Wednesday, February 27, 2013

URDU MEDIA MONITOR LAUNCHED

25 February 2013
PRESS RELEASE: For Immediate Release

URDU MEDIA MONITOR LAUNCHED

A special website has been launched for non-Urdu readers who have a genuine desire to read what is being reported in the Urdu press and for those for whom Urdu speakers and Urdu readers both belong to a mysterious world living in their fanaticise suspecting and inventing conspiracies against themselves.

In its “About us” page Urdu Media Monitor, a newly born baby in the cyber world, introduces itself as, “Urdu that only about sixty years ago was the lingua franca of the Indian subcontinent, is now very simplistically associated with Pakistan or Muslims in north India.

“So unfortunate is now the status of this language that in both countries, India in particular, Urdu press is looked upon with disdain and often accused of sensationalism and misreporting. However the fact remains that it is still a vibrant and representative language of a vast sect of the community.

“Urdu Media Monitor (UMM) is a humble attempt aimed at making accessible to non-Urdu readers, by translating into English, selected articles, editorials and news items published in major Indian and Pakistani press and social media.

“Depending on the contents and quality of articles, we will also translate and produce useful and educational write-ups on past events and personalities that have been deliberately and mischievously dumped and buried in the archives only to be occasionally remembered in the Urdu press.

“We welcome suggestions from our readers whose appreciation and positive criticism will help us in making this site really useful.”

Ends

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Does Islam pose a threat to the West? - By Chip Le Grand - The Australian

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/does-islam-pose-a-threat-to-the-west/story-e6frg6z6-1226583659219

Does Islam pose a threat to the West?

Geert Wilders
Controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders speaking this week at Craigieburn in Melbourne, where he received standing ovations from the audience. Source: Getty Images
 
IT is hard to imagine a more incongruous place for Geert Wilders to introduce himself to Australia. Beyond the edge of town, at the end of a flat, single-lane road surrounded by damp paddocks, Wilders chose a Dutch-themed wedding and reception venue for his public coming out.

On the walls hung pictures of blonde girls in traditional Dutch headgear. Beyond the dark wooden beams and lead-lined windows of the main reception room, a windmill towered absurdly into an overcast sky. The setting immediately posed a question that has nagged Wilders and his supporters throughout this visit: whether his anti-Islamic message is an ill fit with the reality of modern Australian society.

In the press conference that followed, Wilders spoke about the threat he sees Islam posing to Australia, along with every Western democracy founded on Judaeo-Christian, humanist traditions. Asked why Australia should feel threatened, given fewer than 500,000 Muslims live here among a population of more than 22 million and the nation's 200-year history of absorbing immigrants of all religions and races into a stable liberal democracy, Wilders was emphatic.

"If you think what has happened in Europe will not happen in Australia, then you are totally wrong. I am trying to tell Australian friends what happened to Europe, what the real nature of Islam is - how the Islamisation of society will change society for the worse; and it will cost not only the freedom that we cherish (but) anything that we stand for, our own culture - and how to deal with it."
His best line came in response to Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu urging Australians to ignore Wilders. "You can ignore it and sing Kumbaya all day long, but the voters will correct him in due time, I am sure."

Wilders's message here is a marginally embellished version of the stump speech he has delivered in the Dutch parliament, across Europe and in the US, Israel and Canada for the past eight years. 

His evocation of Passchendaele and Gallipoli in calling for Australians to demonstrate the Anzac spirit in standing firm against the threat of Islam was clearly a locally crafted pitch. But, as Dutch journalist Rob van der Wardt tells Inquirer, Wilders said from the outset he did not plan to say anything new in Australia.

Wilders is, in parliamentary terms at least, a politician on the wane. Nearly a million people voted for him in last September's Dutch elections, yet he suffered a 5.4 per cent swing against his Party for Freedom, which lost nine seats. He was able to influence policy in the last parliament as an official supporter of the government. Now he is just another Dutch MP, albeit one whose choice of platforms ensures he remains a formidable political figure.

