Ayodhya Verdict - Aditi Phadnis: Ayodhya - Lest we forget

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/aditi-phadnis-ayodhya-lest-we-forget/409891/

Aditi Phadnis: Ayodhya - Lest we forget

Though religion is no longer the hot topic, the government should be on its guard

Aditi Phadnis / New Delhi October 02, 2010, 0:19 IST

On September 23, 24 and 25, 1992, P V Narasimha Rao, then prime minister, called a meeting with editors of several national newspapers and magazines. The issue was: what should be done with Ayodhya? Most of them came out of the conference confused and disturbed. They wondered if the prime minister’s idea of a solution to the Ayodhya tangle was to hand over the disputed structure to the Hindus.

Rao was a worried man. Karsewaks were massing in Ayodhya. Earlier in the week, at a meeting with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders, he is believed to have said: “Mandir banega aur bhavya mandir banega (the temple will be built and it will be a grand one).” And as an afterthought, Rao added: “Lekin masjid hatana theek nahin hai (but it may not be proper to move the mosque).”

Rao had set up an Ayodhya cell in his office, headed by Naresh Chandra. In an interview to this reporter in October 1992, Chandra was strongly critical of the attempts made by a team of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) professors to prove historically that Ram was not born in Ayodhya. “Progressive historians (like Romila Thapar, S Gopal and others) are more keen to present their modern, secular credentials.They want to sound superior and informed, but we find their writings opinionated and argumentative.”

He added: “We would be rejecting history if we were to say that for the last 400 years (since Mir Baqi, a Shia from Iran, built a mosque at the disputed site), Hindus and Muslims have been living happily and sharing the same building for puja and namaz. There has obviously been a temple here. Whether it belonged to Ram or someone else, we don’t know because there isn’t enough data. But the fact is there have been bitter conflicts over this place, and we cannot brush this aside, as the JNU professors have done.”


The matter came to a head within two months, before Rao’s project could be realised. On December 6 that year, to India’s eternal shame, the government was unable to protect India’s secularism and the “disputed structure” was brought down by mobs while the matter was still being heard by the courts. Recalling that event, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was uncharacteristically cutting about L K Advani’s role. “Unlike the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate, I will not be found weeping in a corner while hoodlums tear down a centuries-old mosque,” he commented witheringly last year.


This time around, when the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has given its verdict, the law-and-order management has been exemplary. Not only have there been no incidents, there is a conspicuous build-up of security forces, and “miscreants” have been punished promptly (like the two boys from Kollam, Kerala who were found to have sent incendiary text messages). There is little patience with communal forces, although a Congress government is in power again and the man who was finance minister then is prime minister now.


So what has changed between 1992 and 2010?


Obviously that was a different time, a different atmosphere. Kalyan Singh, who was chief minister at the time of the demolition, visited Ayodhya on September 16, days before the judgment. Singh tried to sound as he did in 1992: “We will not sit quietly in case the judgment goes against the Hindu claim to the disputed site but political parties must stay away from this issue,” he said at a public meeting. The 50 people who attended the meeting heard him disinterestedly and dispersed five minutes later.


The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) has realised that even when in power, there are some things that a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government cannot do. On the other hand, the Gujarat government has been unapologetic about pulling the shutters down on the VHP’s business dealings. So, one major stream of Hindu mobilisation has simply been disempowered.


But if we agree that no communal incident in India is ever spontaneous, then it is also true that administrative preparedness can prevent such incidents. In this context, even the Congress organisation concedes that the credit must go to the Uttar Pradesh government headed by Mayawati. Massive police and paramilitary presence was ensured by the UP administration.


In 1992, every jai Shri Ram was captured by TV and radio, anywhere it was uttered. In 2010, when lawyers were addressing the press and claiming credit for “winning” the case, some cries of jai Shri Ram were simply muted by TV channels.


Reactions to the demolition came in March 1993, in the shape of simultaneous bomb blasts all over Mumbai. But between 1993 and 2010, the Shiv Sena has split; and post 23/11, it is a different Mumbai.


So what does it all mean? The biggest difference between 1992 and 2010 is: India has lost the appetite to shed blood over religion. It stands to reason. Hindus have become more religious. But many religious leaders — well-known ones, not some leading shady sect — are facing criminal charges ranging from sodomy to murder. Funding to religious institutions, including madarassas, is under scrutiny,


However, Sun Tsu in the Art of War sounds a warning: Do not press a desperate foe too hard. Whoever the winner or loser in Ayodhya, the government needs to remember this.

