Monday, June 7, 2010

Israel and Outremer By Ross Douthat - Op Ed Columnist - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/opinion/07douthat.html?th&emc=th

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Israel and Outremer

By ROSS DOUTHAT

Published: June 6, 2010

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Watching the Israeli government’s botched, bloody attempt to enforce its blockade of Gaza, I kept thinking about Outremer.

Susan Etheridge for The New York Times

Ross Douthat’s Evaluations

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That’s the name — French for “beyond the sea” — given to the states that the Crusaders established in the Holy Land during the High Middle Ages: the principality of Antioch, the counties of Edessa and Tripoli, and the kingdom of Jerusalem.

Out of a mix of amnesia and self-abnegation, we tend to remember the Crusader states only as deplorable exercises in Western aggression. (Never mind that in an age defined by conquest and reconquest, they were no less legitimate than the Muslim states they warred against — which had themselves been founded atop once-Christian territories.) The analogy between Israel and Outremer is usually drawn by Israel’s enemies: “Jews and Crusaders” is one of Osama bin Laden’s favorite epithets, and Palestinian radicals often pine for another Saladin to drive the Israelis into the sea.

But Israel’s friends can learn something from Outremer as well. Like today’s Jewish republic, the Crusader kingdoms were small states forged by military valor, based in the Middle East but oriented westward, with distant patrons and potential foes just next door. Like Israel, they were magnets for fanatics from east and west alike. And when they eventually fell — after surviving for longer than Israel has currently existed — it was for reasons that are directly relevant to the challenges facing the Israeli government today.

The first reason was geographic: the Holy Land is easier to conquer than defend, because its topograpy and regional position leave it perpetually vulnerable to invasion. The second was diplomatic: the Crusaders were perpetually falling out with their major neighbors, from Byzantium to Egypt, and the support they enjoyed from Western Europe was too limited to save them from extinction. The third was demographic: the ruling class of Outremer, primarily Frankish knights and their retainers, was a minority in a territory whose inhabitants were largely Eastern Orthodox and Muslim, and they had difficulty achieving the kind of integration that long-term stability required.

A decade ago, before the collapse of the peace process, the Israelis seemed to be faring better than Outremer on all three fronts. Their potent armed forces and nuclear deterrent more than offset the weakness of their geographic position. After decades of isolation, they had forged reasonably stable relationships with many regional powers — including Turkey, Jordan and Egypt — and an enduring bond with the world’s superpower, the United States. Their substantial Arab minority was better-treated and better-integrated than minority populations in almost any other Middle Eastern state. And they appeared to be disentangling themselves from the long-term occupation of a much larger Arab population in Gaza and the West Bank.

Ten years later, though, only the military advantage endures. Diplomatically and demographically, Israel increasingly faces the same problems that bedeviled the 12th-century kings of Jerusalem.

In the wake of the Gaza and Lebanon wars, and now the blockade-running fiasco, the Jewish state is as isolated on the world stage as it’s been since the dark Zionism-is-racism years of the 1970s. Meanwhile, its relationship with its Arab citizens is increasingly strained, the occupation of the Palestinian West Bank seems destined to continue indefinitely, and both Arab populations are growing so swiftly that Jews could soon be a minority west of the Jordan River.

Israel can probably live with diplomatic isolation so long as the American public remains staunchly on its side. But it will have a harder time surviving the demographic transformation of its territory. If the Jewish state can’t extricate itself from the West Bank, it may be forced to choose between the quasi-apartheid of a permanent occupation, and the dissolution that would likely follow from giving Palestinians a significant voice in Israel’s politics.

Israel’s critics often make this extrication sound easy. In reality, it promises to involve enormous sacrifices, of land and everyday security alike — whether in the form of extraordinary concessions to a divided Palestinian leadership, or a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank that would be more wrenching than the 2005 retreat from Gaza.

What’s more, either approach would almost certainly invite stepped-up violence from the irreconcilable Palestinian factions and their Iranian and Syrian backers, who will see any retreat as a cue to escalate the struggle.