In Australia, Wilders has been cast as a lone voice determined to tackle a subject shunned by mainstream politicians other than Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, who for two years has been encouraging Wilders to visit. With his cartoonish bouffant of peroxide hair and commanding stage presence, Wilders has a charisma lacking in Australian politics. Is there a politician in Canberra who could have drawn more than 500 people to the outer Melbourne suburb of Craigieburn to pay for the privilege of hearing them speak on a bleak Tuesday night?

The crowd was mostly old and white. There were plenty of Dutch expats and a disproportionate number of Jews. The loudest cheer was reserved for his call to stand with Israel, a country "in jihad's frontline". Many had been jostled by protesters on their way in.  

They shook their heads at Wilders's stories of Islamic-controlled no-go zones in European cities, of Muslims armed with Kalashnikovs firing on Belgian police, of lawless Moroccan youths terrorising The Netherlands. "I am not exaggerating," he insisted. "I tell it like it is." He described Islamic immigration as a tool of jihad, Islam as a ruthless political ideology that aimed to impose sharia on everyone. Moderate Muslims, he said, were "captives of Islam". The crowd gave Wilders a standing ovation when he walked to the stage and again when he left.

Yet what, if anything, should Australia take from Wilders's message and his policy prescription to turn back the tide of Islamisation? He calls for three things: an end to immigration from Islamic countries; an end to the construction of new mosques; and deportation of immigrants who commit crimes. The construction of mosques, although an occasionally emotive issue, is not a matter for commonwealth law. Halting immigration from Islamic countries assumes there is a lot of it. Deporting immigrants who commit crimes assumes Muslims are over-represented in crime.

The Australian experience, according to the most recent, comprehensive figures from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, is immigrants from Islamic countries represent only 11 per cent of new settlers. In 2010-11, more than half our 127,458 arrivals came from New Zealand, China, Britain, India and South Africa. The only Islamic countries (defined as those where the official religion is Islam or legislation is based on sharia law) in Australia's top 10 were Iraq, with 2988 arrivals, and Malaysia, with 2737. Altogether 13,910 people arrived from Islamic countries, including 1027 Afghans, 271 Iranians and 190 Somalis who came as refugees. Wilders provides an exemption for refugees from Islamic countries, as many belong to minorities that don't follow Islam.

So now they are here, whom should we send home? Useful crime statistics in this context are difficult to obtain. The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics says police data is too unreliable. In Victoria, accurate reporting of the violence against Indian students in 2009-10 was hampered by police arrest records that made no distinction between victims and perpetrators of "South Asian appearance".

The Australian Bureau of Statistics offers something of a guide in its Prisoners in Australia report, which records jail populations according to country of origin. According to the latest one, published in December, Indonesians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Sudanese and Nigerians are overrepresented in our jails. So are Vietnamese, Samoans, Papua New Guineans, Romanians and Tongans. All of them, including the 791 New Zealanders and 741 Britons jailed at the time of the survey, would be deported under Wilders's policy.

The most overrepresented group in Australian jails is Aborigines - the only lot here when Wilders's early ancestors first sailed down the West Australian coast nearly 400 years ago.

Yet even if the numbers don't add up for him, there is agreement among Muslims and non-Muslims that the issues he raises should be debated in Australia. Conservative economist Des Moore says Wilders has "brought into the public arena an issue that has not hitherto been seriously addressed at a political level. Amazingly, it has taken a leading Dutch politician ... to do this."

Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman Mohamad Tabbaa says: "Absolutely, it is a discussion which needs to be had on a proper level." He is concerned, though, that Wilders is too offensive to Muslims to lead the debate, while our federal politicians are not capable of carrying it on. "Unfortunately politics in this country is not at a standard where we can have such discussions," he says.

The Q Society, which worked to bring Wilders here, believes an Australian politician will emerge who is willing to join the Dutchman's crusade. "I think we have started a discussion," says spokesman Andrew Horwood. "It will happen, it is just a matter of when. We are not the only people who are concerned."

