Monday, March 25, 2013

How General Zia Went Down! By Edward Jay Epstein - VANITY FAIR

How General Zia Went Down! By Edward Jay Epstein - VANITY FAIR


This article, published in June 1989, is about the air crash in 1988 which killed Gen Zia, the U.S. envoy and a number of senior officers. Since then, quite a number of publications came in the market, but this report seems to be the most authentic and incisive. The investigation is thorough and analysis is methodical.


This article about the crash is like Agatha Christie's thriller Murder on the Orient Express, in which everyone aboard the train had a motive for murder. The suspects here are, Americans, Indians, Russians, Afghans and even ''Pakistan Army.''


Please ignore the poor quality of paper as time takes its toll on papers also, human beings no exception.


Please read the thrilling story.

-- Inline image 1
Inline image 2
Inline image 3
Inline image 4
Inline image 5
Inline image 6
Inline image 7
Inline image 8

Saturday, March 23, 2013

The Last Letter: A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from a Dying Veteran

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/3/21/exclusive_tomas_young_reads_in_full_his_letter_to_bush_cheney_a_message_from_a_dying_veteran


DEMOCRACY NOW

March 21, 2013 

Exclusive: Tomas Young Reads in Full His  

Letter to Bush & Cheney, "A Message From a Dying Veteran"


Paralyzed in a 2004 attack in Sadr City, Iraq War veteran Tomas Young recently announced that he will stop his medicine and nourishment, which comes in the form of liquid through a feeding tube — a decision which will hasten his death. Joining us from his home in Kansas City, Young reads in full his letter, A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran. "My day of reckoning is upon me," Young says. "Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness."

WATCH: Exclusive: Dying Iraq War Veteran Tomas Young Explains Decision to End His Life
WATCH: Phil Donahue on His 2003 Firing from MSNBC, When Liberal Network Couldn’t Tolerate Antiwar Voices
WATCH: Dying Iraq War Veteran Tomas Young on Bush, Missing WMDs, Failed Medical Care

AMY GOODMAN: Ten years later, 10th anniversary of the war in Iraq, Tomas Young, Iraq War veteran, wounded April 4th, 2004, his fifth day in Iraq, shot in Sadr City, is now writing a letter on this 10th anniversary called "The Last Letter: A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from a Dying Veteran." Tomas, can you read some of your letter to the former president and vice president?
TOMAS YOUNG: Absolutely.

"The Last Letter: A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from a Dying Veteran."

“I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of [those who bear those wounds. I am one of those.] I am one of the gravely injured. I [am] paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

“I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost parents, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have [done, witnessed, endured] in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

“Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, [and your privilege and power] cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

“I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

“I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the [9/11] attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the [U.S.] I did not join the Army to 'liberate' Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called 'democracy' in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the [Army] to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the biggest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

“I have, like many other [wounded and many other] disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical [disabilities and] wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your [own] brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.
“I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend our country I love—the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

"My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness."
 
 
GUEST
Tomas Young, Iraq War veteran and the main subject of the documentary, Body of War. On April 4, 2004, his fifth day in Iraq, Young’s unit came under fire in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad. Young was left paralyzed, never to walk again. Released from medical care three months later, Young returned home to become an active member in Iraq Veterans Against the War. He recently announced that he will stop his nourishment, which comes in the form of liquid through a feeding tube — a decision which will hasten his death.


Friday, March 22, 2013

India's fantasy of disloyal Muslims may come true - By Pankaj Mishra - Bloomberg.com


Indian Muslims

By Pankaj Mishra
Mar 20, 2013

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is fond of boasting that not one of India’s almost 180 million Muslims has been discovered to be a member of al-Qaeda.

He could underscore an even more remarkable fact: None of the foreign jihadists caught fighting alongside the Taliban has turned out to be from the country with the world’s third-largest Muslim population.

Indeed, Indian Muslims haven’t bothered to lend even moral support to the anti-Indian insurgency in Muslim-majority Kashmir that has claimed more than 50,000 lives in the past two decades.

According to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, this is because Indian Muslims “are the product of and feel empowered by a democratic and pluralistic society.”

A more prosaic and less ideological explanation is that Indian Muslims have many of their own problems to deal with, largely stemming from the swift decay of democracy and pluralism.

According to a 2012 book, “Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation,” edited by Laurent Gayer and Christophe Jaffrelot, Muslims are as badly off, if not worse, socially and economically, than Dalits (formerly untouchable Hindus) and tribal peoples.

Meager Minority

Almost 40 percent of Muslims in urban centers live below the poverty line. They constitute almost 15 percent of the total population, but only 5.5 percent of the members of the Indian parliament are Muslims. Gayer and Jaffrelot note the astonishing fact that many of India’s biggest states do not have even one sitting Muslim representative in the Indian parliament.

Underrepresented in the judiciary, Muslims form a meager component of the police force. And that may be at least one reason for what is now a disturbingly common sport in an increasingly Hindu-nationalized India: blaming the Muslims (and locking up a whole lot of them).

The terrorist attacks last month that killed 17 people in the central Indian city of Hyderabad reopened a cornucopia of conspiracy theories. Faux-enraged television anchors fingered a terrorist outfit called Indian Mujahideen, a group whose origins and elements remain murky. The president of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party demanded that India retaliate against Pakistan.

The police promptly arrested four Muslims in Hyderabad.

All this seemed par for the course. Muslims are routinely picked up after terrorist attacks in India and often paraded before eager television journalists, bearing the most conspicuous marks of their religion: beards, skullcaps and striped scarfs.

But there was a problem this time. The Muslims detained last month had been locked up before, after another bomb blast near one of the oldest mosques in Hyderabad, the Mecca Masjid, in 2007. While in prison, one of the accused ran into, in a bizarre twist of fate, the real perpetrator of the crime, a Hindu extremist, whose feelings of guilt pushed him into a full confession. The police case against the Muslims -- an absurdist fiction, actually -- began to collapse after that uncanny encounter.

New evidence came to light, showing how rapidly anti-Muslim Hindu terror networks, which included at least one serving army officer, had grown across the country, while the police and the media ballyhooed the mass arrests of various alleged Muslim terrorists.

False Confessions

Finally, the Muslims accused in the Mecca Masjid attacks were acquitted by the courts, which slammed the police for extracting false confessions from them under torture.

An extensive investigation by the newsweekly Tehelka unearthed many such malign and bogus cases, revealing a countrywide pattern of what its editor, the novelist Tarun Tejpal, called “a chilling and systematic witch-hunt against innocent Muslims.”