As Walter Russell Mead put it recently, Israel may “have to pay virtually the full price for peace ... without getting full peace.” Nobody should blame Israelis for shying from this possibility.

Yet it may be the only way to guarantee their survival as a nation. Outremer was finally overrun by Muslim armies. But if Israel is destroyed, it will be destroyed from within.

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D. Gundun

Washington DC

June 6th, 2010

10:51 pm

Israel doesn’t want to pay full price even for full peace. Its idea of a fair two-state solution is a demilitarized Palestine with borders and airspace under control of Jerusalem, which will also remain “undivided.” No refugees either. Israel’s idea of peace is a neutered Palestine, even though it’s more likely to benefit from a strong Palestine than a weak one. Like how Palestinians must accept the permanence of Israel, only when Israel accepts an autonomous Palestine can lasting peace become a real possibility. A constant stream of foreign policy flows at www.hadalzone.blogspot.com

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Of Israel's cowardly attack on Gaza Aids Flotilla - By Seema Mustafa

South Africa's President Zouma is visiting India. The fact remains that the meeting of a liberated South Africa's President and Indian President and Prime Minister is taking place in the backdrop of another Apartheid regime being created in the Middle East, and Indian Government has no comparable role to play when comparing with the enormous moral support extended by India towards the breakdown of apartheid regime in South Africa.

Indian government should stand up and be counted and not remain a stooge of the zionist forces.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Seema Mustafa <seemamustafa@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 5:12 PM
Subject: column
To: Ghulam Muhammed <ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

By Seema Mustafa

Israel has demonstrated not just its intolerance but also its cowardice. Nine peace activists aboard the Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid for the people trapped in Gaza by the Israeli military, were shot not once but several times at close range. And of these five were shot in the back. And the Israeli defence: they were al Qaeda, they were terrorists, they came at us with sticks and knives.

Shame! Brutal murder following an act of aggression has evoked condemnation across the globe, but a lot more needs to be done. Turkey that had established diplomatic relations with Israel giving it legitimacy in that part of the world, has now withdrawn its Ambassador and taken up the matter in the United Nations. Other governments have also condemned the killing, but stopped short at that. India has also added a feeble voice to the criticism, and took an entire day to frame the statement which talks of the ‘use of force’ but does not carry the word ‘Israel.” Almost as if by stating this, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government are afraid of inviting Israeli and American ire. Not a word that the blockage against the Palestinians should be lifted immediately, and all supplies of medicines and food and other essential commodities resumed forthwith. Not a word.

Shame! Shame on Israel for occupation and murder. Shame on the world, including India, for maintaining complete silence. Shame on the Arab countries for cowering under US pressure, and refusing to unite to get the Palestinians back their land and Israel contained to agreed on territory. The courage of armies has been taken over by the peace activists across the world who are defying Israel’s threats and have refused to back off after the brutal attack. Ship after ship will arrive at the Palestinian waters seeking to break the blockade, and whether the aid material they are carrying is unloaded or not, this war has already been won. Israel has been defeated morally by a group of ordinary people who worked over the months to get the ships together and break the blockade. They have done so, and have actually challenged Israel’s claims to the waters, even though the countries across the world have failed to do so.

The four ‘terrorist’ groups of West Asia have been those who challenged Israel and Washington’s writ in the region. One of them is dead, and his country destroyed, namely Iraq President Saddam Hussein who had, in his final years, tried to right some of the wrongs he had committed through a new agenda that included taking up the cause of the Palestinians. Iraq was invaded as then US President George W.Bush was convinced that it was harbouring weapons of mass destruction, and when these were not found, the ugly invasion was justified as an attack on a “terrorist.”

The other three continue to exist, and are the demons that the West and now even the East raises and whips every time it wants to consolidate votes and polarize people. There is the Hamas that is now controlling Gaza, that won the elections through a process that was certified as free and fair by the US, and that has been rigid in its anti-Israel and anti-US positions. It is therefore, terrorist and targeted by Israel in a continuing war that has been sanctioned by the world, including India. Needless to say innocent Palestinians are paying the price, with the blockade of Gaza just a small example of the terror that the Palestinians are living with on a daily basis. The terrorist is the Israeli state for them.