-----

India’s ruling party abetted communal carnage in Gujarat - By Keith Jones - WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/03/ind-m05.html



India’s ruling party abetted communal carnage in Gujarat

By Keith Jone
5 March 2002
There is compelling evidence that leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the dominant force in India’s coalition government, abetted the anti-Muslim riots that convulsed the western state of Gujarat last week.

Not only do local activists from the BJP and the BJP-allied Vishwa Hindu Parishad (or World Hindu Council) figure prominently among those named by police as orchestrators of the communal violence, there have been numerous reports from journalists and Muslim victims that police stood by and watched as mobs mobilized by BJP and VHP activists attacked Muslim neighborhoods and villages. Ostensibly many of these mobs had formed to voice their support for a bandh or general strike called by the VHP and backed by the state BJP to protest an earlier atrocity in the Gujarat district town of Godhra allegedly perpetrated by Muslims.

India’s National Human Rights Commission has demanded that the BJP-controlled Gujarat government explain what it has done to suppress communal violence in the state, adding that reports “suggest inaction by the police force and the highest authorities in the State to deal with this situation.”


The major opposition parties, including the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), have issued a statement condemning the Gujarat government for its “abject” failure to protect human life and property. “We are of the view that without the criminal negligence, if not connivance of the State Government, such dastardly events could not have happened.”


Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has all but publicly defended the anti-Muslim violence. First he noted that “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” Then, in a second reference to the Godhra attack, Modi commended the state’s population for their “remarkable restraint under grave provocation.” Needless to say, Modi is rejecting all calls for an inquiry into the police and state government’s handling of the crisis.

A report in the London Daily Telegraph suggests that India’s central government, which is controlled by the BJP-dominated National Democratic Alliance, also played an important role in allowing the anti-Muslim violence to continue.

The Telegraph cited an unnamed senior military officer as saying that early last Thursday evening the military had 13 transport aircraft fuelled and ready to fly troops to Ahmedabad from Jodhpur in neighboring Rajasthan, “But for an inexplicable reason, even though it was apparent the state police were proving incapable, 1,000 troops were flown out only the next morning.”

Furthermore, when the troops did arrive, they were not provided with proper transport or intelligence. “When the army was eventually deployed on Friday evening, it was not taken to the trouble spots,” says a second officer, described by theTelegraph as an intelligence official . The army was “merely asked to display itself in areas from which the Muslims had already fled. It was a calculated decision by the state’s Hindu nationalist government.”

The violence in Gujarat is India’s worst communal bloodletting since the wave of rioting set off by the December 1992 razing of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya. Although the BJP leadership, in deference to its coalition partners, has backed off from its previous commitment to build a Hindu temple on the Ayodhya site, the party is inextricably connected to the Ayodhya issue, since it was the BJP’s main rallying cry in the early 1990s.

Gruesome violence
 
On Monday, the Gujarat police reported that the death toll in six days of gruesome violence had reached 572. The communal carnage was precipitated by the February 27 attack at Godhra on several railway cars carrying Hindu fundamentalist activists back to Gujarat from Ayodhya, where they had gone to support the scheme to erect a Hindu temple on the site of the razed mosque. Allegedly carried out by a mob of Muslims, the Godhra attack left 58 dead.

In the ensuing 48 hours, communal violence erupted in Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Surat, Baroda and Gujarat’s other major urban centers and in many Gujarat villages. In harrowing scenes, Muslim men, women and children were bludgeoned to death, set ablaze after being doused with gasoline or burned alive in their homes. Muslim-owned tea-stalls, shops and businesses were systematically looted and torched. Only after the mobilization of army personnel and repeated firings on riotous crowds—the police report 97 deaths due to police firing—did the violence abate.

Significantly, outside of Gujarat, India’s only major state still governed by the BJP, there were only isolated instances of violence. And the VHP’s call for a nationwide general strike Friday, March 1 was completely ignored.

In a nationally-televised address Saturday, India’s Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee called the communal violence in Gujarat a “black mark on the nation’s forehead,” adding that it had “lowered India’s prestige in the world.”

However, the leader of the BJP said nothing about the actions of the Gujarat state government, nor the hostility against Muslims which has been whipped up over the Ayodhya issue by Hindu activists aligned with his own party and echoed in his own anti-Pakistan war-mongering.