Of course, not all Muslims like to see themselves as victims of majoritarian prejudice. Indeed, “Muslims in Indian Cities” challenges the popular stereotype of a stagnant and insular community in thrall to reactionary, self-serving leaders.

Muslims employed in the Gulf remit almost one-third of the $70 billion that India receives annually. A nascent entrepreneurial middle class is emerging in, among other places, Bhopal and Hyderabad.

But they have to overcome great mental barriers in a mainstream culture largely inimical to them. It is not uncommon for Muslim neighborhoods to be popularly tagged as “mini- Pakistans,” or for even relatively affluent Muslims to be denied rented accommodation and school placements.

As Jaffrelot writes, “to alienate those who invested in education in order to be part of the brighter part of urban India may result in the making of ’reluctant fundamentalists,’ to use the title of a recent book.”

Certainly, a demoralized people living on their nerves are prone to see violence and bigotry everywhere.

Even one of India’s biggest film stars, Shah Rukh Khan, recently complained about being constantly “accused of bearing allegiance to our neighbouring nation.”

Khan was immediately assailed by a storm of hostile criticism, including accusations of rank ingratitude. Pakistani politicians, blatantly unable or unwilling to protect their country’s minorities, cynically called upon the Indian government to ensure the safety of Indian Muslims.

Finally, a plainly nervous Khan backtracked with some sad Friedmanesque jauntiness: “We have an amazing democratic, free and secular way of life,” he said.

This is not quite reflected in his own workplace, Bollywood, whose films now depict Muslims as vicious anti- nationals and devious Fifth Columnists.

Secret Hanging

Muslims wondering about their place in India can’t be encouraged by the media’s recent outpouring of awe and admiration for the notorious Muslim-baiter Bal Thackeray, or its eager flattery of the Hindu nationalist prime-minister-in- waiting Narendra Modi, who is accused of complicity in the murder of more than 2,000 Muslims in 2002.

Writing last week about the wrongful and prolonged incarceration of a Muslim defense scientist, Praveen Swami, an Indian journalist known for his close ties to the security establishment, pleaded that “the harm caused to [the scientist] has to be read against the possible harm to the community caused by the investigators’ failure to arrest.”

More alarmingly, the Supreme Court invoked a similarly imagined community of victimized and angry Hindus when it confirmed the death sentence on Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri Muslim accused of logistical support to a terrorist assault on the Indian parliament in 2001. Guru had to die because, as the court put it, India’s “collective conscience” demanded it.

Last month, India secretly hanged Guru. His family wasn’t given a chance for a final meeting with him; his corpse was also denied to them, in violation of a fundamental Islamic custom of funeral prayers.

Many Muslims, even the few who believe that Guru was given a fair trial, are likely to see the stealthy execution as “state vengeance against a co-religionist,” as the deputy editor of the newsmagazine Outlook wrote.

Some Muslims will also wonder why the sacrificial victim of India’s collective conscience was a Muslim, and not, say, former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Hindu assassins, who had been waiting on death row for much longer.

More than a month after the execution of Guru, most Kashmiris continue to suffer an intensified regime of arbitrary curfews and brutal crackdowns. Last week, two unidentified militants staged a suicide attack on an Indian paramilitary outpost in Srinagar, the biggest such assault in three years.
Clashes between Kashmiri protesters and Indian security forces in recent weeks have also claimed several casualties. This surge in violence -- and there is more to come -- was rendered inevitable by Guru’s dishonorable execution following a dodgy trial, both hailed by a ratings-mad Indian media.

One can only hope that its squalid fantasy about traitorous Indian Muslims doesn’t prove to be self-fulfilling. For the radicalization of even a tiny fraction of 180 million Muslims would not only fatally undermine India’s increasingly unconvincing claims to democracy and secularism. The not-so- reluctant fundamentalists would make the country seem as ungovernable as its neighbor.

(Pankaj Mishra is the author of “From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia” and a Bloomberg View columnist, based in London and Mashobra, India. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this article: Pankaj Mishra at pmashobra@gmail.com

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Hyphens and national unity - By Ashutosh Varshney - The Indian Express, Mumbai, INDIA

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/hyphens-and-national-unity/1090437/0


The Indian Express


Hyphens and national unity

Ashutosh Varshney : Wed Mar 20 2013, 02:14 hrs



In many quarters, democratic politics is often viewed as a contestation over interests, not ideas. Or, ideas are viewed simply as instruments in the pursuit of interests. Against this cynical belief, the ongoing debate in these pages on the nature of Indian identity ought to be viewed with relief.

We have had a genuine exchange over India's evolving democratic politics. Nirmala Sitharaman, the official spokesperson of the BJP, has vigorously participated, but others who have written — Harsh Gupta, Rajeev Mantri, Javed Anand and me — are not political leaders. We belong to different walks of life: civic activism, academia and business. Our vantage points have been quite diverse, but we have engaged ideas.

It would be impossible to survey the entire gamut of issues covered in the debate. A column is like a three-minute song, not a full blown raga. Books can afford to do a raga, covering the different dimensions of a musical theme. Columns have to be leaner. Columns need the popular brilliance of a Lata Mangeshkar, not the classical virtuosity of a Bhimsen Joshi.

Unfortunately, Gupta and Mantri try to force a book into a column. They end up citing so many intellectual and political figures that they are vulnerable to multiple interpretations. Their first column ('One versus group', IE, February 13) cited as many as ten figures: Will Kymlicka, Vrinda Narain, Gary Becker, Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, Alexis de Tocqueville, Thomas Paine, Mahatma Gandhi, Deendayal Upadhyay, Jan Narveson. The second column by Gupta ('Against entrenched identities', IE, March 6) added three more, including Gautam Buddha. Several of these figures come from diverse intellectual traditions. Their ragas are not the same; putting them together in a column generates cacophony.

Let me give an example. If you seek support both from Upadhyay and Gandhi for your conception of citizenship, as Gupta does, you invite puzzlement about the possibility of coherence. Gandhi would have been revolted by Akhand Bharat Aur Muslim Samasya (Undivided India and the Muslim problem), an important Upadhyay text on India's nationhood. Gandhi was singularly incapable of conceptualising Muslims as a "problem".

Gupta often invokes Gandhi, but his stance on Muslims continues to mirror Upadhyay's position. He does not think India practises discrimination against Muslims. Rather, Muslims are responsible for their misery. They treat their women badly, thereby keeping the community backward. "That Muslims are disproportionately unsuccessful even in computer-checked, multiple-choice examinations" is, for him, another example of how Muslim misery is self-inflicted.
One may entirely agree with Gupta about the need for women's emancipation in Muslim society, though one should quickly add that the liberation of Hindu women is neither complete nor exemplary. But what is Gupta comparing Muslim performance in "computer-checked, multiple choice exams" to? To Hindus in general, or is he controlling for income and deprivation?

