congress deviates from its well-established ground rules, we have a story.

It took three degrees of surprise to catapult Dr Singh into his present chair: He had to overcome one probability, one certainty and one possibility. First, the probable winner of the 2004 General Elections, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, lost. Then, for reasons that still have not been made entirely transparent, his certain successor, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, stepped aside, leaving the Congress dazed and Opposition bemused. Finally, Mrs Gandhi discarded the claims of the senior-most Congress leader, Pranab Mukherjee, and pushed Dr Singh, who would have been content with the finance ministry, forward. That sort of dream triple wins you the lottery of a lifetime.

Dr Singh sent a thank you note to Muslims soon enough. It was called the Sachar Commission. Justice Rajinder Sachar shocked the establishment with his honesty. First, he delivered his report very quickly. He did not linger in order to enjoy the various benefits that came with the appointment, as so many of his peers have done: There are instances that are shocking beyond belief. The Sachar Commission's report was an exercise in depth as well as profound and discerning empathy with its subject. It quickly became embedded within the Muslim political consciousness as a defining document. The Left Front never recovered from its revelation that Narendra Modi's Gujarat had a far higher percentage of Muslims in government employment than Marxist Bengal. Sachar etched a portrait of a community left in neglect by those political parties it had trusted.

The Muslim response was dual: It spurred a momentum that had already been building up, motivating a thrust towards education as the only means to reach out towards economic opportunity. Simultaneously, Muslims began to demand reservations in government jobs to compensate for the gap that had built.

Self-help brought rewards. Education among Muslim girls, for instance, has multiplied at a geometrical pace. But the Congress Government which sired the Sachar Commission did nothing about its recommendations. Instead of job reservations, Muslims got the old and stale retinue of gimmicks. Come elections, and the promise of reservations went into the first paragraph of speeches. Once votes had been counted, this promise went into a dustbin.

The Muslim voter's faith in Dr Singh did not wane easily; in fact it peaked in 2009. But a pinnacle, thanks to its height, offers clarity; illusions melt very quickly. When Congress continued to do nothing even after the substantial endorsement in 2009, Muslims began to slip away from the party, with devastating effect. The consequences of Congress' demolition in UP are still playing out. Assam turned this slippage into a fall.

The politics of Assam is not simple. Congress Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi wore his heart literally on his sleeve during visits to Muslim refugee camps when he chose to flaunt a Bodo scarf. Muslim reaction has also changed. Anger used to be diluted by fear, but fear has evaporated. SMS, and its more sinister cousin MMS, have eliminated the distance between Bodoland, Bangalore and Mumbai. Technology has also opened the market for mischief: Between the photoshop and visual cropping, murder on the Indus can be easily distorted into death on the Brahmaputra. Reality is harsh enough. Malice, exported by certain elements in Pakistan according to the home ministry, gives it a vicious twist.

For our Government, alas, the most volatile problem becomes an opportunity, not for a solution, but for another veil over misdeeds. Officials began to censor tweets critical of the Prime Minister, thereby managing to increase the intensity of criticism from all sides. Technology is community-neutral.

The collapse of hope in Congress has driven various Muslim communities into disparate political camps. Mulayam Singh Yadav was a major beneficiary, but the next question is more worrisome: Where do UP Muslims go if the Yadavs also disappoint? In Assam and Kerala, they have banded around exclusivist flags, which is bound to inspire a reaction, sooner rather than later. Desegregation divides communities with rivulets of suspicion. Instead of controlling this drift towards danger, the UPA Government has disappeared into its own tunnel of silence.