Two simple things to atheist friends

From: Bhavesh Merjia
Subject: Two simple things to atheist friends
(The inserts in italics are by Skanda987)

(I)
The response makes it clear that the atheists are not in a position to give a single example of a material thing which is produced without any sort of involvement of any conscious doer or kartaa.
What time the doer or kartaa takes in making something? – is entirely a different question. Raising such a different question, leaving the point under discussion aside, displays the sign of inability to stand on the issue. This is called ‘Vishayaantar’ i.e. shifting the issue.

(II)
If creation of the natural elements are ‘well documented’ (as the atheists say), then why this question – “WHO HAS ESTABLISHED & MAINTAINED THIS MATHEMATICAL SERIES in these basic elements of nature?” Is it not honestly answered by the enthusiastic atheist?

Doesn’t an atheist acknowledge the presence of science of mathematics in the structures of these natural elements tabulated in the Periodical Table?
If yes, then kindly tell who has applied this science in structures of these natural elements?
Do inert elements possess the knowledge of mathematics?
Can we imagine presence of knowledge without its conscious substratum?
Can an attribute exist without its substratum?
Kindly try to understand. Knowledge proves presence of some conscious entity (who has that knowledge.)

Krishna says in Guta verse 7.4:
“Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego–all together these eight comprise My separated material energies.”

This is called prakriti in the Vedic literature. It is personified as goddess(es).

Krishna says in Gita verse 9.10:
“This material nature is working under My direction, O son of Kunti, and it is producing all moving and unmoving beings. By its rule this manifestation is created and annihilated again and again.”

Knowledge is an attribute. It cannot be imagined without its substratum.

Theism is not against science and technology. It only says that as the physical things exist, same way two conscious entities (one God and second – so many souls) do also exist. It is not a rule that only inert, physical entities can have existence. Conscious entities also can exist. That is why in the list of ‘Dravyas’ (substances or substratums), ‘Aatmaa’ (God & Soul) are also included in the Vedic philosophy.

If we accept the existence of these conscious entities and take them in the correct way, we can have still better life.

Still, if someone wishes not to accept the existence of God and/or soul, it is one’s freedom.

(Some atheists are out to make others atheists. They haveno interst for dialogue to understand the truth. Only a few atheists are interested to know the trith, and when they find it, they accept it. Such an atheists Narendra, who instantly became a theists after Swami Ramkrishna put him in Samadhi by holding his thumb for a few seconds. With such atheist the Vedics will dialoge, but hot with the other type. They will need several human births to come to know the existence of God.)

With this message I stop as I can’t spare more time on this issue. However, my atheist friends are free to cherish this as their victory. I would not object.

Bhavesh Merja

Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits by Islam

From: Satish Oberoi

Issue Book Excerpt: Kashmir: Its Aborigines and their Exodus
Date : 25 Apr , 2014

On Jan, 04, 1990, a local Urdu newspaper, Aftab, published a press release issued by Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, asking all Pandits to leave the Valley immediately. Al Safa, another local daily repeated the warning. These warnings were followed by Kalashnikov-wielding masked Jehadis carrying out military-type marches openly. Reports of killing of Kashmiri Pandits continued to pour in. Bomb explosions and sporadic firing by militants became a daily occurrence.

Explosive and inflammatory speeches being broadcast from the public address systems of the mosques became frequent. Thousands of audio cassettes, carrying similar propaganda, were played at numerous places in the Valley, in order to instill fear into the already terrified Kashmiri Pandit community. Recalling these events, the former Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police, Shri M M Khajooria says, “The mischief of the summer of 1989 started with serving notice to the prominent members of the minority community to quit Kashmir.

The letter said, ‘We order you to leave Kashmir immediately, otherwise your children will be harmed- we are not scaring you but this land is only for Muslims, and is the land of Allah. Sikhs and Hindus cannot stay here’. The threatening note ended with a warning, ‘If you do not obey, we will start with your children. Kashmir Liberation, Zindabad. ”1

*These slogans, broadcast from the loud speakers of every mosque, numbering roughly 1100, exhorted the hysterical mobs to embark on Jehad.

*They signaled the implementation of their intentions quite blatantly. M. L. Bhan of Khonmoh, Srinagar, a government employee, was killed on Jan 15, 1990. Baldev Raj Dutta, an operator in Lal chowk, Srinagar, was kidnapped on the same day. His dead body was found four days later, on Jan 19, 1990, at Nai Sarak, Srinagar. The body bore tell-tale marks of brutal torture.