Because of a serious divergence in socio-economic conditions, the academic performance of Muslims simply cannot be compared to all Hindus, only to Hindu OBCs. To believe that "multiple choice exams" show an absence of discrimination against Muslims in India, and they are responsible for their misery, is to abjure standard canons of scientific reasoning altogether.

Let me turn to two other themes. Sitharaman doubts that America is serious about allowing hyphenated identities, as I had claimed. She points to the struggle of Hindu Americans in recent years as evidence ('The tyranny of hyphens', IE, February 20).

American record is undoubtedly imperfect. Almost every new migrant group in the US has historically faced problems — in some cases, also persecution. It should, however, be noted that all such groups — the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Asians — managed to find a place under the American sun.

Mormons were persecuted in the US, but a Mormon finished second in the recent presidential race. President Obama, elected twice, describes the 1960 biracial marriage of his parents, a black African father and a white American mother, thus: "In 1960, the year that my parents were married, miscegenation still described a felony in over half of the states in the Union. In many parts of the South, my father could have been strung up from a tree for merely looking at my mother the wrong way; in the most sophisticated of northern cities, the hostile stares, the whispers, might have driven a woman in my mother's predicament into a back-alley abortion — or at the very least to a distant convent that could arrange for adoption." (Dreams from my Father).

The US, indeed, has a chequered practice of inclusion. But, because its basic national principles allow such inclusion, politics has increasingly reduced the gap between the ideals and the practice. Hyphens, while resisted, sometimes violently, get accommodated. In the end, all arguments that hyphens are anti-American collapse.

This leads me to the second point in the debate. Do hyphenated Indian identities undermine national cohesion? If Indians continue to be Muslim Indians, Hindu Indians, Christian Indians on one hand, or Gujarati Indians, Bengali Indians and Tamil Indians on the other, would Indian nationhood suffer?

Sitharaman thinks so; Javed Anand and I do not. Gupta now argues that hyphenated identities can exist in society, but the state should not recognise them. "Nobody is saying Indians cannot see themselves and fellow citizens as belonging to any group. The argument is simply for the government to not see Indians as Hindus, Muslims, Christians or so on."

It will be instructive to look at the empirical evidence before saying what the state should do. Two research institutions — the University of Michigan and Delhi's Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) — have conducted extensive surveys of identities in India. In 2005, only 35 per cent of India said they were "only Indian"; 41 per cent said they had both an Indian and a regional identity; and 12 per cent called themselves "only regional". Despite that, 88 per cent Indians said they were proud of India, a figure ranking just below the US and Australia and much higher than for Germany and Switzerland. Surveys also repeatedly show that Indian Muslims are as proud of India as Indians in general.

Hyphens, thus, have not undermined national pride or unity. It may well be that by permitting hyphens, not suppressing them, India has also allowed national feeling to increase, or remain high. Hyphens signify inclusion; their erasure would have led to an erosion of national feeling.

The existence of hyphenated identities does not mean that only one identity is strongly felt, or that the two sides of the identity are necessarily in contradiction. Narendra Modi, after all, keeps emphasising the Gujarati side of his identity, not simply the Indian. He has also often celebrated the Hindu part, not just the Indian. But he appears to deny that hyphenated privilege to Muslims and Christians. Does he by any chance believe, as Savarkar wrote in Hindutva, a founding text of Hindu nationalism, that Muslims and Christians could not be true Indians because, unlike Hinduism, Islam and Christianity not born in India? For Muslims and Christians, said Savarkar, India was a pitribhumi (fatherland), not a punyabumi (holyland). As he rises on the national stage, we need to know Modi's position on who belongs, and who does not.

Would the numbers of those feeling "only Indian" go up as India's urbanisation proceeds further and greater prosperity accrues? Comparative evidence is not clear cut. America's urbanisation boomed in the late 19th century, but ethnic politics also stepped up at the same time. Even after reaching high levels of prosperity, Scotland today is going through a Scottish revival. The remarkable enrichment of Barcelona and its surroundings have not taken away the desire for Catalan distinctiveness. Mumbai, India's richest city, has "sons of the soil" politics.

Sitharaman is right to argue that an aspirational India is rising. But it does not follow that the rising and prospering youth will shun their hyphens, or that if they kept their hyphens, they would be less proud of India. If young Indians lose their hyphens voluntarily, that is entirely to be welcomed. But a political ideology that pushes minorities to unhyphenate will bring more harm than good.

The writer is Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences at Brown University, where he also directs the India Initiative at the Watson Institute. He is a contributing editor for 'The Indian Express'












Wednesday, March 20, 2013

India’s War in Bangladesh - By Dr. Firoz Mahboob Kamal

India’s War in Bangladesh

Dr. Firoz Mahboob Kamal
 

The War in New Phase

Enemy’s war never ends: only changes its strategies and frontiers. India’s war against the subcontinents’ Muslims did not end in 1947, 1965 or 1971. It still continues. And Bangladesh is the perpetual battleground. The Muslims of Bangladesh are given no time to relax. They can only survive such on-going onslaught if they can identify and defeat the enemy strategies, and purge their foot-soldiers. A body cannot live a long life with killer bugs inside. And Bangladesh has enough of them. The political border between Bangladesh and India still exist -even after the break-up of Pakistan in 1971. But Bangladesh Awami League (BAL) and their ally have been very successful to remove the country’s cultural boundary –especially between the BAL followers and the Indians. And culture has a dominant and defining role on politics. Hence, the vision of BAL leaders is seldom different from that of a Bengali Hindu. Bangladesh’s international border has been made irrelevant to belittle such mutual cultural and political bondage. Recent 3 days’ official visit of Mr. Pranab Mukharjee –the Indian President, to Dhaka amidst 3 days’ dawn to dusk wheel-jam strike was primarily arranged to demonstrate India’s commitment to such bondage. Mr. Mukharjee directly delivered the promise of India’s unrelenting support to the troubled Prime Minister Mrs. Hasina Wajed.