Like Jury selection, Judges for Babri Case should be chosen by the litigants on Supreme Court appeal - By Ghulam Muhammed

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Like Jury selection, Judges for Babri Case should be chosen by the litigants on Supreme Court appeal

Ayodhya Verdict as a piece of legal document is held by lawyers and judges as so much flawed when it is tested on the standards of Constitutional fundamentals. The logic and reasoning of all 3 judges smack of extra-legal consideration impacting on their judgments.

Since judges are appointed by State, which is proved to be politically motivated on one side or other, a selection method should be adopted at the next Apex level hearing of the appeal to be filed by the both litigants who should have a stake in ensuring no bias, no prejudice, no politics, no personal agenda is attributed to the selected judges. Both litigants should have the right to veto the candidature of any judge appearing before a specially paneled ‘Selection Committee’ to ensure that case should proceed with mutual trust and confidence in the judiciary. A separate process should be initiated by the Chief Justice of India, to test the bona fides of the judges on their commitment to the Constitution of India, during their past record of delivering judgments.

Since Babri Masjid/ Ram Janambhoomi, title suit is to be considered entirely on the basis of hard facts and documentation, Chief Justice should caution selected judges against inserting extra legal/ philosophical/ ideological/ religious opinions in their judgment.

All such precautions will have to be made at appeal to Supreme Court level, to ensure that such hotchpotch potpourri as presented by Allahabad High Court on Ayodhya, is not coming forth to damage the reputation of Indian Judiciary and drag Indian justice to directions ultra vires of Indian constitution.

Let India not become the laughing stock of the world that is so keenly watching, how India sizes up to the challenges of the modern world.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

<http://www.ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com>

Ayodhaya Verdict: Indian Voodoo Justice By Ghulam Muhammed

Friday, October 01, 2010

Letter to the Editor

Ayodhaya Verdict: Indian Voodoo Justice

India has long been known in the West as home of the snake charmers and rope tricksters. Now it will be more famous for one of its most modern and much admired modern institutions turning out Voodoo justice – an amalgam of law and faith impacting the judgments given out by the 3 judge bench of a High Court, all with their version of how Indian law should be interpreted. The Ayodhaya Verdict will go down in history as one of the finest example of an old tradition-steeped country trying to wear the garb of a new nation without realizing its slip is showing. In fact, the Emperor wears no clothes.

For one of contestant of the title suit of the Babri Masjid property, the Muslims, it is a mockery of justice as per the long traditions of legal and judiciary system introduced by Colonial British in India two hundred years back and now very much entrenched in its polity. The Hindutva version of justice takes Indian justice to another two thousand back, even prior to any sharia laws of Muslim era, and the verdict seems to be forerunner of how ‘Vedic’ ( term used for lack of any other suitable Hindu term: with apologies), in contrast to Islamic Sharia, laws may be changing the entire ethos of Indian polity.

While Pandit Nehru, a high-caste Kashmiri Brahmin, thanks to his exposure to Fabian culture that was in fashion when he studied in Great Britain, tried to position the newly independent India into a gradual slide into the modern world, by introducing ‘secularism’ as India’s constitutional creed, he was so overwhelmingly and suffocatingly surrounded by hard-line Brahmins, even in his own Congress Party, that it is a miracle that the façade of secularism is still in vogue in India and the Hindutva hardliners too have eventually found shelter in secularism’s benign shadows.    

The shameless display of triumphalism shown by Saffron Brahmins, while spewing high moral slogans of unity and integrity in Indian society, is ample example of how the fascists have completely taken over the entire country, lock, stock and court hammer. The only alternative for the rest of the people, who are decidedly non-Brahmins, is to size up the danger of Brahmin conspiracies and boycott all Brahmin political groupings, including Congress and BJP. Muslims should vote even for a ‘kala chor’ (black thief in local parlance) rather than vote for Congress. They can hardly ignore how the earliest comments by a Congress leader, Chaturvedi, (a Brahmin), on a TV channel, came out applauding the verdict as facilitating a new phase of unity and integration among communities; apparently on Brahmin terms.

150 million Indian Muslims (15% of Indian population) should realize that India is as much their country, as it is of 30 million (3% Indian population) Brahmins and if they want to regain their stakes in their own country, they will have to reorganize and play the game by the rules of the game that is now being promulgated by the Brahmins, till the time the Brahmins are sidelined. And decidedly that is not a tall order, as far as US is posing as friend of India.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

<http://www.ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com>

Obama Admits He Is A Muslim

Cyberwar Against Iran: Is Obama Already at War with Tehran? - By Robert Dreyfuss - The Dreyfuss Report - THE NATION

http://www.thenation.com/blog/155026/cyberwar-against-iran-obama-already-war-tehran?page=full

Blogs > The Dreyfuss Report

Cyberwar Against Iran: Is Obama Already at War with Tehran?

