Monday, October 24, 2016

The Rs 5-cr hafta - Editorial - The Indian Express, Mumbai | Comments by Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

My comments on The Indian Express Editorial: The 5-Crore Hafta:

GMGhulam Muhammed
Indian Express Editorial had taken a very narrow and very nearsighted moral view of the settlement negotiated by BJP's Maharashtra Chief Minister Fadnavis between Film producer Karan Johar and the supposed non-state actor Raj Thackeray. That kind of 'illegal' and 'immoral' exchange has been going on in Maharashtra, nay even all over the world, for times immemorial. The real justification for the exchange of such hafta is the avoidance of bloodshed. One would think, if BJP will be prepared to enter into some such arrangement with Pakistan itself over Kashmir, to avoid bloodshed. After all Kashmir and even other piece of populated land had been bought and sold by other entities, without the transaction being judged on moral ground. What price Kashmir? who will be the highest bidder, India or Pakistan. Will the people of Kashmir become a bidder? All this could be an interesting area of conjecture, in case India wants to abide by its true spirit of non-violence and keep peace.
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GMGhulam Muhammed
Shamsul has unnecessarily brought in Saudia and Islam for legalizing peace terms that had historically avoided wars and bloodshed all over the world, throughout history. India and its Brahmins are not spiritually and morally geared for military engagements. Modi will be working against the very spirit of accommodation and peace if he and his group thrust a billion people of India into any military confrontation, either on its own volition or as proxy of other forces. Fadnavis has open a new mode of exchange in full public gaze. It appears horrendous, but it can be evaluated in wider perspective to take sting out of our tortured lives that we are going through under the new rule.
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http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/ae-dil-hai-mushkil-karan-johar-donate-rs-5-cr-to-army-welfare-fund-3101106/


The Indian Express

The Rs 5-cr hafta


That’s what India’s soft power was reduced to: A bargain between the extortionist and the artist with state as facilitator.

By: Editorial | Published:October 25, 2016 12:04 am
When Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis invited Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and Karan Johar and other representatives of the film industry to his official residence on Saturday to broker a truce — after the MNS threatened to disrupt the showing of Johar’s film Ae dil hai mushkil starring Pakistani actor Fawad Khan — he diminished the fundamental pact between the citizen and the state. The “solution” arrived at, payment of Rs 5 crore by the filmmaker to an army fund, resembles the hafta given to assuage the local bully who has already intimidated the policeman. That there should be a price tag to law and order, that a filmmaker should have to pay money to ensure a violence-free passage of a film, speaks of the times we live in when nationalism is becoming a cover for an everyday assault on civility and freedom by assorted non-state actors. But most of all, it speaks of the stark abdication by the chief minister and his government of its responsibility to ensure and protect the rule of law.
But there was more than one cave-in in last week’s meeting in Mumbai. Karan Johar and other industry seniors had an opportunity — to take the moral high ground, to stand up to the bully, and to show up the cravenness of their government by refusing to compromise with the freedom of speech and expression. They failed, but what was far worse, they didn’t even put up a fight. Far from defending the liberty to make the film they want, with the actors they choose, Johar and Co. have let the MNS frame the issue as one that involves nationalism and patriotism. They did not point out the obvious: That the campaign of threat and blackmail, MNS-style, is not about anybody’s love for the nation. That it is, in fact, about the danger posed by the politics of hate and insularity to creative freedoms. The Fadnavis-led BJP may arguably have acted on the political calculation that propping up the MNS and legitimising its politics would help it undermine the Shiv Sena, which is becoming a competitive, troublesome ally. The film producers may have felt pressured by the large sum of money and the several livelihoods that ride on a film as big as Johar’s. But in the end, for their own reasons, both the chief minister and the film producer have let Raj Thackeray and his goons seize the canvas and stunt the frame.
Tragically, the Mumbai drama was devoid of any high principle, it was only about the tawdry terms of a monetary transaction, at a time when it could have been about Mumbai reminding the nation of the real power of the idea of India. It gets reaffirmed, and becomes larger, when artists from other countries, including and especially from Pakistan, flock to it, to work and to make it their home. That idea of India is made up of the promise of a system more open and free, institutions more rule-bound, and a society more liberal and tolerant of diverse ideas, minorities and dissent. It took a blow in Mumbai on Saturday.