Vajpayee’s immediate fear is that the events in Gujarat could cause the NDA coalition to collapse. Several coalition partners, including the National Conference of Jammu and Kashmir and the Telugu Desam Party, draw considerable Muslim support. They have justified their alliance with the Hindu chauvinist BJP on the grounds that they can keep its communalism in check. The Gujarat events come in the aftermath of the BJP’s rout in last month’s state elections, a rout that has changed the national political equation and caused all of India’s political players to reassess their position.

While trying to keep the NDA coalition in tact, Vajpayee also faces the problem of conciliating his party’s increasingly restless Hindu nationalist base. Vajpayee cancelled his trip to last weekend’s Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Australia to deal with the crisis in Gujarat. But he has spent much, if not most, of his time, consulting with BJP officials, Hindu religious leaders and leaders of the Hindu supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on how to persuade the VHP not to proceed with its plan to defy India’s Supreme Court and begin constructing a temple on the Ayodhya site on March 15.

A third concern for the BJP leadership is that the communal violence has shattered the government’s attempts to gain international backing in its conflict with Pakistan by contrasting a purportedly democratic and tolerant India with a military-ruled Pakistan that is allied with Islamic terrorism. The truth is both the Indian and Pakistani elites have tried to defect social discontent by fanning communalism and religious fundamentalism.

In a strong indication that the BJP intends to try to weather the current crisis by continuing, if not intensifying, its belligerence against Pakistan, senior BJP officials have claimed that the attack on the Hindu activists at Godhra was organized by Pakistani intelligence with the aim of provoking anti-Muslim riots and sullying India’s reputation. This claim has a double-purpose: to fan hostility to Pakistan and cover up the BJP’s responsibility for the communal carnage in Gujarat.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Can you hear sounds of Fascist jack-boots in India? - Amarsh Misra - THE TIMES OF INDIA - BLOGS

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/the-mainstream-maverick/entry/can-you-hear-sounds-of-fascist-jack-boots-in-india

The Times of India




THE MAINSTREAM MAVERICK

Can you hear sounds of Fascist jack-boots in India?

Amaresh Misra
20 February 2013, 12:07 AM IST


An Intellectual's Suicide

In 1940, Walter Benjanim, the renowned literary critic of Germany, known all over the western world as one of 20th century greatest, liberal-left intellectual, was hounded to death by Hitler's cohorts. Finding Germany's illiberal atmosphere under Hitler arraigned against free speech and liberal arts, Benjamin wanted to emigrate; Nazi-fascist German authorities would not let him; finding all doors closed-even an attempted escape foiled-Benjamin committed suicide (Walter Benjanim).

Walter Benjamin
 Walter Benjamin was a Jew; it was impossible for him to fit into the `superiority of the pure Aryan race', anti-Semitic, fascist-totalitarian ideology, peddled, by Hitler and his cohorts. Benjamin represented the quality driven strand of excellence, tolerance and pluralism in classical German culture; he stood proud and singular in the tradition of Mozart, Beethoven, Goethe, Heinrich Heine and other famous German artistes and intellectuals, several of whom were Jews. As part of the pre-Nazi, Germanic spirit-which prized music, philosophical breakthroughs, Judaic mysticism, idealism, and the science of dialectics-Benjamin rebelled against the Nazi-fascist thought of regarding Jews as inferior human beings. Benjamin also couldn't accept Hitler's dictum that the `pure German race'-if anything of that sort ever existed-possessed the divine right to rule other races and nations.

The Myth of Racial Superiority

Benjamin knew that all distinct cultures and identities of the world emerge only after prolonged material and spiritual praxis running over centuries. This process involves close interaction-struggle and unity-war and peace-intermingling and interbreeding-with people of other faiths-different skin colours-various cultural identities-and so on and forth.