Like an Indian Hindu, the BAL people too, attribute Bangladesh’s independent entity on the world map as a legacy of Pakistan and its Muslim heritage. This map itself reminds them the unwanted division of 1947.  Such Pakistani legacy is hindering BAL and it ally to fully fall into Indian lap. However the political map of 1947 is so much deeply rooted in the Bengali Muslims’ psyche that India could not change it in 1971 –even after a full military occupation. They realised, they can undo such legacy only through deleting it from Muslims’ mind-set-only possible through a complete de-Islamisation. And that needs a full cultural conversion. Hence, they brought a full-fledged cultural war in Bangladesh. They consider it a key strategy, and the sure way of isolating its 150 million Bengali Muslims from the whole Muslim Ummah; and thereby to bring their total subjugation to Indian hegemony. Their worry, if Islam survives in Bangladesh, not only the border will survive, rather will get strengthened to build a citadel of Islam on her eastern flank. One on her western flank is already giving her a lot of troubles; hence can hardly afford another one on her eastern border. Therefore, dismantling such a possibility in Bangladesh is India’s most important priority. As a part of the same coalition, India’s crony government in Bangladesh has already launched on her behalf an all-inclusive war against the Islamists. Recent events in Bangladesh must be studied with such holistic perspectives.  


Pakistan's division in 1971 was not the endgame. Rather starting point of the next phase of Nehru doctrine – the Indianisation of the separated East Pakistan. India’s vision is clear. Pakistan has disappeared from its eastern border. But Bangladesh didn’t, and still survives. They believe, if Bangladesh with its 160 million populations sustains as an independent Islamic state, it will work as India’s security threat for ever. The country’s rapidly resurging Islamists can take over at any point of time. That will pose against India not only a strategic threat, rather a civilizational challenge. Threat to mighty Roman and Persian empires did not come from mighty kingdoms, rather came from the poor people of Arabia. Hence they argue, if USA and the Western Europe could consider an emerging Islamic Afghanistan -with less than 30 million people in another part of the glove, a security threat, why Islamic Bangladesh on her border cannot be the same for India?  If USA and her European ally can massively bomb and occupy Afghanistan, why can’t India do the same in Bangladesh? India is selling this view to the anti-Islamic coalition of the west and getting a full support -as evidenced by their support for India’s extremely brutal occupation of Kashmir. India has deployed more than 600,000 forces to suppress the Kashmiri up-rise. India is speculating the same scenario in Bangladesh. Hence, India is getting more aggressive towards her anti-Indian Bangladeshi neighbours. Its Border Security Force (BSF) has killed more than 400 Bangladeshis only in last 4 years. They did not kill even a quarter of that on its Pakistan border in last 60 years. Bangladesh’s weaker military power might have contributed to make her people more vulnerable. Moreover, the crony government of Hasina paid blind eye to that.   

The Cultural War

India’s current war is not for physical occupation of Bangladesh; rather occupation of the people’s conceptual and cultural territory. India wants to mould Bengali Muslims’ mind and mentality prior to any all invasive war. That is through cultural conversion. India is working day and night on such scheme. It has deployed thousands of foot-soldiers on Bangladeshi soil to launch a huge cultural war. Thousands of them are working as music teachers, dance teachers, art teachers and in many other forms in almost all over the country. Highly paid Indian agents are working as university teachers, newspaper editors, TV presenters, columnists, reporters in almost all government and non-government TV channels and newspapers. Most of the country’s media organisations are indeed the Indian occupied territories. They are the real Trojan horses inside Bangladesh. Recently they launched an aggressive media and internet warfare against Islam and the Islamists. Their real picture came to the forefront while the Shahbag drama unfolded against the Islamists. When the huge number of the cultural war foot-soldiers demonstrated the strength in Dhaka’s Shahbag roundabout, these Indian agents cum professionals could not remain hidden in their holes. They came out with their real colour as warrior activists –especially while playing their role as reporters, news casters, talk-show presenters and newspaper columnists. Their colleagues in the internet blogs became so much emboldened by the government support that they did not hesitate to cross the red line. They not only raised slogans for total annihilation of Islamic parties and their leaders, but also started huge abusive campaign against the Almighty Allah Subhana Wa Taala, His great prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), the prophet’s wives and his great companions. To their surprise, this caused a huge Islamic resurgence in the silent majority. Millions of people came to the street. As a consequence, their bubbles quickly fizzled out. They retreated back to their workplaces under the government’s security shield.


The Bengali people are indeed divided into two nations since day one of Muslim advent in this land. Hence, after the end of British rule, both the Hindus and the Muslims are pursuing two incompatible political visions. In 1947, Bengal’s Muslim leaders tried to create an undivided greater Bengal -separated from greater India. But the Hindu Bengali watered down such a nationalist project with a fear that it would bring dominance of the majority Bengali Muslims. In 1947, in Bengal’s parliament in Calcutta, the Hindu members opted for joining greater Hindu India with a pan-Hindu vision. The Bengali Muslims had two options: either to form independent East Bengal or to join Pakistan. In those days, the East Bengal Muslims were known for its non-existent military power and poor economy. If separated as an independent state in 1947, its army would have been much weaker than that of Nizam of Hyderabad. The Bengali Muslims’ presence in civil administration and other areas was also very scanty. Hence the wise Bengali Muslim leaders of 1947 could clearly anticipate Kashmir or Hyderabad-like Indian invasion of an independent East Bengal, thereby quick accession to India. That invasion and accession of East Bengal too, like invasion and accession of Kashmir and Hyderabad could go unnoticed by the world powers. India could have found hundreds of reasons to justify that. Even to catch a thief, one needs to invest huge energy, even endanger his life. Therefore, who would have come to invest their lives and money to save Independent Bengal from such Indian invasion? Did anyone come to save Hyderabad or Kashmir? In those days, the zeal of pan-Islamism in Muslim youths in Bengal was very high, hence inspired to work for Pakistan. This was indeed the background that led the Bengali Muslims to join Pakistan. Indeed, in the making of the greatest Muslim country in the world, the Bengali Muslims’ contribution was the greatest. Even All India Muslim League –the organisation which led Indian Muslims to make Pakistan was born in Dhaka. In 1946 election on Pakistan issue, Muslim League got the strongest support from Bengal –not from any other province of India. But BAL’s thoughtless jingoists have little strategic depth in their thought or intellectual calibre to understand such crucial survival interests of Islam and the Muslims in Bengal. Hence they detest the Bengali Muslims’ decision of 1947.  With such a distance from Islamic belief and non-commitment for the Muslim interests, these BAL’s cultural and intellectual converts now sing the same song with the Indian Hindus.
 