*Night of Jan, 19, 1990

*The night witnessed macabre happenings, the like of which had not been witnessed by Kashmiri Pandits after the Afghan rule. Those that experienced the fear of that night are unlikely to forget it in their life time. For future generations, it will be a constant reminder of the brutality of Islamic radicals, who had chosen the timing very carefully. “Farooq Abdullah, whose government had all but seized to exist, resigned. Jagmohan arrived during the day to take charge as the Governor of the State. ”2 He took over the charge of the Governor just the previous night at Jammu. He had made efforts to reach Srinagar during the previous day, but the plane had to return to Jammu from Pir Panjal Pass, due to extremely bad weather. Though curfew was imposed to restore some semblance of order, it had little effect. The mosque pulpits continued to be used to exhort people to defy curfew and join Jehad against the Pandits, while armed cadres of JKLF marched through the streets of the Valley, terrorizing them no end.

As the night fell, the microscopic community became panic-stricken when the Valley began reverberating with the war-cries of Islamists, who had stage-managed the whole event with great care; choosing its timing and the slogans to be used. A host of highly provocative, communal and threatening slogans, interspersed with martial songs, incited the Muslims to come out on the streets and break the chains of ‘slavery’. These exhortations urged the faithful to give a final push to the Kafir in order to ring in the true Islamic order. These slogans were mixed with precise and unambiguous threats to Pandits. They were presented with three choices — Ralive, Tsaliv ya Galive (convert to Islam, leave the place or perish). Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims poured into the streets of the Valley, shouting ‘death to India’ and death to Kafirs.

These slogans, broadcast from the loud speakers of every mosque, numbering roughly 1100, exhorted the hysterical mobs to embark on Jehad. All male Muslims, including their children and the aged, wanted to be seen to be participating in this Jehad. Those who had organized such a show of force in the middle of a cold winter night, had only one objective; to put the fear of death into the hearts of the already frightened Pandits. In this moment of collective hysteria, gone was the facade of secular, tolerant, cultured, peaceful and educated outlook of Kashmiri Muslims, which the Indian intelligentsia and the liberal media had made them to wear for their own reasons.

*Most of the Kashmiri Muslims behaved as if they did not know who the Pandits were.

*Most of the Kashmiri Muslims behaved as if they did not know who the Pandits were. This frenzied mass hysteria went on till Kashmiri Pandits’ despondency turned into desperation, as the night wore itself out.

For the first time after independence of India from the British rule, Kashmiri Pandits found themselves abandoned to their fate, stranded in their own homes, encircled by rampaging mobs. Through the frenzied shouts and blood-curdling sloganeering of the assembled mobs, Pandits saw the true face of in¬tolerant and radical Islam. It represented the complete antithesis of the over-rated ethos of Kashmiriyat that was supposed to define Kashmiri ethos.

The pusillanimous Central Government was caught napping and its agencies in the State, particularly the army and other para military forces, did not consider it necessary to intervene, in the absence of any orders. The State Government had been so extensively subverted that the skeleton staff of the administration at Srinagar (the winter capital of the State had shifted to Jammu in November 1989) decided not to confront the huge mobs. Delhi was too far away, anyway.

*Hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits phoned everyone in authority at Jammu, Srinagar and Delhi, to save them from the sure catastrophe that awaited them.

*Hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits phoned everyone in authority at Jammu, Srinagar and Delhi, to save them from the sure catastrophe that awaited them. The pleadings for help were incessant. But not a soldier came to their rescue. Therefore, Kashmiri Pandits found best protection in huddling together indoors, frozen with fear, praying for the night to pass. The foreboding of the impending doom was too over-powering to let them have even a wink of sleep.

The Pandits could see the writing on the wall. If they were lucky enough to see the night through, they would have to vacate the place before they met the same fate as Tikka Lal Taploo and many others. The Seventh Exodus was surely staring them in the face. By morning, it became apparent to Pandits that Kashmiri Muslims had decided to throw them out from the Valley. Broadcasting vicious Jehadi sermons and revolutionary songs, interspersed with blood curdling shouts and shrieks, threatening Kashmiri Pandits with dire consequences, became a routine ‘Mantra’ of the Muslims of the Valley, to force them to flee from Kashmir.

*Some of the slogans used were:* “Zalimo, O Kafiro, Kashmir harmara chod do”.

(O! Merciless, O! Kafirs leave our Kashmir)

“Kashmir mein agar rehna hai, Allah-ho-Akbar kahna hoga”

(Any one wanting to live in Kashmir will have to convert to Islam)

La Sharqia la gharbia, Islamia! Islamia!