Hitler's very idea of a pure German race was a myth-a momentously ludicrous-and horrendously murderous-dark and comic lie. Told by him and his cohorts loudly and repeatedly, this lie instigated an irrational frenzy of anti-Semitic fear amongst the German people. The purpose was to divide the German people, so that they forget bread and butter, anti-establishment anger-issues-against the post World War I socio-economic order. Run by cold-hearted, anti-working class, German big business-corporate interests, the prime interest of this order lay in profit and fleecing its own people during one of worst economic depressions in human history. Forming a military-industrial complex and perpetuating War as an extension of business by other means was the logical outcome of agreements between fascists and big business interests.  

Bertolt Brecht

Unlike Walter Benjamin-Bertolt Brecht-Benjamin's friend-and a famous Marxist playwright-regarded second only to Shakespeare in art and content-was a non-Jewish, "true-blue blood" German. He could have slid easily into Hitler's fantasy driven world of `pure Aryans' controlling the earth. A resolute anti-fascist, Brecht, however, chose to fight; citing how Hitler and fascism distort and misuse the greatness of German culture for narrow, homicidal-political ends, Brecht attacked the banal fascist propaganda with pro-people, creative, leftist   poetry, drama, and occasionally, cinema. Fortunate enough to have left Germany soon after Hitler ascension to power, Brecht termed Walter Benjamin's suicide as the "first real blow to German literature" handed down by fascists (Bertolt Brecht).
                                                                                                                  Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Fascism and Democracy

Made famous by Hitler and Mussolini, the fascist ideology killed democracy in the 1930s and 40s in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, and several East European countries invaded by Germany during World War II. Fascism led to the incarceration and death of such noted European intellectuals as Antonio Gramsci and Frederico Garcia Lorca to name a few; it also forced Freud and Einstein to flee from Continental Europe to the USA.

On 10th May, 1933, in a state-sponsored frenzy presided over gleefully by Hitler, Goebbels and other top Nazi officials-the first of its kind in modern human history-thousands of Nazi-fascist students burned over 25,000 volumes of classical and contemporary German literature (Nazi book burnings).
                                                                                   
Books being burned by Nazis in Germany
Carried out all over Germany especially in University towns, the act presaged decades of illogical censorship and maniac, linear control of culture that destroyed German modernity and the country's 2000 year old intellectual-cultural heritage. Thus, fascism destroyed both tradition and modernity-old and new-humanism and liberalism-religion and agnosticism-in one stroke.   

Persecution, Dictatorship and Totalitarianism

Like Mussolini in Italy before him, Hitler went on to suspend Germany's Parliament, declare dictatorship, end freedom of press, personal and religious liberty, and the right to form political parties. Communists, liberals, agnostics, atheists, Catholics, Protestants, gypsies, believers, non-believers, housewives, working women, prostitutes, even children-anyone even suspected of not falling in line with the fascist-Nazi ideology-was either killed or sent to concentration camps. Double standards were such that a homosexual with Nazi beliefs was allowed to thrive-but homosexuals of other ideological persuasions were declared deviants, not worthy of existence as human beings.

Irrespective of whether they supported or opposed Hitler, Jews were stripped of citizenship rights, hounded and killed-often in state sponsored gas chambers-in numbers crossing the six million mark (The Holocaust). 

World War II

Initiated by fascists and their irrational-fanatic lust for arbitrary, bloodthirsty power over "lesser" and "rival" nations-especially western democracies and socialist-communist countries-World War II  claimed between 50-73 million lives (World War II).  

Western nations like England, France and the USA joined hands with communist USSR in order to defeat fascism. In fact, principally, Hitler was brought to his knees by reverses on the eastern front when his blitzkrieg failed to break the morale of USSR's Red Army. Under Stalin, the Red Army began the counter march from Moscow to Berlin, liberating many concentration camps victims-or what was left of them-in Auschwitz and other centres (Auschwitz concentration camp).  

Never before, not during Mongol invasions, or the Crusades, or several wars of the 18th and 19th century, had the world seen massive killings of innocent men, women and children, ordered  calmly, inside closed doors, in rooms and over tables, in a juridical-clinical, phased mode. Fascists outdid Attila the Hun and Changez Khan-who were at least warriors with medieval code of honour-in unleashing savagery and barbarism through modern technology and creating the world's only State based on genocide, to describe which political scientists are still struggling with concepts.     