The Hindu Vision & the Lie
The Hindu Bengalis had a vision. They wanted a united Bengal only if merged with India. That way, the Bengali Muslims were offered the slavery of Hindu majority rule in undivided India. The British left in 1947. But since then, the slavery under the Hindu rule has proved to be much worse than the slavery under the British. The brutality has already been much revealing in systematic anti-Muslim genocide in Kashmir, Gujarat, Assam, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Meerat, Aligarh, Allahabad and many other Indian states and cities.  So the anticipation of Allama Iqbal and the Muslim League leaders about the danger of Hindu rule against Muslims proved to be 100% true. So with such anticipation, in 1947, the Hindu project of united Bengal under Indian Hindu majority rule was out-rightly rejected by the Muslims.
But still the Hindu protagonists of undivided India did not move a single inch from their pre-1947 idea, rather they working day and night on the same project. The whole paradigm of India’s current cold war in Bangladesh –even in the remaining part of Pakistan, is based on that pre-1947 Hindu concept. The Indian Hindu accepted the division of Bengal and creation of Pakistan in 1947 for the time being; their next move was to divide Pakistan and then engulf the weaker half –the East Pakistan. This is India's much proclaimed Nehru doctrine. So far, India has taken every calculated move to pursue that strategy. Since 1947, they were waiting for a right opportunity, and even Nehru himself made a move to annex East Pakistan in his life time. But that failed. The real opportunity came in 1971. India skilfully manipulated Pakistan’s internal political crisis to manufacture a full-fledged war to invade and occupy East Pakistan. But in 1972, India had to withdraw its occupying troops under tremendous international pressure. Moreover in 1972, the cultural and political situation of Bangladesh was not ripe enough for India to go further for a full annexation. India needed to do much home works to make the ground quite ripe for a full harvest.

Since the political map of Bangladesh draws its legitimacy from 1947’s division of India, the Indian agents are doing concerted propaganda against the sanity of such division. Even Dr. Zakir Naik –the famous Muslim preacher of India argues openly in his speech that the division of India in 1947 was wrong. It indeed owes to his tunnel vision and gross inadequacy in his political understanding. With such personal constraints, people cannot see a bigger picture. In his public speech, he boasts India as the fast growing superpower and rejoices that India will go far superior to the USA. As if, the Indian Muslims are going to gain much from India’s super-power status. Like an average Hindu Indian, here he turns to a nationalist chauvinist. Such speeches are getting huge audience all over the subcontinent. This way he is doing a great job as India’s cold war warrior against Bangladesh and Pakistan. In fact, India’s such relentless cold war has made millions of such converts not only in India, but also in Pakistan and Bangladesh. 
                                                                                     
Blessings of a Muslim State
But the truth is different. The creation of Pakistan in 1947 brought enormous blessing –both material and spiritual, not only to Pakistan, but also to the people of Bangladesh. India’s Muslim Population is larger than that of Bangladesh. But the number of Muslim doctors, engineers, scientists, academics, lawyers, army and police men, religious scholars, industrialists and big businessman living in only one city of Bangladesh like Dhaka is much larger than the total number of such value-added people in India’s whole Muslim population. Indian Muslims are almost invisible amidst the overwhelming Hindus in the overseas, where as the overseas Bangladeshi are almost ten million. The success of Pakistani Muslims is much higher, because the creation of this largest Muslim country with a pan-Islamic vision worked with much better image among the world’s Muslim population. The middle-eastern rulers, developers and business establishments helped Pakistan in many ways. After 1971’s debacle, they not only opened gates for millions of Pakistani workers to their countries and built hospitals and mosques in Pakistani cities, but also financed Pakistan’s costly nuclear projects. Whereas Bangladesh had to carry the status tag of India-midwifed vassal state for many years.

These are only few material gifts of an independent Muslim majority state. More blessings come in other ways. The Muslims build states not for mere raising homes and businesses, nor for growing cattle and crops. They can do such things even in non-Muslim countries. In life time, Muslims must play the most important role to fulfil the Divine obligation as Allah’s viceroy on earth. That is to bring ultimate supremacy of His law in His land, and contribute his own share to raise an Islamic civilisation. If the land is grabbed by the enemies, a Muslim must do something to end such occupation. The early Muslims made most of their sacrifices not in raising homes or businesses, rather to establish and defend such Islamic state. Indeed, this is the greatest teaching of the prophet (peace be upon him). The Muslims of other times and other lands have a duty to follow such an indispensable prophetic tradition. Living in a non-Muslim state, a Muslim does not enjoy any space to practise such tradition. This is why migration to a non-Muslim state never got appreciation from a true believer. It has been only justified for security reasons; like the migration of early Muslims to Ethiopia. Hence, all Muslims are faith-bound to establish Muslim majority states; then move on to convert those into Islamic state. Indeed, in 1947, the creation of Pakistan was deemed as an obligation to address such a basic Muslim political as well as a spiritual need.

The Muslim majority Bangladesh and Pakistan are not still Islamic; but the opportunities for such change are still profound. The Muslims in these two countries can still dream about that. But such dream is unthinkable in Hindu majority India -even in coming thousand years. At best, the Indian Muslims can practise Islam as devout follower of Tabligh jamaat. But Tabligh jamaat does not replicate Prophet’s complete Islam. They cannot practise Islam as a full Muslim with all the dimensions of prophetic teachings. For that, a Muslim needs to enter into full sharia rule, into Islamic culture, into full Islamic education, into Islamic administration, into jihad, into Muslim brotherhood, so on and so forth. Hence, for such a full Islamic practice, Muslims need an Islamic state. The prophet of Islam and his great companions needed that. Hence today, how a Muslim can be full Muslim without that?

The Indian Hindus may enough reasons to tell a lot of lies against 1947’s division of India. They blame it a British ploy in conjugation with Muslim communalists! But how a Muslim can repeat the same lie? Muslims can commit to such lie only with intense ignorance. This owes to their ignorance of Islamic vision of a true believer. The enemies have a motive. They want to take the Muslims out of the Divine mission; hence they relentlessly tell lies against Islam and the Muslim history. Bangladesh is the home of more than 150 Million Muslims. So the enemies cannot be oblivious of such huge Muslim populations. Indeed they have an agenda. So the country has turned not only to homes of thousands of anti-Islamic NGOs, but also breeding ground for thousands of anti-Islamic bloggers and cultural warriors. They have gained so much strength under the current government that they are now demanding the prohibition of all Islamic parties and their activities. For the Islamists, the life was not so difficult even in British rule. It was unthinkable even 60 years ago.   

The Indian Objectives
India’s political investment in Bangladesh has always been massive. In 2008 election, it went to a diabolic proportion. London’s weekly “the Economist” gave a testimony to that. So far, India’s key strategy has been to replicate its successfully executed Sikkim strategy: that entails buying the political leaders as well as the players in the key positions in the army, media, police and civil administration. In 2006, after the end of Khalida Zia’s BNP rule, India worked with other anti-Islamic foreign stakeholders to install a pro-Indian proxy-military government to manipulate the forthcoming election results in 2008.  Their plan worked very well and their stooges won a landslide victory. After the election victory and quick installation of a coalition government, the AL and its 14 party-alliance were entrusted with the second phase of the work. This time, India and her cronies in Bangladesh did not want to miss this hard-earned opportunity in any way. After analysing the past 4 years’ BAL administration, it is now clear that the government has worked with two-pronged main objectives. These are: a). Rapid de-Islamisation of the people –especially Muslim youths and the school-going children, and b). Breaking down the backbones of the Islamic organisations and their Islamist leaders.