Robert Dreyfuss

September 27, 2010

For several years now, there have been reports that the United States has been waging what amounts to technological warfare against Iran, using sophisticated industrial sabotage measures to weaken and undermine Iran’s nuclear industry—and, according to the New York Times, these efforts began during the Bush administration but accelerated under President Obama. And, for the past several years, there have been widespread reports that Iran’s nuclear program has been slowed or crippled by some unexplained malfunctions that have, among other things, caused Iran to spin far fewer centrifuges at Natanz, its enrichment plant, than earlier.

Now, it appears, there is a serious computer worm affecting Iran’s nuclear industry, along with other Iranian industrial facilities. Called Stuxnet, the worm appears to be a case of outright industrial sabotage or cyber warfare, created and unleashed not by rogue hackers but by a state. According to the Seattle Times, the time stamp on the Stuxnet virus reveals that it was created in January 2010, meaning that if the United States is behind it, it’s Obama’s doing, not Bush’s.
If so, and if the United States is behind it, then Obama is already at war with Iran. Cyber warfare is no less war than bombs and paratroopers. Besides the United States, of course, Israel is high on the list of countries with both motive and capability. Iran’s PressTV, a government-owned news outlet, quotes various Western technology and cybersecurity experts saying that either the United States or Israel is behind Stuxnet.


The Times reports that Stuxnet is highly specific, aimed “solely at equipment made by Siemens that controls oil pipelines, electric utilities, nuclear facilities, and other large industrial sites.”


The Stuxnet infection was detected by VirusBlokAda, a Belarusian computer security company, in July. Like other forms of warfare, the Stuxnet attack is causing collateral damage, spreading to computer networks outside Iran.


The Times notes, somewhat obliquely, that while President Obama talks often about spending huge sums to protect the United States from computer warfare, it also spends a lot of money to develop an offensive capability against other countries:  “President Obama has talked extensively about developing better cyberdefenses for the United States, to protect banks, power plants, telecommunications systems and other critical infrastructure. He has said almost nothing about the other side of the cybereffort, billions of dollars spent on offensive capability, much of it based inside the National Security Agency.”


The Stuxnet virus has also affected Iran’s nuclear power plant at Bushehr, constructed by the Russians. According to the Tehran Times, Iranian officials have admitted the attack and they’re working to contain it. “Iranian information technology officials have confirmed that some Iranian industrial systems have been targeted by a cyber attack, but added that Iranian engineers are capable of rooting out the problem,” reported the Tehran Times. The paper also quoted a top Iranian official saying: “An electronic war has been launched against Iran.” The same official, Mahmoud Liaii of the Industries and Mines Ministry’s tech office, added that the virus “is designed to transfer data about production lines from our industrial plants to [locations] outside of the country.”


The Israeli daily Ha'aretz  quoted a European firm, Kaspersky Labs, thus: “Stuxnet is a working and fearsome prototype of a cyber-weapon that will lead to the creation of a new arms race in the world.”


Make no mistake: this is serious stuff. I'm not one of those naïve, Pollyanna-ish types who believe that Iran is merely interested in peaceful uses of nuclear power. (For one thing, it doesn't have an nuclear power industry that needs fuel, and it won't have one for at least fifteen years.) 


Iran would never suffer the painful sanctions and international isolation that it faces merely to defend a theoretical right to develop a civilian nuclear industry. Perhaps its leaders see the nuclear program as a giant bargaining chip or as a way to gain attention for itself. No one wants to see Iran get the bomb, including Russia, China and, yes, The Dreyfuss Report. However, Iran is not very close to having that capability: so far, it hasn't even tried to enrich uranium to the highly enriched state needed to build a bomb, and if and when it does the world will know,. And, if bombing Iran's nuclear facilities isn't the answer, neither is launching war by other means.

Robert Dreyfuss

September 27, 2010  

  

Islamophobia, European-Style - By Gary Younge - THE NATION

http://www.thenation.com/article/154978/islamophobia-european-style?page=full

Islamophobia, European-Style

Gary Younge

September 23, 2010   |    This article appeared in the October 11, 2010 edition of The Nation.

Say what you like about George W. Bush; he respected the Muslims he murdered. Even as he wiped them out and tortured them, he professed his respect for their religion. "The Muslim faith is based upon peace and love and compassion," he said. "The exact opposite of the teachings of the Al Qaeda organization." The problem wasn't that he hated Muslims; it was that, through invasion and occupation, he sought to love them to death.