RSS and Hitler

Hitler justified colonialism and British rule over India. In the 1930s, he was admired by quite a few anti-communists and anti-liberal figures. MS Golwalkar, the RSS chief from 1940 to 1970 was one of them. In 35/43 page of `We or our nation defined', a 1938 tract, Golwalkar wrote:

"To keep the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked up the world by her purging the country, of Semitic races - the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to root to be assimilated to one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by..."

Golwalkar does not stop here; pages 47-48 and 55-56 openly threaten Muslims:

"The foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e. of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge into the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing…….not even citizen's rights..."    

I hate to make comparisons-it reflects poorly on India. But truth-however ugly-has to be told; this much Mahatama Gandhi has been able to inculcate in us writers. Isn't it incredible that what Saadhvi Rithambara and Babu Bajrangi type figures threatened Muslims with-the stripping of their citizenship rights in an imagined Hindu Rashtra-respectively-during LK Advani's Rath Yatra for a Ram temple in Ayodhya and the 2002 Gujarat riots-was not part of some extreme right-wing fringe?  Rithambara and Bajrangi both took their lessons straight from a mainstream RSS leader like Golwalkar! What a discovery! No difference between Golwalkar, Advani, Modi, Rithambara and Babu Bajrangi! What do so-called sophisticated and `liberal' leaders of the BJP-and their intellectual-right wing apologists like Swapan Dasgupta and Tavleen Singh-have to say now in their defence? Will they come out openly and admit that they support a convict like Bajrangi who waxed eloquent over ripping open a Muslim mother's womb-and that he felt like Rana Pratap committing a heinous crime-on camera-in the Aaj Tak expose?

Till date, the RSS has not refuted lines written by Golwalkar. On the contrary, they form part of the core RSS ideology. It has become a fashion with some BJP figures to fudge and try to bypass Golwalkar's views on Hitler by saying that `he (Golwalkar) changed his thinking, and why don't you look at the good done by RSS etc';   in  a previous  article (Omissions and commissions of the RSS led Sangh Parivar...and the letters of Sardar Patel), I dwelt at length about RSS' terrorist activities from the assassination of Mahatama Gandhi to involvement in 1947 anti-Muslim pogroms with active British assistance. This sordid saga includes RSS' role in several anti-Muslim, anti-Sikh, anti-Christian riots in the post-Independence era, the murder of innocent men, women and children during the 2002 Gujarat riots, and bomb blasts of Malegaon, Modassa, Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Sharif Dargah. In the same article, I also challenged the RSS to provide an iota of evidence of their involvement in the Indian freedom movement. I am still waiting.

Arun Jaitley Vs Markandey Katju

When Arun Jaitley first raised objections to Jutice Katju's OP-ED article in the Hindu (All the perfumes of Arabia), people thought that the BJP leader was exercising his democratic right to disagree with an opinion. But no-Jaitley went on a tangent, accusing Katju harbouring a pro-Congress political agenda, holding a biased view. Jaitley even attacked the constitutional institution of Press Council of India (PCI), headed currently by Justice Katju.

People were astounded when Jaitley asked for Justice Katju's resignation from the Press Council of India (PCI), on grounds that the PCI was listing grievances only against non-Congress Governments.  Jaitley of course conveniently forgot that Justice Katju had intervened in several cases in Maharashtra and other Congress ruled states whenever an issue of restrictions to free speech came up.

What got Jaitley so worked up? Justice Katju's write-up in The Hindu criticises Narendra Modi,  asks questions about his role during 2002 Gujarat riots, and casts doubts on his achievements in Gujarat, especially in the sphere of human development.  So many intellectuals have punctured Modi's vibrant Gujarat to an extent that even pro-Modi Gujarati bureaucrats refrain now from belting out statistics at the drop of a hat. Beyond a modicum of doubt, it has been proved that except for opening Gujarat for  loot by foreign and Indian big-business interests, Modi has done nothing special in improving the living standards, health, hygiene and physical well being of the vast majority of Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs in his state.