There is Hezbollah, a strong voice that has challenged the might of Israel not just verbally but in deed by inflicting a severe defeat on the army a few years ago. It is a defeat that Israel has not recovered from till now, and of course Hezbollah is a ‘terrorist’ outfit as it has refused to accept Zionism as an ideology, and is one of the few organizations in West Asia that is also represented in the government. Hezbollah leader Nasrullah has refused to compromise and has filled the sizeable anti-Israel space in Lebanon, and in fact in the region itself where he is seen as a hero of the Arab street.

And then there is Iran, the ‘rogue nation’ despite its ancient civilization and its sophisticated brain. For the new definition now brands any one---individual, group, state---who questions the right of Israel and the US to push their writ across the globe as a “terrorist” or at best a “terrorist sympathizer.” A description being used by governments to restrain other nations, or their own people. It is being used to justify and perpetrate state terror, establish and reinforce the will of the militarily powerful over the poor, and to kill and maim at will. Iraqis were killed and imprisoned, and the proud people of ancient Mesopotamia were treated like dogs by the ugly ‘conquering’ army. Palestinians have been humiliated, tortured, killed with their land having become a playing field for the Israeli state. And people resisting the might of autocratic states across the world are under attack by their own governments.

India, after attaining freedom, had declared her support for the struggle of the world. Her leaders at the time were part of the anti-apartheid struggle and the Palestinians efforts to get back their land. Jawaharlal Nehru, and even Indira Gandhi, realized that foreign policy and domestic policy were totally interlinked, and Indian independence could only draw strength from these struggles in Africa and West Asia. There was nothing Hindu or Muslim about the decision. It was a decision taken by a fledgling democracy that had dreams of a future.

Unfortunately the pygmies who have come to power over the last years have no sense of history, or justice, or even a basic understanding of the rule of law. Important global issues are reduced to the Hindu-Muslim, Shia-Sunni discourse by petty politicians who are scrambling to be recognized as leaders by Washington. The tenets of democracy are reduced to petty politics, as India moves away from the strength of the non aligned to the weakness of a nation captured by the glitz of globalization and militarization.

One wonders, if today India would have had a voice loud enough to make a difference for the anti-apartheid forces if the movement was still alive. Or whether hers would have been a feeble croak, unheard and ignored by not just the world powers but even the smaller nations.

--
Seema Mustafa

‘Iron’ic? Story of the Great Indian Loot - The Times of India

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/-Ironic-Story-of-the-Great-Indian-Loot/articleshow/6012491.cms

‘Iron’ic? Story of the Great Indian Loot

Shankar Raghuraman, TNN, Jun 5, 2010, 02.02am IST

Take a look at the accompanying map and you can’t but notice the extent of overlap between India’s thickly forested areas, the regions with the bulk of the country’s most important mineral wealth and the territory over which Maoists are dominant. Is this just a coincidence? No, that would stretch credulity.

So what connects the Maoist menace with forests and mining? Clearly, forests give a guerilla force its best chance of taking on the might of the state. But any guerilla army needs more than just thick foliage. Insurgents thrive where the local population is sympathetic to them or at least not sympathetic towards the state.

That’s where mining comes into the picture. There has been a long history of traditional forest dwellers being denied the right to live off the forest, a process that cannot but lead to alienation. Add to that a mining policy regime that has allowed massive scaling up of mining in the same areas for super profits, and it is not difficult to see why many tribals believe the state is hostile to their interests, but in tune with corporate interests.

Mining projects have repeatedly led to localized protests. In many cases, the administration has muttered darkly about agent provocateurs from outside fishing in troubled waters. In states like Orissa, Maoists have been accused of exploiting local resentment for their own ends.

To understand how mining policy has actually helped the Maoists, let’s take the specific case of iron ore — crucial for Chhattisgarh and Orissa and not insignificant for Jharkhand, all states with a serious Maoist problem on their hands.

At the turn of the millennium in 2001-01, India exported iron ore worth a measly Rs 358 crore. By 2008-09, that figure was up to Rs 21,725 crore, a sixty-fold jump in just seven years.

