http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_mumbai-builder-rizvi-clashes-with-obama-s-islam-envoy_1418554
Mumbai builder Rizvi clashes with Obama’s Islam envoy
Published: Wednesday, Aug 4, 2010, 2:28 IST
By Uttarika Kumaran, Ashutosh Shukla
Place: Mumbai
Agency: DNA
What was supposed to be a goodwill gesture turned into an unexpected face-off between two men with distinct points of view about US policies and their historical consequences in the Muslim world.
Rashad Hussain, US president Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Conference (IOC), the second largest international body, was on a day’s visit to the city to deliver a lecture titled ‘The Obama Administration’s Outreach to the Muslim World’.
Meeting with the press and students of Rizvi College of Architecture, Hussain was in his element as he listed the Obama administration’s efforts in the field of education, science and technology, entrepreneurship and health to reach out to the global Muslim community and bridge the gaps created by past US
governments.
Akhtar Hasan Rizvi, prominent builder and education baron, sat calm and composed as Hussain spoke. When it was his turn on the dais, Rizvi politely welcomed his guest and gave a brief disclaimer, saying, “I welcome the move and support it but doubt the US president’s success.”
Thereafter, the general secretary of the Nationalist Congress Party and former Parliamentarian didn’t mince his words, citing grouses which the Muslim community has held for decades against the US. “America gave birth to terrorism and the Jewish policy needs to be controlled,” Rizvi told a visibly shaken Hussain.
"Obama has to begin from the root. If you treat the symptom, it’ll be a temporary cure. You have to treat the disease. And that started 45 years ago,” said Rizvi, referring to America’s backing of Israel during the Palestine crisis, “There would have been no war of 1967 if you had not supported Israel.”
He added, “You gave weapons of mass destruction to Iraq against Iran and then you went hunting for them and could not find them.”
“You made nuclear bombs, nuclear weapons in order to control the whole world. First, America should correct that wrong and stop the supremacy policy,” said Rizvi.
Backing Iran’s right to produce nuclear weapons, Rizvi emphasised, “Israel has not adhered to so many resolutions. Why not pull them up? Every nation has the right to produce nuclear weapons for their survival, why stop them?” He further questioned America’s blundered policy in Vietnam, as well as its hand in creating Taliban and then fearing it.
“I apologise for what I’ve said but I have to lay down the plain facts for you to correct the wrongs you have done,” Rizvi said in the midst of considerable cheering.
Unable to stomach the “conspiracy theories” Rizvi brought up, Hussain responded, “In a school of architecture, the emphasis should be on building, and going forward. Not on going backward, living in the past, and spreading conspiracy theories which are dis-empowering.”
“I reject anti-Semitism. Something Islam and the Prophet rejected. To speak about an entire religious group in such a negative way is wrong and I don’t think it reflects reality,” said the envoy adding, “In a school of architecture, I would expect the future belongs to those who build and not to those who destroy.”
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Crisis compounded by multiple sieges -By Shail Mayaram - TOI - Crest
http://timesofindia.
Shail Mayaram, Jul 17, 2010, 12.23pm IST
Shail Mayaram
The siege of Gaza is only one kind of siege that is currently in operation in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Gaza, of course, represents one of the gravest humanitarian crises in the world. During my recent stay in Israel, conversations with a number of persons brought home the many ways in which it has been reduced to a slum — even water sources smell of ammunition! In effect, Israel’s actions against Gaza have created a wave of sympathy in world opinion overturning the initial revulsion to Hamas violence and this includes its particularly vicious bombing known as Operation Cast Lead and the subsequent siege that it has enforced along with Egypt. Later this month, 4,000 persons will be on aboard Freedom Flotilla no 2, representing an international coalition of 32 countries and will once again defy the siege.
Ironically, the siege is being enforced by a selfproclaimed Jewish democracy to protect Israeli Jews, who of all people in the world should know best what the experience of a siege is. President Nasser closed Israel’s own access to the Suez Canal in 1956 and in 1967 once again blocked Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat denying its ships access to the Straits of Tiran. But there are older accounts in Jewish history and memory of Roman sieges.