From East to West, there will be only Islam

“Musalmano jago, Kafiro bhago”,

(O! Muslims, Arise, O! Kafirs, scoot)

“Islam hamara maqsad hai, Quran hamara dastur hai, jehad hamara Rasta hai”

(Islam is our objective, Q’uran is our constitution, Jehad is our way of our life)

“Kashmir banega Pakistan”

(Kashmir will become Pakistan)

“Kashir banawon Pakistan, Bataw varaie, Batneiw saan”

(We will turn Kashmir into Pakistan alongwith Kashmiri Pandit women, but without their men folk)

“Pakistan se kya Rishta? La Ilah-e- Illalah”

(Islam defines our relationship with Pakistan)

Dil mein rakho Allah ka khauf; Hath mein rakho Kalashnikov.

(With fear of Allah ruling your hearts, wield a Kalashnikov)

“Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e- Mustafa”

(We want to be ruled under Shari’ah)

“People’s League ka kya paigam, Fateh, Azadi aur Islam”

(“What is the message of People’s League? Victory, Freedom and Islam. ”)

*Wall posters in fairly large letters, proclaiming Kashmir as ‘Islamic Republic of Kashmir’, became a com¬mon sight in the entir Valley. So were the big and prominent advertisements in local dailies, proclaiming their intent:

*‘Aim of the present struggle is the supremacy of Islam in Kashmir, in all walks of life and nothing else. Any one who puts a hurdle in our way will be annihilated’.

*Press release of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) published in the morning edition of Urdu Daily ‘Aftab’ of April, 01, 1990.

* ‘Kashmiri Pandits responsible for duress against Muslims should leave the Valley within two days’.

*Head lines of Urdu Daily, Al Safa, of April, 14, 1990.

*‘With Kalashnikov in one hand and Quran in the other the Mujahids would openly roam the streets singing the Tarana-e- Kashmir. ’

Notes:

Shri M M Khajooria, former Director General ofJammu and Kashmir Police. Kanchan Gupta: Pioneer, Aug 10, 2008.

Was the Babri Masjid Demolition Justified?

From Sri Venkat

Was the Babri Masjid Demolition Justified?

(First the need is to answer: Was Godhra carnage justified? Is the forcible invasion of Islaam in Hindustan justified? Are/were riots, all began by Muslims against the Hindus, justified? Is the overnight expulsion of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir justified; is keeping them as refuges in their own country justified? Is the treatment of the majority of the people, the Hindus in India, as 3d class people by the congress Gov. justified? Is the anti-Hindu, and therefore anti majority constitution of Hindustan justified? – Skanda987)

What do Indians feel about the Babri Masjid demolition? Was it justified? Was it long time coming? Was it inevitable? What do they think about governments role in it? What do you conclude about India’s law enforcing agencies competence and capability?

I will give you a study in contrasts. Look at the story of the Somnath temple:

Somnath …The ruins were pulled down in October 1950 and the mosque present at that site was shifted few miles away…

Ayodhya is equivalent to the Jerusalem for Christians and Mecca for Muslims – one of the holiest sites as far as Hindus are concerned.

Local lore in the Ayodhya has always maintained that Babur destroyed a flourishing Hindu temple, built on the same hallowed grounds where Lord Ram himself was born. This last part is important – it is an article of faith, whose historical validity is difficult, if not impossible to prove. What may be easier to prove, is that the mosque was built over an ancient temple. Recent archaeological assessments have indicated as such: wikipedia.org Archaeology of Ayodhya …The excavations gave ample traces that there was a mammoth pre-existing structure beneath the three-domed Babri structure…

So going back in history – the Indian partition was achieved after significant Hindu-Muslim tension, which included ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistani areas, as well as reprisal killings of Muslims in Hindu/Sikh dominated areas: Partition of India

Ethnic cleansing of Hindus continued in Pakistan even after it had completely broken away and became independent: 1950 East Bengal genocide 1964 East Pakistan genocide

Dialing back to 1947, Hindu pride was the order of the day, and similar to the Jews in 1947 Israel, there was an urgent need felt to resurrect the old symbols of Hindu pride – Ayodhya being the primary one, along with others like Somnath.

In Somnath, the local government faced no interference in its plan to relocate a pre-existing minor mosque, in order to facilitate the rehabilitation of a symbol of immense Hindu pride.