Driving this export of ore were several factors. One was the decanalisation of exports of ore with an iron content of 64% or less in the late 1990s. The other was China’s seemingly insatiable appetite for iron ore in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. As a result, the international price of ore — with 63% iron content — soared to $200 per tonne in March 2008, more than four times the price five years ago.

Indian ore exporters thus had a ready and profitable market. The icing on the cake was provided by the royalty rates charged by the government. The rates fixed in October 2004 varied from as little as Rs 4 per tonne for low-grade ore to a maximum of Rs 27 per tonne for the highest grades. There was also no export duty.

To see what this meant, check out what the Karnataka Lok Ayukta had to say on the allegations of illegal mining in the Bellary region of the state. Its report submitted in December 2008 pointed out that when the export price was hovering around Rs 6,000 to Rs 7,000 per tonne, the state government was getting between Rs 16 and Rs 27 by way of royalty. The extraction cost to the miner was, by the state’s own admission, of the order of Rs 150 per tonne. The Lok Ayukta noted that even if the transportation cost was estimated at Rs 250 per tonne, the total cost for the exporter would be not more than Rs 427 per tonne.

Since the export price of the ore even in a slump was never lower than Rs 1,500 per tonne, that would leave a neat profit of Rs1,073 per tonne. Out of this, the state was getting at best Rs 27.

So outraged was the Lok Ayukta by these calculations, that the report went on to advocate a complete ban not just on export of ore but also on its trading, saying it should be reserved only for captive mining by domestic steel producers.

A committee appointed by the planning commission in 2005 to examine the national mining policy, observed that “the margins available in the mining sector have been very substantial and are widely expected to continue being so in the foreseeable future”. It recommended in December 2006 that royalty rates be reviewed. A subsequent study group suggested that the royalty be pegged at 10% of the sale price of ore.

It took another two years before the ministry finally notified the new rates in August 2009. But there was a catch. The “sale price” which was to form the basis for the ad valorem rates would be determined by the Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) on the basis of the average of sale prices reported by non-captive producers.

To see why this made a mockery of the 10% rate, just look at the numbers for February 2010, the last month for which the IBM has put up the sale prices on its website. The all-India sale price average for lumps of 62-65% iron content was Rs 1,760 per tonne. The highest sale price for any state for this grade of ore was put at Rs 1,949 per tonne.

Against this, the average international price prevailing in February for Indian ore of 63% iron content bound for Chinese ports was $128 per tonne, which is closer to Rs 6,000 per tonne. Even allowing for transportation costs, which can be significant, clearly there is a wide gap between the price at which the royalty rate is being applied and what the exporter is actually getting.

Why do these details of iron ore extraction and sale matter? Because the enormous margins involved — in exports as well as domestic sales — mean that the scope for sleaze and the temptation for illegal mining are huge.

And this is where the connection with Maoists lies. Not only has rapacious mining turned the tribal away from the state, it has reportedly provided a steady source of funding for the Maoists through extortion. In short, by promoting this variety of crony capitalism, the state has shot itself in the foot.

So, what’s the way out? When TOI recently asked a Union minister whether it would be a good idea to auction mines to raise more revenues for the states, which could then put a chunk of it back into development work for the local community, the minister’s response was, “But why allow exports in the first place?”

That’s the language of Left radicals, but when it comes from a minister, it’s an indication of how serious the problem has become.

Since 2007, the government has imposed export duties on iron ore that have varied between zero and 15%, but are we in for a further tightening of the screws?

Thursday, June 3, 2010

MUMBAI PROTESTS AGAINST ISRAELI ATTACK ON AID FLOTILLA

MUMBAI PROTESTS AGAINST ISRAELI ATTACK ON AID FLOTILLA IN A BRUTAL ACT OF PIRACY ON HIGH SEAS AND DELIBERATE TARGETED MURDERS OF PEACEFUL RELIEF WORKERS

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: MEDIA CELL <mediacell.jih@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 3, 2010 8:40 PM
Subject: Photogrpah and report on protest in Mumbai against Israel
To:

Boycott Israel.
Protest against Israel growing with time.
Mumbai: Sentiments against Israeli belligerence are not receding in fact growing with the time. Mumbaities join the series of Protest happening all over the world against the Killing of 19 Innocent Peace loving civilians. CPI ML, Bharat Bacho Andolan, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind and SIO on Thursday hold a Protest near Churchgate Railway station in South Mumbai.
Israel Attacked the Aid Ships sailing tons of foods and Medicines for the Gazans. Along with European parliamentarian and Nobel Laureate Peace Loving activist from all over the world were travelling with the Free Gaza flotilla.
Israeli Foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, dragged India in to the row of Violence only to retract later. Aslam Gazi, Spokeperson, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, opined, “India Should cut off all its relation, diplomatic or otherwise with Israel and a case must be registered against Israel in the International court.”
They are also planning to intensify this remonstration and are planning to hold public meetings all over Mumbai. Sanjay Sanghvi, member Central Committee CPI ML added “We are going to lodge our protest with the Israeli Consulate in Mumbai and will be holding public awareness meeting about the issue.”
Elders and Children were Holding Banners and were shouting slogans to Boycott Israel and Free Gaza. Kishore Jagtap of Bharat Bachao Andolan issued press release demanded, “World must Boycott Israel who is guilty of killing unarmed Women, Children and working Farmers. Israeli Hegemony must stop here and now.”
K.K. Suhail, all India President of Students Islamic Organisation of India SIO, also condemn the violence and urge the international community to pressurize Israel to stop all its “Inhuman Practices which are barbaric and brutal.” He also appealed to the world Leaders to take active part in rebuilding War affected Gaza.

protest against Israel - June 2, 2010.JPG
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Saturday, May 29, 2010

All’s Not Well With Your Home, Minister -By Rana Ayyub _TEHELKA Magazine

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main45.asp?filename=Ne050610alls_not.asp

All’s Not Well With Your Home, Minister

NARENDRA MODI HAD ONCE BRAZENLY UPHELD SOHRABUDDIN’S FAKE KILLING. NOW, AS THE CBI THE ARRESTS TOP COPS,THE DIRT BEGINS TO UNRAVEL IN GUJARAT, SAYS RANA AYYUB

Present continuous TEHELKA has persistently tracked the unraveling of the ‘encounter’ killings by Gujarat Police

IS THE noose tightening around Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi over his administration’s alleged complicity in the 2002 massacre of Muslims? Is nemesis, as the cliché goes, finally catching up with him for a string of allegedly fake encounter killings of “terrorists” by his police? It may be too early to call curtains for arguably India’s craftiest politician that Modi has turned out to be over the last eight years. Yet, the arrest of a top police officer in Gujarat by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) may well begin to unravel the Modi era.

Indeed, so thoroughly alarmed are the Bjp, Modi, and others implicated in the Muslim massacres and the encounter killings, that there is a clear last-ditch attempt at preventing the CBI from establishing the truth. The latest round started on january 12 this year when the supreme Court ordered the CBI to reinvestigate the 2005 encounter killing of Gujarat businessman sohrabuddin shaikh, his wife Kauserbi, and an associate of his, tulsi prajapati. sohrabuddin, a small time extortionist, was killed in a joint encounter by the Gujarat and Rajasthan police in November 2005 when he was travelling with his wife Kauserbi, on charges of being a Lashkar-e-tayyeba member on his way to Gujarat to assassinate Modi. A similar theory was given at the time of the Ishrat jahan encounter a year before and later proved as fake by the justice tamang Committee.

Sohrabuddin’s brother, Rubabuddin, had earlier moved the supreme Court, virtually accusing Modi’s police of killing his brother in cold blood. Modi’s administration has been accused of attempting to derail the trial of the several police officers who have been jailed on charges of killing sohrabuddin, his wife and others over nearly three years since 2002.