The Roman Empire’s siege and fall of Jerusalem between 66 and 74 BCE is one of the most painful episodes of Jewish history. Jewish collective suicide at Masada is recounted by Josephus Flavius following the siege of the Romans and the breaching of the hitherto impregnable rock fortress. Josephus also tells the story of the siege of Jotpata, a city in the Galilee in which 40 notables had taken refuge in a cave till a woman gave them away to the Romans. He and another woman were the only survivors following collective death of the rest.
Masada has become iconic for contemporary Jewish nationalism , yet the Israeli state fails to comprehend that it is reproducing for Palestinians the imperialism of Rome multiplied manifold by modern technologies of violence. A series of sieges are identifiable in its post-1967 occupation policy.
The work of colonialism and nationalism thrives on boundaries and Israel is caught in the tragic-drama of its own line drawing exercise. Jerusalem, which is possibly the central issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is being suffocated as never before in its history and by a state for which Jerusalem is a founding myth. Studies conducted by the International Peace and Cooperation Center show the creation of a belt of settlements around Jerusalem, the coming to an end of the Moroccon Quarter, dispossession in the Muslim Quarter while the Jewish Quarter has been expanded sixfold from 20 dunums to 120 dunums. Since the mid-80 s Sharon had begun the policy of Judaising Muslim and Christian Quarters and began supporting the movement of extremist groups into these areas to fulfill the Zionist vision of the Old City.
The newer boundaries not only encircle but also build over. This is manifested in the way in which Jews have been given rights to build on the roofs of Palestinian homes both in Jaffa (the old city of Tel Aviv) and in the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem. As always, the new Jewish settlers work through Palestinian collaborator-tenants .
There is even a messianic hope to build a Third Temple over the Muslim holy site of Haram al-Sharif , where the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension on the horse Burraq is said to have taken place. Archaeological excavations continue unabated and have led to countless protests but to no effect.
Jerusalem has been for the last 500 years a multi-ethnic , multi-religious city conserved by its Turko-Arab character. The mosaic character typifies the Muslim city and was a product of organic growth. State planning and housing have now become the twin instruments of sovereignty, added to which is the Judaicisation of the names of streets and neighbourhoods.
Even as Jerusalem is seemingly “united” under Israeli sovereignty, it has become the paradigmatic divided city, ethnically and nationally. In effect, international civil society became complicit in this by its endorsement of the Oslo Agreement of 1993 that was to have given autonomy to Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza Strip but excluded the Palestinian National Authority from East Jerusalem that had been the political centre both for the Jordanian State in the West Bank and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Since 1967, Israel has confiscated 25,000 dunns of Arab lands for Jewish settlements, prohibiting any Palestinian settlements in West Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem has been cut off from the West Bank, yet another siege symbolised by a regime of checkpoints and permits. A 700-km wall built in violation of international law according to the International Court of Justice extends Israeli sovereignty and severs Palestinians from Israeli Arabs. As observers point out, the wall had been planned prior to the suicide bombings that were later used to justify it and came about when fears were expressed of a growing Palestinian population.
The very suburbs of Jerusalem have been wrenched from it. My drive to the Al Quds campus at Abu Dis now takes almost half an hour instead of the 5-10 minutes it would normally take from the German Colony in Jerusalem. Like many other suburbs, it has been separated from East Jerusalem. Indeed, all three Palestinian universities , including those of Bir Zeit and Bethlehem, have been affected (in the case of Al Quds, the wall was to go through its football field until its President, Sari Nusseibeh, interceded with Condoleeza Rice) as students from East Jerusalem are no longer able to access these institutions.
And then there are the less visible lines — the ways in which an invisible boundary has been drawn around Gaza and farmers have been forced out of the buffer zone surrounding it. The Al Jahaleen Bedouins who have been uprooted from their environment in Abu Dis and resettled along the outer wall.