Modi has his defenders. Articles praising him have appeared innumerable times in the Indian Press. But no Congress leader stood up and demanded the resignation of an intellectual from a position he/she holds just because something got published in Modi's favour.

Jaitley apologists say that as the PCI chariman, Justice Katju should not have aired his political views. Press Council chiefs and people holding similar posts have time and again spoken out on what they feel politically. There has been never been an argument on this issue.

Several other intellectuals have also written against Narendra Modi-including on Times of India's edit page (Gujarat: Myth and reality). But Jaitley or other Sangh-BJP leaders never really attacked these figures or asked for the resignation of Bhalchandra Mungekar, the author of the afore-mentioned TOI edit page piece, from a post he holds currently-why was Justice Markandey Katju singled out for such treatment?

Liberal Hindus Vs Hindutvawaadis

The answer lies in the method to Jaitley's madness. As an educated fascist, Jaitley knows that Justice Katju belongs to the liberal spectrum which believes in the ideology of Mahatama Gandhi and   Jawahar Lal Nehru, and respects BR Ambedkar, Sardar Patel, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. As a retired Supreme Court judge, Justice Katju also carries a lot of prestige. He has adopted a consistent position on communalism and social justice. He enjoys huge support amongst liberal Hindus.

The BJP does not fear Muslims, leftists, socialists and English-speaking liberals, as much as it fears liberal Hindus. Justice Katju is a Kashmiri Brahmin. He is also a Sanatan Dharmi. Secretly, RSS regards Sanatan Dharmis as the main enemy. This is because RSS' politics revolves around creating the myth of a divine Hindu race. And then declaring itself as the true representative of that race-in short, RSS might have a few confused-brainwashed Sanatan Dharmi followers. But RSS can never claim the sole leadership   even of upper caste Hindus till it appropriates control of what constitutes divinity among Hindus-whether Brahmins, Rajputs, OBC or Dalits-or  Sanatan Dharma leaders-of various Shankaracharya Peeths-Akhadas and Maths-of the Hindu religious order.

In 2001 and the ongoing 2013 Allahabadh Kumbh Mela, followers of traditional Hinduism or Sanatan Dharmis came to blows with Hindutvawaadis on several occasions. Sources close to Shankaracharya Swami Swarupanand-and the Naga Baba ascetics of the June Akhada-told me in confidence that RSS-VHP-BJP shady characters-some of them criminals-played a role in conjunction with the Samajwadi Party during the recent stampede which killed more than 50 people in Allahabad. At present, this is merely, an allegation. But since human lives are involved, it is worthy of investigation by an impartial body.  It does seems that the `underground' SP-BJP alliance has been flourishing in UP after the 2012 polls-several riots during the current SP regime bear testimony to the unholy nexus.

Fascist threat in India

People should wake up-Jaitley's attack on Justice Katju should not be looked at in isolation. Digvijaya Singh, the Congress general secretary, rightly said that Jaitley owes Modi his Rajya Sabha Sabha seat-and by attacking Katju, Jaitley is returning the favour. Singh also went on to elaborate Sangh Parivar's fascist mind-set, which rarely tolerates dissent (Digvijay Singh slams Jaitley’s remarks on Katju). 

The Jaitley-Katju spat represents the beginning of an open fight between Hindutvawaadis and liberal Hindus, a real life drama that will unleash with full  fury  in the 2014 elections. Indians have to decide whether they want a India where Bajrang Dal and Sangh Parivar activists go on a rampage attacking liberal Hindu, largely upper caste, judges, professors, media heads, senior journalists, respected intellectuals-members of the Dalit-OBC intelligentsia-as well as esteemed women personalities in social life-and the like; or they would like a peaceful India where the rule of law, liberty and freedom of speech and religion prevails. If voted to power, fascists will launch a smear campaign against modernity, pluralism, diversity, democracy and liberalism. As under Hitler, women will suffer the most under fascist-Hindutvawaadi rule. 