In its january order, the Supreme Court (sC) slammed the Gujarat police, its CId and its officer-in-charge, Geeta johri, for bungling the investigation. It was found that the Gujarat government was misleading the court by filing dubious Action taken Reports (ATRs)— as many as eight of them — in the case. What alarmed the Bjp most is that the sC directed the CBI to also investigate “the possibility of a larger conspiracy”. evidently, this has opened a pandora’s box, leading to the arrest, on April 29, of DCP (Crime) Abhay Chudasama who, as acting joint Commissioner of police (JCP) controlled criminal investigations in the state. Chudasama is the same cop whose corrupt practices TEHELKA had first exposed in its investigation of Gujarat last year, when a key witness used by Chudasama to implicate innocents arrested in the Gujarat blasts had revealed in an exhaustive interview to TEHELKA, that he had been forced by the dCp to make those confessions. he had also confirmed that those arrested in the Gujarat blasts were innocent. With his arrest, the CBI may well be on its way to uncovering a series of cover-ups.

Chudasama was one of the most well connected police officers in Gujarat’s home Ministry, under which the police department falls. Right after his arrest, Modi flew down to delhi to meet Bjp party president and confidant Nitin Gadkari and LK Advani at his residence. subsequently, Modi travelled to Nagpur to discuss the developments with Rss head Mohan Bhagwat. The effect showed in the form of LK Advani alongwith Bjp party Mp’s sitting on a dharna outside parliament to protest against the mishandling of CBI by the upA government. subsequently, Gadkari also issued a three-and-a-half page statement on this, of which two pages were devoted to defending the Modi government’s record.

Sohrabuddin was branded an Let terrorist. In reality, he was an extortionist killed for money

On the day of Modi’s visit, however, it was clear that all was not well in his kingdom. At a government celebration of Gujarat’s 50th founding day on May 1, home Minister Amit shah, long Modi’s second-in-command, was conspicuous by his absence. It soon became evident why shah, who had planned the mega event, had gone missing. two BJP leaders held a press conference the day after to express fears that the CBI “may also implicate some political leaders wrongly, and arrest them in connection with the case”.
Few have risen to be as powerful under Modi as Shah has, especially since Modi’s confidant-turned-foe, Haren Pandya, was murdered in 2003. After Chudasama’s arrest, hoardings ?appeared across Ahmedabad overnight, slamming the Congress party for trying to project “Sohrabuddin, the terrorist” as a hero. They suggested that the cbi’s arrests were an attack on the Gujarati nation. The bjp promised a state-wise agitation if the arrests did not stop. The very next day, the Gujarat Police cid arrested two police ?officers that the cbi was about to arrest, prompting the speculation that Modi ?didn’t want cbi to get hold of them.

Domino effect DCP Abhay Chudasama, arrested recently by the CBI, is accused of covering up on false cases

In hiding Narendra Modi with Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah (left) who went missing

The CBI claims that Chudasama was arrested after he was found tapping telephone calls of witnesses and CBI officers connected with the Sohrabuddin case. It claims that witnesses in the case had been speaking on the phone with Chudasama before showing up at the cbi offices for questioning. The cbi also says that police officers arrested earlier have provided it with evidence of Chudasama’s illegal wealth. The cbi has no less than 197 complaints of extortion and harassment against Chudasama, filed within days of his arrest. A fact that also went against him is that on the very day of his arrest, Rs 1.5 crore was deposited into the accounts of three family members of Chudasama, accounts which Chudasama thought won’t be checked by the cbi. On the day he was produced in the court, bjp workers turned up to shower petals on him and hail him a hero.

Indeed, Chudasama’s arrest also puts a question mark on the claim that he had “solved” the July 2008 serial bomb blasts in Ahmedabad. (More than 60 Muslims accused of the bombings are currently being tried.) In fact, the cbi claims that Chudasama knew Sohrabuddin, a gangster-for-hire, and ran an extortion racket through him, allegedly collecting Rs 40 lakh in 2001 alone. The cbi says Chudasama also ordered Sohrabuddin to ?organise a shootout in Gujarat.

CBI officers from Mumbai have travelled to Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan on this trail. ?Refusing to speak on record because the investigation is still continuing, a top CBI officer told Tehelka that Chudasama planned Sohrabuddin’s killing at the ?behest of a lobby of Rajasthan’s marble traders whom Sohrabuddin had begun to extort while he was still in jail.