The Israelis have to understand that Israel was the gift of the Arabs to them. No western country would have allowed the creation of a Jewish state on its territory. Unknowingly the Arabs abetted in its making by selling them their land. What is going to be Israel’s gift to the Arabs? Surely not imperialism’s gift of lines, borders and sieges.
The writer is Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
Ironically, the siege is being enforced by a selfproclaimed Jewish democracy to protect Israeli Jews, who of all people in the world should know best what the experience of a siege is. President Nasser closed Israel’s own access to the Suez Canal in 1956 and in 1967 once again blocked Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat denying its ships access to the Straits of Tiran. But there are older accounts in Jewish history and memory of Roman sieges.
The Roman Empire’s siege and fall of Jerusalem between 66 and 74 BCE is one of the most painful episodes of Jewish history. Jewish collective suicide at Masada is recounted by Josephus Flavius following the siege of the Romans and the breaching of the hitherto impregnable rock fortress. Josephus also tells the story of the siege of Jotpata, a city in the Galilee in which 40 notables had taken refuge in a cave till a woman gave them away to the Romans. He and another woman were the only survivors following collective death of the rest.
Masada has become iconic for contemporary Jewish nationalism , yet the Israeli state fails to comprehend that it is reproducing for Palestinians the imperialism of Rome multiplied manifold by modern technologies of violence. A series of sieges are identifiable in its post-1967 occupation policy.
The work of colonialism and nationalism thrives on boundaries and Israel is caught in the tragic-drama of its own line drawing exercise. Jerusalem, which is possibly the central issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is being suffocated as never before in its history and by a state for which Jerusalem is a founding myth. Studies conducted by the International Peace and Cooperation Center show the creation of a belt of settlements around Jerusalem, the coming to an end of the Moroccon Quarter, dispossession in the Muslim Quarter while the Jewish Quarter has been expanded sixfold from 20 dunums to 120 dunums. Since the mid-80 s Sharon had begun the policy of Judaising Muslim and Christian Quarters and began supporting the movement of extremist groups into these areas to fulfill the Zionist vision of the Old City.
The newer boundaries not only encircle but also build over. This is manifested in the way in which Jews have been given rights to build on the roofs of Palestinian homes both in Jaffa (the old city of Tel Aviv) and in the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem. As always, the new Jewish settlers work through Palestinian collaborator-tenants .
There is even a messianic hope to build a Third Temple over the Muslim holy site of Haram al-Sharif , where the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension on the horse Burraq is said to have taken place. Archaeological excavations continue unabated and have led to countless protests but to no effect.
Jerusalem has been for the last 500 years a multi-ethnic , multi-religious city conserved by its Turko-Arab character. The mosaic character typifies the Muslim city and was a product of organic growth. State planning and housing have now become the twin instruments of sovereignty, added to which is the Judaicisation of the names of streets and neighbourhoods.
Even as Jerusalem is seemingly “united” under Israeli sovereignty, it has become the paradigmatic divided city, ethnically and nationally. In effect, international civil society became complicit in this by its endorsement of the Oslo Agreement of 1993 that was to have given autonomy to Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza Strip but excluded the Palestinian National Authority from East Jerusalem that had been the political centre both for the Jordanian State in the West Bank and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Since 1967, Israel has confiscated 25,000 dunns of Arab lands for Jewish settlements, prohibiting any Palestinian settlements in West Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem has been cut off from the West Bank, yet another siege symbolised by a regime of checkpoints and permits. A 700-km wall built in violation of international law according to the International Court of Justice extends Israeli sovereignty and severs Palestinians from Israeli Arabs. As observers point out, the wall had been planned prior to the suicide bombings that were later used to justify it and came about when fears were expressed of a growing Palestinian population.
The very suburbs of Jerusalem have been wrenched from it. My drive to the Al Quds campus at Abu Dis now takes almost half an hour instead of the 5-10 minutes it would normally take from the German Colony in Jerusalem. Like many other suburbs, it has been separated from East Jerusalem. Indeed, all three Palestinian universities , including those of Bir Zeit and Bethlehem, have been affected (in the case of Al Quds, the wall was to go through its football field until its President, Sari Nusseibeh, interceded with Condoleeza Rice) as students from East Jerusalem are no longer able to access these institutions.