Islam and Hindutva by Ghulam Muhammed

Monday, October 24, 2016

Islam and Hindutva

Since the arrival of Narendra Modi, a lifetime parcharak of RSS, as Prime Minister of India, with huge convincing majority in Lok Sabha, a string of measures have been unleashed at several levels in politics, society, and economy to ‘crush’ Indian Muslims.

A cursory study of the reasons for this negative avalanche of enmity towards Muslims, equal citizens of this pluralist, multicultural republic, would reveal several factors that are in public domain.

However, there is a much deeper motivation that drives the political votaries of Hindutva to counter Muslims and Islam, and that could be pure jealousy.

Brahmins at the head of the caste hierarchy have been fully aware of the common origin of their monotheistic ideas and ideals. They however, having imposed on themselves a non-military life-style had been no match for Muslim invaders who had both an ideology and the means to nourish it in a favorable social environment.

Brahmins helplessly observed how the monotheist Muslim, with identical ideology of religion, could marshal forces, create States and use its resources to achieve both a worldly prosperous existence as well as a life-style conducive to harmonious social environment conforming to Islamic fundamentals.

Brahmins, a fairly educated tribe had nurtured deep jealousy against Islam. Even though they admired or appreciated so many facets of Islamic Sharia, they had gone on some distance with their caste-ridden hegemony to be able to bring about any change to adopt Islamic norms in their conduct, or join Muslims in converting Hinduism to a class-less, idol-less, generous version of even their own Vedic based religious beliefs.

Now that through exploitation of secularism and democracy as tools of convenient power-grab, Hindutva had acquired State power, they have ambitions to spread out like Islam, to all over the world albeit with their pagan images of soft power. In this age of modern communication, compared to 14 century old Islam, they do have some beginner’s luck to bedazzle the unsuspecting world with their demonstrative razzle dazzle of song and dance rituals. However, the deeper content of Vedic truth cannot be long covered up and it has to acknowledge and trod the same monotheistic path like Islam, if it has to get any foothold in the hearts and minds of  uninitiated looking for alternatives to their failed religions, be that Christianity or Marxism.

Hindutva’s singular misfortune is to fall for the help, assistance, agency, surrogacy and guidance of Jewish Zionism that has a historical world record of burying their clients while making a big hoopla of their king-making prowess. Not universally realized is the fact that even behind the British colonization and its final disintegration, the British Jewry were always there reading out their mantras at each step of the way. India was done in, more by the Jewish British than the British themselves. One can easily pick out Jewish names in Britain’s 200 years of Indian colonization and exploitation. 

Specimen of Jewish intervention in world history of rise and fall of global movements are too many to escape Hindutva opportunists.

No doubt, in India over the millennium, Hinduism as distinct from Vedic religion had impacted several Islamic practices that were and are contrary to Islamic basics. 

However, with the new age of open societies in the ever shrinking global village, even Indian Islam is opening up to essential basics, gradually shunning practices mimicking Hindu rituals. More so to confront Modi’s direct interference in Muslim affairs! The old Empire is preparing to strike back. Viva the Mullahs!

As a humble servant of Islam and Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) I am duty bound to call all Brahmins who have intellectual capacity to absorb both Vedic and Islamic traditions, to hear the call of your inner being and have the courage to read Shahada (There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is Allah’s servant and messenger) and join the ranks of the righteous and the rightly guided. 

I pray to Almighty to open the hearts of all Brahmins wherever they are, to the truth of their special duty to the creator.


Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
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