There was no reason to disbelieve these claims. Iraq, in particular, was never a war against Islam. It was primarily a war for oil; Muslims just got in the way. The driving logic behind it had no more to do with religion than slavery had to do with skin pigmentation. When it came to marketing the war, not only was disdain of Islam not necessary; it was actively unhelpful. With the war branded as an act of liberation, there was little to be gained by wantonly disparaging the faith of the very people it was now your task to subdue. And so long as the United States was bombing Muslims abroad, there was no need to bash them at home.


Needless to say, this official sensitivity bore little relation to how Muslims were treated by the state. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, broad sweeps of people from predominantly Muslim countries resulted in the "preventive detention" of 1,200, mostly men; voluntary interviews of 19,000; and a program of special registration for more than 82,000. Not a single terrorism conviction emerged from any of this.


Nor did Bush's tactful words do anything to quell popular Islamophobic attitudes. In 2006, long before the brouhaha over Park51, the so-called "Ground Zero mosque," a Pew survey showed that Muslims were viewed less favorably in the United States than in Russia, Britain or France, while a Gallup poll revealed that 39 percent of Americans supported requiring Muslims in the country, including US citizens, to carry special identification. By the time Obama ran for president, "Muslim" was a slur—an accusation about his faith he felt compelled to deny.


But while these views were prevalent, they did not gain electoral expression or widespread political currency. There was no rush to reprint cartoons of Muhammad or hold vexed national discussions about what Muslim women should or should not wear. Though Islamophobia may have been rife, Islam itself did not appear to provide a rich vein to tap. There were, it seems, precious few votes in it.


That paradox is now unraveling. The fallout over right-wing attacks against Park51, as well as those against several other mosques across the country, suggests that a sizable section of the right believes there is capital to be gained from scapegoating Muslims. From now on, the Koran burnings, mosque torchings and hate crimes directed at Muslims can no longer be understood simply as isolated incidents of bigotry. They will draw their strength and legitimacy from within the establishment and their encouragement from the mainstream media: not acts of individual calumny but insidious calculation.


Just as earlier waves of Islamophobia cannot be understood outside the context of 9/11 and the "war on terror," so this current strain is consistent with two related trends at home and abroad. First, it marks the rise of xenophobic and racist forces within the Republican Party, for whom the election of a black Democratic president with an uncommon name and an African father has produced a perfect storm for divisive, deranged rhetoric. As such, this most recent outburst of Islamophobia marks a plot development in the narrative of the Nixon strategy, which used the dog whistle of racially charged rhetoric to realign the South toward the GOP. Now no dog whistle is needed. The racism is not veiled but naked, the delivery not subtle but brutal. With the Minutemen, the birthers, the Tea Partyers and Fox News on common ground, it was only a matter of time before they turned their pitchforks on Muslims. For while they did not invent Islamophobia, they were well positioned to exploit it. Twenty-eight percent of Americans believe Muslims should not be eligible to sit on the Supreme Court, while fully one-third believe Muslims should be barred from running for president.


Second, the moment also brings the American hard right into line with its European counterparts, which bodes ill for American political culture as a whole. The past decade has seen an alarming rise in anti-immigrant and Islamophobic parties gaining political representation in Europe. In the Netherlands in June the party of Geert Wilders, who calls Muslims "goat fuckers" and wants to ban the Koran, almost tripled its representation, becoming the third-largest party. In "liberal" Sweden in September the hard-right Sweden Democrats entered Parliament for the first time, with 5.7 percent of the vote. With extremist parties regularly getting more than 10 percent, and in some cases sitting in government, European fascism has returned as a mainstream ideology. These movements start off on the fringes, but like arsenic in the water supply, their policies and rhetoric have a tendency to infect the broader discourse. The result, where Muslims are concerned, has been a moral panic. Switzerland voted in a national referendum to ban the construction of minarets—there are just four in the whole country. Belgium has passed a law banning the burqa, a garment estimated to be worn there by a couple of hundred women at most. In Italy a woman was fined 500 euros for wearing a veil on her way to a mosque.


That the American right, so contemptuous of Europeans on almost every level, should follow them on this front is, to say the least, disheartening. Polls show that despite living in the very country whose foreign policy, in Iraq and the Middle East as a whole, had done so much to enrage the Islamic world, Muslims felt more at home here than in European countries that opposed the Iraq War. That paradox, too, is unfortunately set to unravel.

Gary Younge

Angry Rabbi