And then there are the less visible lines — the ways in which an invisible boundary has been drawn around Gaza and farmers have been forced out of the buffer zone surrounding it. The Al Jahaleen Bedouins who have been uprooted from their environment in Abu Dis and resettled along the outer wall.
The Israelis have to understand that Israel was the gift of the Arabs to them. No western country would have allowed the creation of a Jewish state on its territory. Unknowingly the Arabs abetted in its making by selling them their land. What is going to be Israel’s gift to the Arabs? Surely not imperialism’s gift of lines, borders and sieges.
The writer is Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Cracking the terror code - By Smita Nair - Sunday Indian Express
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/cracking-the-terror-code/648005/0
Cracking the terror code
Smita NairTags : Mecca Masjid blast, Bomb blast, RSS, Ajmer,Malegaon, ATSPosted: Sun Jul 18 2010, 00:12 hrs
The site of the Malegaon blast of 2008; (below) prayers at Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad after the serial blasts of 2007
The alleged links emerging between some leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and suspects of the bomb blasts in Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid and Ajmer in 2007 and Malegaon in 2008, have been greeted with an element of surprise—as well as denial.
But investigators probing these acts of terror consider the findings a major milestone in a journey they began in the aftermath of the Malegaon blast, the first major attack in the country blamed on Hindu extremists. Within days of making the first breakthrough in the case and arresting Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur in connection with Malegaon, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) got their hands on Lt Col Shrikant Prasad Purohit, a serving army military intelligence officer who was eventually accused of being a key conspirator.
During his interrogation in November 2008, Purohit is alleged to have claimed that he not only supplied RDX explosives used in the Samjhauta Express bombing in February 2007, but also to a “cell” he said was behind “two other blasts”. Soon, investigating teams from Haryana, Hyderabad and Ajmer, and finally CBI Director Ashwani Kumar, landed in Mumbai where Purohit was being interrogated.
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Purohit’s claims did not surprise many though. While the investigation of the Samjhauta bombing had got stuck after the trail of the suitcases in which the bombs were planted led to a village near Indore from where the suitcases were purchased, the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer trail also eventually reached Madhya Pradesh.
Investigators say that links between the Mecca Masjid and the Ajmer blasts were already there on paper as forensic experts had established that the same group was behind the blasts. But they suspected it to be Harkat-ul-Jehadi-Islami (HUJI), the Bangladeshi terror group blamed for attacks elsewhere in India in the past.
A SIM card from one of the unexploded bombs at the exit gate of Mecca Masjid was the first crucial evidence. The Andhra Pradesh police found that the SIM card inside the Nokia 6030 phone belonged to a person named Babulal Yadav. But it was a fictitious name.
The CBI, which took over the case in June 2007, continued the SIM card probe. The joint probe—with inputs collected by the Andhra police and CBI—found that while the SIM card was bought using a fictitious identity, the photograph belonged to a yoga instructor called Tarak Nath Pramanik. The probe, which would continue at a slow pace for another three and half months, was about to unravel a “very calculated and a very strategic operation”.
“Unlike other blasts where terror outfits cry out loud and own up the act, the evidence” had convinced investigators that “this was something new, something far more real than what we see and hear,” says a senior officer.
Call logs were tracked, a million subscriber databases of various cell phone providers cross-checked, and it was found that the SIM card had been used in other phones and those phones had also used other SIM cards. “This was the first indication that it was an organised crime. The motive was still difficult to track,” recalled a forensic expert.
It took investigators some time to find out that the picture of Pramanik had been plucked out of a national news weekly in which it was published alongside a column on yoga he wrote for in 2005 and 2006. The details of the picture were sent around and it was found that the same photograph had been used to buy nine SIM cards in Babulal Yadav’s name. Two more SIM cards had been bought using the picture but under the fictitious name of Ramesh Agrawal.