The Strategies
To fulfil the stipulated objectives, BAL and its ally are working on some planned strategies. These can be easily understood from the last four years’ activities. These are as follows:
Strategy 1: Re-framing a secular education policy at all level and re-writing all text books with a special emphasis on curtailing the amount of Islamic knowledge and infusing sentiments against country’s Islamic values and personalities. Raising acceptability and compatibility with India’s Hindu worldviews has been other strategic goal. The Hindu political, intellectual and literary figures like Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore and others were placed in limelight as the figure of highness to be followed by the students. Whereas Islam’s great prophet like Hazrat Muhammad (peace be upon him) and other prophets, the great companions of the prophet, the great Muslim rulers, the thinkers and the reformers who contributed decisively to Islamise Bengal’s landscape were given very little or no importance in the education policy. For eyewash, they added some Islamic flavour by incorporating some stories of folklore fakirs and sufi saints in the textbooks.

Strategy 2: Reducing and restricting the learning of the Holy Qur’an, the prophetic tradition and Islam’s history in both the state run secular schools and in the religious madrasas. With such an objective against Islam, the government reduced the emphasis of learning Arabic language in religious madrasas: made it optional from its previous compulsory status. Moreover, the amount of dis-information on fundamentals of Islam that are passed on to the students through the text books is also huge. Recently it came to the press that it is written in year 9’s text book that meats of animals sacrificed in the name of other deities are also halal.

Strategy 3: Projecting Shaikh Mujib as the greatest personality in thousands of years’ Bengal history. “Bangla academy” and other government bodies run by the tax-payers money were entrusted to publish hundreds of books on Mujib and his family –both for adults and for the youths. Millions of Taka was granted to public libraries to purchase those books. TV, radio and other mass media were used to publicise Mujib’s life and his speeches. Whereas, publishing books on Qur’anic teachings, the prophet’s life, great Muslim personalities and Islamic history were much restricted.

Strategy 4: Keeping constant vigilance on religious sermons in mosques, prohibiting and restricting Quranic tafsirs classes in open-field mass gatherings by the scholars, and prohibiting publication and circulation of books on jihad and sharia. The police and the Rapid Action Battalions (RAB) were the key tools for suppression of any Islamic propagation. They raided houses, offices and bookshops to confiscate Islamic books –especially on jihad and Islamic movement. The books written by Moulana Syed Maudoodi and Syed Qutb are the special target. In Bangladesh, it is a common practice that the people form committees to organise Quranic tafseer sessions in open fields. These happen in almost every nook and corner of the country around the year. In such gatherings, the eminent religious scholars are invited to deliver long speeches on Islamic teaching. Indeed, the Qur’anic knowledge and prophetic tradition survived among people through such public speeches for ages; and thus Islam reached to the doorsteps of the common people in Bengal. But Hasina’s regime has turned its government machinery against such popular tradition. She and her political ally rebuke it as a tool of spreading fundamentalism. Moulana Dilawar Hussain Sayeedi is widely known as the most famous religious speaker that Bangladesh has ever produced. His speech inspired scores of non-Muslims to accept Islam. But such extraordinary skill and Islamic knowledge of Moulana Sayeedi did not impress the government. He was put him behind the bar for more than two years. The government alleged him as murderer, arsonist, rapist and above all anti-liberationist in the war of independence in 1971. Recently the subservient judiciary of the government has passed a verdict to hang him. After such pronouncement, the country has entered into a virtual civil war like state. Already more than 100 people are killed by the police; several thousands are wounded and tens of thousands of people are imprisoned.

Strategy 5: Annihilation of Islamic parties by banning their organisation, killing their leaders, imprisoning their workers, closing their offices and confiscating financial resources. The BAL government has already banned Hezbut Tahrir as a part of the strategy. In Bangladesh, people are dying every day by terrorist attacks. BAL’s student cadres openly carry firearms; they kill people in front of the police. But the police do not touch them; let alone arresting them and putting them behind the bar. Although there is no proof that Hezbut Tahrir has taken part in any terrorist activities, the Government has disbanded them. At Shahbag roundabout of Dhaka, the BAL cadres are openly raising slogan to kill every razakar without any trail, instigating people to destroy the Islamists’ banks and other financial institutions. They have clogged the busy roads for more than a month. In a civilized country, all these are punishable criminal crimes. But in Bangladesh, they are getting government’s blessing. The government not only asked the local schools to supply children to continuously feed Shahbag’s gathering, but also deployed hundred police constables to protect these hooligans day and night from public anger. The government and non-government TV channels have been asked to show day-long live casts to spread their venomous speech. One the other hand, if Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) or Shibir (JI’s student force) or any other Islamic party bring out any peaceful procession, police would apply every possible means to dismantle them. In several occasions, they even opened fire arms to kill the protesters. The Home Minister has ordered the police to resist JI and Shibir where ever found - even if found in peaceful rally or procession. Dhaka’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner has been reported to ask his police to shoot JI and Shibir worker instantly if found anywhere. In a civilised country, a police constable is never given the authority to kill any man or woman on the street. Even Bangladesh’s own law does not allow even a district judge to hang a worst criminal; his judgement needs to be ratified by the high court. But the current government has given such power to political foot soldiers on the street. So the war like situation had returned to Bangladesh’s street.   So JI is not allowed to hold any rally in any part of the country. Already police has killed more than 100 people, and tens of thousands of JI and Shibir workers are arrested. The government is not still happy with such brutal suppression; they now want to ban JI.    

Strategy 6: Using cultural activities like open air concerts, dance show, drama show, film festivals, village theatres, TV shows to deflect people away from Islamic belief and practices. To make this cultural war a big success, India’s investment is huge. It has extensively deployed its cultural foot-soldiers in every nook and corner of the country. India’s film stars, singers, dancers are making continuous visits to Bangladeshi cities. Thousands of people attend those shows. Bangladesh is a country of foreign-funded NGOs. Thousands of these NGOs are working exclusively to train boys and girls in dancing and singing. Along with hundreds of Bangladeshi Hindu girls, thousands of Muslim girls from secular families have joined this huge army of cultural warriors against Islamic faith and practices. All these are happening in the name of cultural activities.