The CBI says it now has recordings of phone calls between Chudasama and a few high-profile names in the Gujarat government, including a key minister, proving their involvement. The CBI ?believes that the DCP was also involved in two other extra-judicial killings. According to the cbi source, the marble lobby first approached a Rajasthan bjp leader, who in turn asked a minister in Rajasthan to organise Sohrabuddin’s killing. When that minister backed out, the marble lobby reportedly approached a minister in Modi’s government in Gujarat, who ?assigned Chudasama the task, says the cbi. The CBI claims Chudasama recorded his telephone chat with the minister, which the cbi has now sent for a forensic test.

So why hasn’t the CBI yet arrested this Gujarat minister? Because, says the CBI?officer, the Gujarat CID is obstructing its path. “The cid is stonewalling, despite the Supreme Court’s order that it [the CID] give us all evidence that it has collected,” he says. The CID has held the documents back on the pretext that it is still investigating the killing of Tulsi Prajapati, ? Another small-time outlaw, who was killed by the police in an encounter in Banas Kantha in December 2006, a year after Sohrabuddin’s killing. “The CID doesn’t want us to reveal the real names behind the encounters,” the CBI officer says.

Meanwhile, the CBI has moved the sc to access telephonic conversations of various police officers on the night they were involved in Sohrabuddin’s killing. It is said that these same police officers could also be behind the murder of Prajapati. The CBI officials say that the CID, in its report, had submitted that the third person who was travelling with Sohrabuddin and his wife was Kalimuddin, who dig Vanzara had taken to the spot were they were killed. However the cbi investigation has found out that the person travelling with Sohrabuddin was not Kalimuddin but Prajapati — killed a year later, most likely because he was the sole witness to the Sohrabuddin encounter.

Truth uncovered Ishrat Jahan, whose killing in June 2004 was nailed as a fake encounter by the Tamang Committee

Murdered? Sohrabuddin, killed in a joint encounter by the Gujarat and Rajasthan cops in November 2005

HOWEVER, KALIMUDDIN’S identity too now has been revealed. A CBI officer told TEHELKA that Kalimuddin, who hails from Andhra Pradesh and had been a police informer in that state is, hold your breath, also an underground Maoist, who had been used by the Gujarat Police as an informer in several other cases. He is said to be alive and absconding. The CBI is now likely to produce the Andhra Pradesh police as witness to prove that the Gujarat cid had hidden Kalimuddin’s identity as a police informer, which would make him ineligible as a witness in the Sohrabuddin case.

Till now, the CBI has questioned at least 12 IPS officers in Gujarat. Its investigation team is entirely made of non-Gujarat ? Police officers. All the accused who have been arrested have been produced, not in a Gujarat court, but in a Mumbai court. Indeed, when the cbi sought the custody of two key police officers that were already in CID custody — Narendra Amin and VA Rathod — it refused to given any evidence to the Gujarat court except for a gist.

The CBI is also investigating if Geeta Johri, the then cid head, had deliberately modified records of telephone calls made to each other by the policemen the night of Sohrabuddin’s killing. Johri had handed over these allegedly doctored call records to Rajnish Rai, who took over the probe from her. The CBI now believes that the records were doctored to protect two ministers — in the Gujarat and Rajasthan governments — and other state-level leaders who might have been involved.

CBI officers claim they have evidence that Chudasama and one of the two above-mentioned ministers had illegal bank accounts and shareholding in two real estate projects in Dubai and elsewhere in the Middle East. This minister was in the news recently after an independent audit claimed that Rs 80 crore was siphoned off from cooperatives which he was involved in. The CBI could soon arrest another BJP leader, a confidant of this minister, who is also linked with the cooperatives. Another BJP leader from Rajasthan could be summoned as a witness, or even an accused, in the next few weeks.

Possibly with a view to slowing down the CBI charge, Gujarat Chief Secretary AK Joti and DGP SS Khandwawala met CBI director Ashwini Kumar in New Delhi last week. But will Modi rush to save his minister? According to a BJP insider, the answer is no. Many in the bjp and the RSS family are upset that Modi has failed to save Maya Kodnani, another minister, who stands accused of participating in the Muslim massacre of 2002 and who was arrested by the CBI earlier this year.