By September 2007, investigating agencies had tracked shops in Jamtara and Mihijam in Jharkhand, Asansol and Chittaranjan in West Bengal and Roopnarayanpur in Bihar from where the SIM cards had been bought. The handsets had similarly been bought from New Delhi, Faridabad, Mihijam, Asansol and Chittaranjan. Barely three to five calls were made from each SIM card to “confirm the phone connection” and ensure that they remain active.
“All this convinced us that “extreme caution” had been taken to ensure that even an accidental leak of information would not expose the brains behind the operation. And as expected, the phones and SIMs went dead after the blast,” said an investigating officer.
But sleuths operating across states were also suspicious that the perpetrators would not have mounted such a large operation for just one blast in Hyderabad. And they were proved right when Khwaja Mohinuddin Chishti’s dargah in Ajmer was hit by a bomb in October 2007, five months after the Mecca Masjid blasts.
The Ajmer blast only added more clues to the ones investigators already had from their probe in Hyderabad. Both bombs had been wrapped and stuffed with paper from the same Telugu newspaper—the May 4, 2007, copy of Andhra Jyoti—indicating the scope of the operation. Moreover, at both places, the attackers placed two bombs to be activated by mobile phones and at both places only one of them exploded, leaving the other behind for investigators to establish their links.
But progress was once again slow as the groups behind the two blasts were apparently lying low until Malegaon was attacked in September 2008 and Purohit was questioned. Picking up the strands from there, investigators found that some of the SIM cards that had been bought from various parts of eastern India and had not been accounted for in the two blasts, had become active in June 2009 in two villages near Indore—Chapri and Kala Peepal.
Investigations found that the SIMs were being used by RSS officer bearers. One was with Sharda Bharot, the wife of an RSS worker, Chandrashekar Barot. The others were with Vishnu Patidar and his brothers Vinod and Santosh. All of them reported to Devendra Gupta who was the head of the propaganda team for the district. Gupta is now in the custody of the CBI after the Rajasthan police arrested him for his alleged role in the the Ajmer blast.
The probe found that Bharot, Sandeep Dange, who is still absconding, and Sunil Joshi, who was mysteriously killed while he was out on a walk in a village near Indore after the Ajmer blast, and Ramchandra Kalsangra, a much wanted fugitive, constituted the primary group which was allegedly in charge of logistics, making and planting the bombs in Hyderabad and Ajmer. Sandeep Dange, who allegedly planted the bomb in Malegaon as well and who is wanted for the Mecca Masjid blast, is the RSS Vibhag Pracharak for Indore and was the “controller” for Sunil Joshi and Lokesh Sharma, another RSS worker wanted in connection with both Mecca Masjid and Ajmer blasts.
With the alleged plot unravelling now, police in Ajmer, Hyderabad and the CBI suspect that Dange and Kalsangra were partners in buying the eight phones and nine SIM cards that have been traced so far. While a hunt is on for both of them, the CBI has questioned two senior RSS leaders from Uttar Pradesh, Ashok Varshney and Ashok Beri, on suspicion that they may have sheltered Gupta and even provided logistics to the perpetrators of the blasts.
But crucial to any substantial progress in the case would be to find Kalsangra and Dange, the two who are suspected to be the common factors in the blasts that shook Mecca Masjid, Ajmer and Malegaon.
Sadhvi Pragya singh Thakur
Former ABVP member and founder of Jai Vande Mataram Jankalyan Samiti, the Sadhvi was arrested on October 23 last year. Her bike was used by her “two confidantes”, Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange, for planting a bomb in Malegaon.
Lt Col Prasad Shrikanth Purohit
Was serving at Panchmarhi at the time of his arrest. Said to be the founder of Abhinav Bharat, the organisation that propagated a separate Hindu Rashtra, the ATS calls him the face behind the "fundamental ideology". Was responsible for procuring explosives.
Sudhakar Udayaban Dhar Dwivedi alias Dayanand Pandey, Swami Amrutanand Devoir, Shankaracharya Sharada Sarvagya Peeth,
is charged with attending conspiracy meetings where he spoke of seeking revenge for atrocities against Kashmiri Pandits.