The Imminent Danger                                    
The enemy of Islam understand that the full conversion of Bengali Muslims to non-Islam is difficult. But they also understand that it is very easy make them cultural converts. It is no less harmful either. Indeed, this way they are pulling the Muslims away from Islam’s fundamental belief and practice, and making easy inroads into Muslims’ inner circles of politics and other activities. Since culture itself is the expression of Muslim faith; and many Bengali Muslims are indeed mere cultural Muslim with little Islamic knowledge and aqeeda, such cultural conversion will be highly detrimental to Islam in Bangladesh. Ultimately, that will lead to massive de-Islamisation. And such de-Islamisation would adequately serve the enemy’s political and strategic purpose.

In the past, the Muslims have experienced the calamities caused by this de-Islamised brand of the Muslims. They worked as the most obedient collaborators of the enemies. They fought with the British colonial army to extend their rule in most of the Muslim lands. Like any non-Muslim army, they did not hesitate to slaughter the fellow Muslims. The same brand of people joined British army in World War-I to snatch the Muslim Iraq and Palestine from Muslim Khelafa and placed them in the alter of the British Empire. In 1971, the same de-Islamised brand went to India to get training and arms to dismember Pakistan and slaughter both Bengali and non-Bengali Muslims in Bangladesh. Now they want to hang the remaining Islamists. India still wants the same lot of collaborators with same anti-Islamic zeal. They are working very hard to get them in enough number. The gathering in Shahbag, indeed gave a vivid display of these products. This is the core point of India’s current cold war in Bangladesh. If India continues to win the war with current pace, she will not need any conventional war to colonise this Muslim land. The time will come when these Bangladesh converts, like Bengali Hindu, will ask for the merger. India is cunningly waiting for such a moment. 17/03/13
http://www.drfirozmahboobkamal.com/english-articles/913-indias-war-in-bangladesh.html

Sunday, March 10, 2013

‘I was discriminated against because I am Muslim’ - Interview by Irena Akbar - The Indian Express, Mumbai, INDIA

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/-i-was-discriminated-against-because-i-am-muslim-/1085223/0

The Indian Express


‘I was discriminated against because I am Muslim’


express news service : New Delhi, Sat Mar 09 2013, 21:20 hrs
45
 
In 2008, a youth was arrested from my neighbourhood in Hubli for alleged links with the Student Islamic Movement of India. He was studying to be a doctor and had no history of indiscipline or run-ins with the law. His family was traumatised, and still is, for he continues to languish in jail. If that could happen to a young, educated Muslim like him, it could happen to me, too, I thought then. Five years later, that passing thought became an ugly reality. 

On August 29, 2012, a posse of armed policemen barged into the one-bedroom flat I shared with four other boys in Bangalore. They pretended to be looking for my roommate Shoaib Ahmed Mirza, whom they accused of plotting to assassinate some right-wing Kannada columnists. Ironically, they had picked him up from the locality just a while earlier. In our flat, they slapped his brother, Aijaz Ahmed, abused the other three and suddenly handcuffed me too. I pleaded with them to tell me why they were taking me away. I asked one of the policemen, whom I had spoken to earlier when I was a crime reporter with Deccan Herald, what was going on. All I got was a sarcastic look. The brazen manner in which we were picked up was more like a kidnapping than an arrest. With my pleas unanswered, my mind slid into numbness. I went blank. I could not think. The story of that youth kept replaying in my head. 

My first night in the cell was the longest night of my life. We kept pleading with the cops, including the junior-most constables, to not destroy our lives. During our 30 days in police custody, the cops abused us in every way they could. One policeman asked me, "So, you work for a Pakistani newspaper?" I don't even want to get into the nasty things they said about my faith. I was surprised that unlike the others, I was not physically abused. Outside the prison, though, I was planted as the "mastermind". 

When we — the 15 of us arrested in the so-called assassination plot — were shifted to Bangalore Central Jail, for the first two months we were locked inside a separate barrack, which meant we were denied access to facilities available to other inmates, such as outstation phone calls, the gym and the library. Later, when we were shifted out from there, we could avail these amenities, but it exposed us to taunts from others. The prison authorities used to refer to us as the "bomb case people", and other inmates seemed to believe them. They'd say in Kannada, "Enu ide iwaradu." (They must have done something wrong.)

I did not mingle much with others. I spent time reading the Quran, that my sister and brother got for me during one of their visits, and taught English and Urdu to two of my co-accused. There were times when I ran out of hope, fearing that I may languish here forever. But then, my innocence reclaimed that hope, and I would feel confident that I would be out soon. 

Six months later, on February 25, 2013, I was released. But even before I could get over the police hostilities I had endured, I was told about the the media onslaught during my time in jail. I had been dubbed the "mastermind" of the plot. Some of my former colleagues told me that a senior police officer, who was not even investigating the case, misled journalists that I had joined Deccan Herald with the sole purpose of blowing up the Metro station opposite my office. The media blindly, mindlessly, reproduced his words. Similarly, going by the police's words, the media said "radical literature" was seized from my office computer. That computer had an Urdu poem about Republic Day, written by Sahir Ludhianvi, a Leftist ideologue, who was part of the Progressive Writer's Association.

Honestly, after our arrest, I was prepared for such reportage. That I was called a "mastermind", for example, did not surprise me. But some stories were painfully insensitive. A news channel "broke" the story about my father in Pakistan who "guided" me from there. My father died of a heart attack in 2006. I even have his death certificate. Can you imagine how it feels to deal with such bulls**t? Another news channel said I had Rs 50 crore in my bank. If I had so much money, I would certainly have owned a newspaper.

The way the police and the media reacted to my alleged involvement in the so-called plot has convinced me that there is an institutional bias against Muslims. When you put all the facts together — that I was picked up for simply sharing a room with a suspect, that an Urdu poem on my terminal was interpreted as a fanatical text, that so many other Muslim youths have languished in jails for terror-related cases only to be let off for want of evidence — how can you expect me to feel otherwise? 

This is not a new feeling. When I was studying journalism in 2009, I had suggested "media coverage of terror suspects" as the subject of my thesis, which my teacher rejected. At that time, Muhammad Hanif, a doctor from Bangalore, was arrested in Australia on terror charges, which were later proved to be false. There were similar arrests for the Malegaon and Mecca Masjid blasts. The media reports sensationalised such arrests, and engaged in character assassination. It was as if they had taken it upon themselves to prove that the accused were guilty. When Hanif was exonerated, the Australian government issued a public apology to him — something the Indian government has not done for so many similar, wrongful arrests.