However, Ayodhya was smack-dab in the middle of Nehru’s sphere of geographic influence – the British United Provinces. So instead of attempting to facilitate a cooperative dialog to relocate a mosque that had no real symbolism to Muslims, he basically ignored the issue. So the local Hindu entities tried to obtain through subterfuge, what should otherwise have been achieved through full cooperation of the executive…. by installing idols into the disputed structure on the sly. Ayodhya dispute

The net result was a legal dispute, which pits Muslims against Hindus. Since this dispute has festered for so many years (originally since 1859), and since Hindus feel that the mosque itself has nowhere close to the symbolism as the site has to Hindus, the lack of a cooperative out-of-court settlement is viewed as a symbol of continued Muslim intransigence and inability to respect the religious sentiments of Hindus.

To answer your specific questions: Was the demolition justified? Slippery Slope – not sure anyone can justify a blatant disregard for court orders. But as the commentary above indicates – this is as much a religious and emotive issue, as it is a legal issue.

Was it a long time coming? If you agree with the religious/emotive sentiment, then 1859 to 1992 is a long time coming

Was it inevitable? No. Like Somnath – either a forceful executive intervention or a government facilitated co-operative compromise to shift the mosque could have avoided the demolition. I doubt if anything could have been done to change the article of faith that Lord Ram was actually born there, and therefore the temple needs to be built at that site and not at an alternate site

What do we think about government’s role in it? The Indian Central Government’s insistence to completely ignore the religious sentiment behind the dispute has led to a deep sense of “perceived” persecution in the minds of a large majority of Hindus.

In 1947, Muslims had a genuine fear that accepting a “climb down” on Ayodhya would lead to repeated claims on other Muslim mosque properties. This is no longer tenable. By some estimates, close to 300,000 functioning mosques exist in India, along with significant land holdings for many many more. 10 facts about India (Sorry for the poor source – but trust me that they are numerous) Sachar wanted Indian Wakf Service; govt. rejected it without any reason …Wakf boards across India have land holdings of more than 6 lakh acres

So the Government should be able to drive some sort of grand compromise. For instance, full completion of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, in return for a shifting/relocation of the Babri masjid as well as a commitment from Hindu groups to abandon similar historical claims at other sites (e.g. Kashi and Mathura).

The failure to drive such a compromise is a failure of the government – both at the local/state level as well as at the central level. This issue could and should have been solved in the 1950’s itself. In fact, multiple Muslim groups have repeatedly called for some sort of compromise along these lines mentioned in the paragraph above. However, by taking a strictly legal view of the dispute, the government has abdicated it’s responsibility for solving the dispute, and passed the “hot potato” to the Indian courts and India’s legal system.

What do you conclude about India’s law enforcing agencies competence and capability? The law enforcing agencies are firmly in the control of the executive. Law enforcement is a state subject. The central government can intervene only in exceptional conditions – for instance, there is a provision to disband a state government if it fails to uphold the constitution.

In the Ayodhya case, the central government had no legal basis to intervene pro-actively. You cannot remove a state government on a hypothetical assumption that it is not going to uphold the rule of law. Till the actual date of the demolition, the state government had followed all laws and judgments of the Indian courts.

On the day of the demolition, you can fault the state government for not providing sufficient forces (likely deliberately) to prevent the (extremely large) mob from storming the mosque premises.

However, as with many other instances, the law enforcing agencies were in no position (either materially or numerically) to prevent the demolition. So the actual demolition should not lead to a overly negative view on the competence and capabilities of India’s law enforcing agencies.

When given sufficient political support/leadership and requisite materials/numbers, India’s law enforcing agencies have been extremely successful in enforcing the rule of law.

—-

Hypothetically, if Islamic invaders had ransacked the Sistine Chapel inside the Vatican and built a mosque in its place, and a few hundred years later, Europe decided to rebuild the Sistine chapel by tearing down the mosque – I am fairly sure it would face very little opposition.

The demolition, in my humble opinion, was one (not very democratic) way Hindus cried out against oppression in their own homeland where they constitute an overwhelming majority. What we’ve largely forgotten due to 500 years of Islamic invasion, 200 years of British Raj and 50+ years of Nehruvian minority appeasement is that India is Hindu country and it is as sacred to Indian Hindus as is Mecca to Islam and Jerusalem / Vatican to Christianity. Islam came to India in the form of invaders of our land, pillagers of our riches, rapists of our women and murderers of our armies. As if this was not brutal enough, the invading armies built symbols of Islam (mosques) on the desecrated ruins of Hindu shrines to showcase their alleged superiority. One such mosque was built over Ram temple in Ayodhya. That this mosque was used purely as a symbol of “Islam trumps Hinduism” is proved by the fact that the mosque wasn’t even used as a place of worship by the Muslims of Ayodhya and was largely deserted.