Since they supported the British in the pre-Independence era, RSS inspired forces will not hesitate to undermine Indian sovereignty in the interests of US led western block. Historically, xenophobic-fundamentalist-fascistic nationalism has always favoured the big over small, domination of superpowers over regional powers. Liberal-left nationalism on the other hand, usually fights in the interest of the people and the country.

Modi's developmental model excludes benefits to OBCs, Dalits, the middle and the small peasantry, Adivasis, organized and unorganized labour, small and medium businesses, entrepreneurs, and the lower middle classes whether Hindus or Muslims. Under the Indian fascist utopia, people are supposed to remain bogged down in inter-religious or inter-ethnic conflicts while big business corporate interests loot precious Indian resources in Indian tribal and forest regions, displace peasants in the name of development and muzzle all voices that disagree-a fascist victory in 2014 would imply an end of India's 5000 year old civilization and culture.

Five years of NDA rule failed not only to build the Ram temple; apart from unscientific posturing on `Vedic Mathematics'-that too inconsistent-the BJP led government made no effort to highlight the great scientific-philosophical-cultural-artistic-moral-political achievements of Indian society before the advent of Muslims. On the contrary-the NDA regime-including senior leaders like Murli Manohar Joshi-persecuted Gandhians and liberal Hindus-and forced several Gandhian institutes-to shut down. Many erstwhile VHP-Bajrang Dal members-and former MLAs like Pawan Pandey-one of the prime accused in the Babari Masjid demolition case-left the BJP in disgust after seeing the moral degeneration of Ayodhya based BJP leaders such as Vinay Katiyar.

If nothing else-this-the deliberate neglect of the very Hindu heritage the Sangh Parivar claims to protect-should persuade people to see the other side of the Sanghi moonlight. Who is going to stop Hindutvawaadis from burning Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Mahabharata, Ramayan, Arthashastra, Kamasutra-as well as ancient, medieval and modern Indian works on science, art and humanism-if they are in power and a wave of puritan-paranoia takes hold of their political persona?

Is there a Hindu race and nation?

RSS uses terms like `Hindu race' and `Hindu nation'-of course both these terms have no rational-scientific basis. There is no one Hindu-Aryan race-and surely no Hindu nation-the Vedas and Puranas mention nothing of that sort-Puranas use `Bharat' to denote a shifting, geographical entity.

Even rational RSS sympathisers concede that different castes and tribes living in India-peoples of a modern nation-state-welded in its present form initially by the great Mughals, then the colonial British, and finally Independent India's State power-consist of men, women and children of diverse racial origin. The concept of a single, dominant `Hindu race' is not only false-it is dangerous as it allows any small group to lay claim to that status and then use it to suppress democracy and the vast majority of the Indian people.

Puranas mention different kingdoms, not a `Hindu nation'-this does not mean that the idea of India did not exist in ancient times. It just did not exist the way the fascists want it to exist-Mughals carried forward the initial efforts of empire building by Mauryas and Guptas-and beginning from the 1857 war, the Indian Independence movement gave a modern, nationhood status to that idea.

Violence and Fascism

The other aspect of course, is the use of violence for political ends, something that all fascists exercise to attain power. After all, even the most reverent Narendra Modi supporter concedes that the extremely violent Gujarat 2002 riots made possible the rise of their self-styled Hindutva icon. Fascist violence carries an abnormal strain-it reflects a mind-set that is sadist, inherently cruel and cowardly-as well as eccentric-whimsical-in the ugly sense. Killing babies and children and raping women has always been a special fascist prerogative. If some day, a crazy bout of psychosis grips a fascist in power, he can also sever facets of the fascist-big business alliance. Hitler persecuted businessmen also because they had some remote Jewish connection or the colour of their hair was not to his liking. True horror stories from Gujarat-of capricious mistreatment of even well placed individuals by Modi-will start appearing only after BJP's defeat in the state. Don't be surprised if suddenly, a Sangh Parivar leader takes a disliking to Ratan Tata or Cyrus Mistry for being Parsees, or to Kumar Mangalam Birla for his hair style or to the Ambanis for not contributing enough to fascist coffers-once unleashed, weird politics of paper tigers carries untold destruction.                                            
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