The media has reacted in the extreme to me — extremely cruel when I was arrested, and now, extraordinarily supportive after my release. I am inundated with phone calls from journalists, asking for my side of the story. Even though I am disillusioned by the media, I have not lost faith in it. That faith comes from some truly fair reporting, specially in the print media. I want to return to work as a journalist. My father, who used to run an Unani medical store, wanted me to become an Unani doctor, but I was good at languages and social science, and began working as a journalist in the Urdu newspaper Rashtriya Sahara in Dharwad in 2007, while doing a PG diploma in journalism. In 2009, I joined Deccan Herald, where I first covered crime, and then education. Journalism has always been close to my heart. But, I have become sceptical of reportage. I will always think twice before trusting a news story. I want to work on the desk and ensure the accuracy of a story.

I do hope to live a normal life. I am overwhelmed with visitors who have been pouring into my home, welcoming me back, and putting an end to my fear of being stigmatised for life. My ex-colleagues are also in touch with me. Throughout my life, I have never been discriminated as a Muslim. I have always believed that Muslims must stop feeling as if they are victims of the system, and must strive towards educating and empowering themselves. But my six months in jail as an educated, empowered Muslim, paints a contrasting picture — that I was discriminated against because I was Muslim. These are two extremities. And though one positive extreme gives me hope, as does my faith in the judiciary and democracy, the other extreme puts me in despair. I am trying to find a middle ground to this dilemma. I have truly experienced the uncertainty of life. I have reflected a lot on my own life, and if something good has come out of this ordeal, it is that I have emerged a better person. Now, I look at the larger picture of life, and can empathise with others' sufferings.

As told to Irena Akbar

Friday, March 8, 2013

India's Muslims - Growing, and neglected - A steadily rising Muslim population continues to fall behind - THE ECONOMIST

http://www.economist.com/world/asia

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21572785-steadily-rising-muslim-population-continues-fall-behind-growing-and-neglected

The Economist


India’s Muslims

Growing, and neglected

A steadily rising Muslim population continues to fall behind

Mar 2nd 2013 | AGRA |From the print edition


IT TELLS you something hopeful perhaps that, for all the horror unleashed when two bombs laid by presumed militant Islamists ripped through a crowd in Hyderabad on February 21st, India’s public response has been muted. The blasts killed 16 and injured 117. Both the method of the attack (bombs in metal tiffin boxes strapped to bicycles) and its location (near a Hindu temple) point to a home-grown Islamic group, the Indian Mujahideen.

Apart from a brief debate about policing and about the competence of the home minister, Indians responded phlegmatically. Terror is not novel, and bombings have grown less frequent and bloody of late. Muslims broadly, including politicians in Hyderabad, were quick to call the latest violence an assault on all Indians; Hindu politicians echoed them. Two days later, in the goat-filled lanes of Taj Ganj, a Muslim quarter in Agra, south of Delhi, the capital, descendants of workers who built the Taj Mahal cheerily said India’s faiths rub along fine. There was no reason to change now.
The moderation is encouraging, especially in the context of a steady rise in India’s Muslim numbers. An official analysis of data by religion from the 2011 census is not yet out. Any delay might be deliberate: to avoid a fuss ahead of general elections, due next year. 
 
Higher fertility rates among Muslims might be seen as politically sensitive. Private studies guess that India has about 177m Muslims, comprising 14.6% of the total population. It marks a rise of nearly 40m, or a percentage point, on a decade before. Higher fertility will ensure the upward trend continues. Overall, India’s fertility rate is falling, but among Muslims it is dropping most slowly. Old habits persist. Few Muslim women work outside the home. Contraception is not much used.
Crucially, fertility tends to fall only as poverty drops. Muslims are poorer than average and are heavily present in the big, poor, northern states. According to a study by the Pew Research Centre, India will probably have 236m Muslims in two decades’ time, on a par with Indonesia (which has the world’s biggest Muslim population). That is a lot, but is still under a fifth of India’s total population. In certain states, however, change is more dramatic. In Assam, in the north-east, Muslims now make up a third of the population, a sharp rise in the past two decades (though immigration accounts for some of it).

Where population change is fast, instability may follow. Last year 77 people were killed and 400,000 were displaced in Assam, amid clashes between Muslim settlers and Bodo tribal groups who feel their land is under threat. Still, growing populations alone did not provoke the violence in Assam. Shifting political loyalties were also a factor.

Elsewhere, resentment among Muslims may grow if not enough is done to redress their economic backwardness. No serious official effort has been made to assess the lot of India’s Muslims since the publication in 2006 of a study ordered by the prime minister, Manmohan Singh. Called the Sachar report, it broadly showed Muslims to be stuck at the bottom of almost every economic or social heap. Though heavily urban, Muslims had a particularly low share of public (or any formal) jobs, school and university places, and seats in politics. They earned less than other groups, were more excluded from banks and other finance, spent fewer years in school and had lower literacy rates. Pitifully few entered the army or the police force.

Seven years and an economic boom later, are Muslims better off? 

Wajahat Habibullah, who heads the National Commission for Minorities in Delhi, sees only faint reasons for cheer. Muslims in India outperform their neighbours in Pakistan on some social indicators, such as having lower fertility rates and infant mortality, and higher literacy and life expectancy.

He also sees a strong yearning among Muslims for education, including for girls, that was absent before. That matters, especially learning English, which can offer a path to better jobs at a time when employment is fading in the traditional Muslim crafts of weaving, leather and metal working, and small-scale manufacturing. 

The slums of east Delhi, with many Muslims, are now home to some excellent new schools for boys and girls.

Yet much else is discouraging. A new study by an American think-tank, the US-India Policy Institute, assessing progress since the Sachar report, bluntly concludes that Muslims have “not shown any measurable improvement”. Even in education, Muslims’ gains are typically more modest than other groups’.

Too many official efforts to direct help, for example by spending more on schools in Muslim districts, also fail. Funds get stolen or diverted to non-Muslim recipients, Mr Habibullah says. Just as telling, far more is done to tackle rural poverty, with job-creation schemes, subsidies for farmers, and prices set above market levels for much farm produce. Muslims, predominantly in the cities, suffer relative neglect.

Things could yet change, through politics. The ruling Congress Party has traditionally relied on the votes of villagers, as well as on the unwavering support of Muslims, to flourish at elections. But if India’s biggest party takes Muslims for granted, they will leave in search of other parties where they can have political clout. In Uttar Pradesh the ruling Samajwadi Party has peeled away Muslim votes. Elsewhere, as in Hyderabad, Muslims now fall in behind parties which appeal explicitly to their interests. Better political organisation may, in time, bring economic reward.
 
From the print edition: Asia