Rakesh Dattatraya Dhawade
Arms curator and antique arms collector in Pune. Associated with the Abhinav Bharat group, he is charged with sourcing explosives.
Sameer Sharad Kulkarni
Media publicist for Abhinav Bharat, was one of the two “thinkers” of the group.
Sudhakar Omkarnath Chaturvedi
The other ‘Chanakya’, his house was allegedly used for assembling the IED used in the Malegaon blast.
Shivnarayan Gopalsingh Kalsangra
Related to the ‘planter’ Ramji Kalsangra. The ATS found two timers at his residence given to him by his brother.
Shyam Bavarlal Sahu
The owner of a mobile store, he’s charged with supplying Ramji with SIM cards.
Ramesh Shivji Upadhyay
Retired Army Major and the working president of Abhinav Bharat. Charged with attending conspiracy meetings.
Ajay Raja Eknath Rahirkar
Treasurer of Abhinav Bharat. Is charged with controlling the finances and disbursing the amount for procuring explosives and hand grenades.
Jagdish Chintaman Mhatre
He was the last in the chain for sourcing weapons; the ATS recovered two imported firearms with 15 live cartridges from the Dombivali resident.
Friday, July 16, 2010
One ‘Muslim’ minister’s lonely fight against entire 200 million strong Indian Muslim community - By Ghulam Muhammed
Friday, July 16, 2010
LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
One ‘Muslim’ minister’s lonely fight against entire 200 million strong Indian Muslim community
The man is not a visionary. He is just a government minister. But he thinks he knows best. The giant size confidence that Salman Khurshid nurses, comes from being very near to power center for long long years and thus being far and very far from the Muslim community itself; which he is now being entrusted to represent. It is reported that such an important bill, which has Muslim community’s stakes worth millions of Crores, is being claimed by the minister to be not even read by him. If the report is correct, such a minister should be sacked immediately. The bureaucrat, who was specially transferred to advise and help him in this grossly anti-Muslim enterprise, was known to have his own ideas of how Awqaf should be handled and woe to Indian democracy, that the community whose votes make the real difference between victory or defeat in Indian elections, has nary a say in such a monumental issue. But all is not lost. Muslims have been awaked at the eleventh hour. Salman Khurshid has been hobnobbing with individuals across the country, lobbying with promises, to help him see the bill through. And come Sunday, he has planned a grand meeting of a cross section of Muslim opinion makers with a view to get a consensus. One hope that Sunday meet does not end as the circus of the absurd. The real test of power, will be not be this Sunday, but the next assembly election in the by-lanes of the poverty ridden Uttar Pradesh. Congress writ does not run in that state which elects maximum number of Lok Sabha seats and this Awqaf bill will not make the situation any better; unless all the recommendations of the Muslim community are incorporated to their entire satisfaction without any overt or covert treachery.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
Run Rupee Run - The new Rupee symbol - By Ghulam Muhammed
Friday, July 16, 2010
Run Rupee Run
The new Rupee symbol is something to write home about. The IIT graduate has proved that the institution is full of talent and can be relied upon for ideas. The new Rupee symbol is simple, clean, chiseled and still so entwined with India’s own cultural heritage of the script that dominates its public discourse, as if it is part and parcel of our old devnagari alphabet.
However this symbol is to be standing next to other globally recognized symbols and there are some aesthetic angles that could work on the subconscious mind of the beholder. Take $ or € or ₤ or ¥ ; all have solid base.
On the other hand, the new Rupee symbol conjures up a caricature of Dada’s langot hanging on the clothes line, or a kati Patang ravaged by wind, dangling on power-lines or the image of small girl playing langdi, the one-legged skip and jump game. The symbolism of run rupee run, smacks of an Indian version of American cartoon, the Road Runner. The base is missing. We do not want a run on the Rupee. Ever.
Now that we are choosing a symbol that would become the permanent fixture of our very economic pomp and pride, why not invite more ideas from the public space and find out if a better symbol with more character of stability, dignity, immediate global recognizance, ease in writing, could still be creeping out from some ingenious minds of our scattered millions.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
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