This minister also happens to be an arch rival of the Gujarat Revenue Minister Anandiben Patel, who is looking to become Modi’s number two. Patel controls numerous educational institutes and trusts in Gujarat. Modi has been grooming her as a possible successor in Gujarat, if he manages to propel himself to the national stage. A cbi officer said people claiming to be close to Patel have already approached the cbi and offered ‘help’ against the minister. The cracks in Modi’s house, it seems, are starting to open up.

With top cops and ministers under the scanner, few expect Modi to do much to save them

According to the opposition Congress party in Gujarat, the cid is complicit in Modi’s agenda to protect the police officers. Congress leader Siddharth Patel, who is also the Leader of the Opposition in the Gujarat Assembly, thinks the state government is on a witch-hunt against the CBI. “When the Gujarat cid arrested 19 officers last year, they didn’t bat an eyelid. But when the cbi arrested one IPS, they started crying foul, from Delhi to Ahmedabad about CBI being corrupt,” he says.

The CBI should, in fact, broaden its scope and investigate the role of more policemen, according to retired IPS officer RB Sreekumar. The former DGP of Gujarat has gone on record claiming to have witnessed the role of Modi’s administration in allowing the killing of Muslims in the 2002 riots, and who claims that Modi’s officers killed innocents in encounters and passed them off as terrorists. “Many such officers superseded others and are today at the top,” Sreekumar says. “The cbi should investigate them.”

If the line of investigation and the forensic tests are taken into cognisance, then some of the big names in the Gujarat and Rajasthan BJP could soon be arrested. “We have evidence against the Gujarat police, in this case and others, details of which shall be provided to the respective agencies. We are just waiting for the forensic reports and new details which officers from five states are sending us,” added the CBI source, signing off. So is Sohrabuddin’s brother, Rubabuddin.

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rana@tehelka.com

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

An open letter to Jaswant Singh By Ghulam Muhammed

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

An open letter to Jaswant Singh

It may not be in public knowledge but the way you have taken up the matter of India /Pakistan partition and the role of Jinnah, and the way you were mistreated by your erstwhile party, the BJP, for supposedly committing the unpardonable sin of having a soft corner for Jinnah as a secular person, there has been a feeling in Muslims circles, that you could be a suitable candidate, in the same manner as Late V.P. Singh was, to lead all communities other than Brahmins, to chart a new coarse for India, that should try to wipe out the deep misapprehensions of the past and bring a fresh atmosphere in Indian politics, where the old Brahminical agenda appears to have run its coarse.

It is difficult for RSS and its political serfs, to ever get over their existential compulsions and usher India into a new future of unitedIndia, friendly and cooperating with its neighbours, as the core country to unite the subcontinent. Your reception in Pakistan, in Lahore and Karachi, on the occasion of the release your book in both politically aware cities of Pakistan, gives a hint that your bona fide as a genuine votary of a united subcontinent that had been arbitrarily divided by vested interests to cater to their own narrow communal agenda, could become a focus of like minded well-wishers on both sides, to come together and think about the future of India without being bogged down by constraints of the Brahminical Idea of India. India’s attempt to close its borders to outside world has miserably failed and the earlier 40 years of Free India, was at best a defensive exercise that compromised with India’s full potential, in all sphere of its polity, be that political, economic or cultural. In India, where caste is still a reality that is thriving for some and suffocating for others, your own caste seems to find it easy to claim leadership from the Brahmins and prepare to give proper justice and fairplay to those disadvantage in the Age of Brahmins. If you had gathered courage, like V. P. Singh in the past, it could have been possible for a core group of Muslims to ignore your tactical alliance with the Saffronites and extend a hand of support to see you as a possible candidate for the Prime Ministership of India with the hope that India can be blessed with a new beginning that will ensure justice for all and favour to none. The Idea of India, then could have a new and broader, inclusive definition that will better suit its destiny, as under the Brahmins, its tryst with its destiny had been seriously derailed.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

Ghulam Muhammed

Monday, June 7, 2010