My personal opinion therefore is that the Hindu demand for demolishing the mosque built over the holy birthplace of Shri Ram is justified, however the means to achieve the same could have been different. One must caveat that by saying, given the appeasement mentality of the congress-nehruvian government, a judicial process would likely have not yielded the desired solution.

I am an Indian Hindu – my reason for anonymity is that people (and friends) often confuse my pro-hindutva views as implying islamophobia, which is simply not true. It would be hard for anyone who has read history to deny the brutality with which Islam came to India. That said, I have no issues with Islam and Islamic practices in the Middle East, North Africa, etc., where Islam is the dominating religion and where the religion originated. Similarly, Hinduism is deeply entwined with the very concept of India and therefore cultural and historical symbols of Hinduism in India should be protected from foreign ideals and forces.

http://www.quora.com/Indian-People/What-do-Indians-feel-about-the-Babri-Masjid-demolition

What Caused India’s Partition in 1947

From: Yogesh Saxena

The first steps were taken toward self-government in British India in the late 19th century with the appointment of Indian counsellors to advise the British viceroy and the establishment of provincial councils with Indian members; the British subsequently widened participation in legislative councils with the Indian Councils Act 1892. Municipal Corporations and District Boards were created for local administration; they included elected Indian members.

The Indian Councils Act 1909 — also known as the Morley-Minto Reforms (John Morley was the secretary of state for India, and Gilbert Elliot, fourth earl of Minto, was viceroy) — gave Indians limited roles in the central and provincial legislatures, known as legislative councils. Indians had previously been appointed to legislative councils, but after the reforms some were elected to them. At the centre, the majority of council members continued to be government-appointed officials, and the viceroy was in no way responsible to the legislature. At the provincial level, the elected members, together with unofficial appointees, outnumbered the appointed officials, but responsibility of the governor to the legislature was not contemplated. Morley made it clear in introducing the legislation to the British Parliament that parliamentary self-government was not the goal of the British government.

The Morley-Minto Reforms were a milestone. Step by step, the elective principle was introduced for membership in Indian legislative councils. The “electorate” was limited, however, to a small group of upper-class Indians. These elected members increasingly became an “opposition” to the “official government”. The Communal electorates were later extended to other communities and made a political factor of the Indian tendency toward group identification through religion.

World War I would prove to be a watershed in the imperial relationship between Britain and India. 1.4 million Indian and British soldiers of the British Indian Army would take part in the war and their participation would have a wider cultural fallout: news of Indian soldiers fighting and dying with British soldiers, as well as soldiers from dominions like Canada and Australia, would travel to distant corners of the world both in newsprint and by the new medium of the radio.[8] India’s international profile would thereby rise and would continue to rise during the 1920s.[8] It was to lead, among other things, to India, under its own name, becoming a founding member of the League of Nations in 1920 and participating, under the name, “Les Indes Anglaises” (The British Indies), in the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp.[9] Back in India, especially among the leaders of the Indian National Congress, it would lead to calls for greater self-government for Indians.[8]

In 1916, in the face of new strength demonstrated by the nationalists with the signing of the Lucknow Pact and the founding of the Home Rule leagues, and the realization, after the disaster in the Mesopotamian campaign, that the war would likely last longer, the new Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, cautioned that the Government of India needed to be more responsive to Indian opinion.[10] Towards the end of the year, after discussions with the government in London, he suggested that the British demonstrate their good faith – in light of the Indian war role – through a number of public actions, including awards of titles and honors to princes, granting of commissions in the army to Indians, and removal of the much-reviled cotton excise duty, but most importantly, an announcement of Britain’s future plans for India and an indication of some concrete steps.[10] After more discussion, in August 1917, the new Liberal Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, announced the British aim of “increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration, and the gradual development of self-governing institutions, with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.”[10] This envisioned reposing confidence in the educated Indians, so far disdained as an unrepresentative minority, who were described by Montague as “Intellectually our children”.[11] The pace of the reforms where to be determined by Britain as and when the Indians were seen to have earned it.[11] However, although the plan envisioned limited self-government at first only in the provinces – with India emphatically within the British Empire – it represented the first British proposal for any form of representative government in a non-white colony.
Earlier, at the onset of World War I, the reassignment of most of the British army in India to Europe and Mesopotamia had led the previous Viceroy, Lord Harding, to worry about the “risks involved in denuding India of troops.”[8] Revolutionary violence had already been a concern in British India; consequently in 1915, to strengthen its powers during what it saw was a time of increased vulnerability, the Government of India passed the Defence of India Act, which allowed it to intern politically dangerous dissidents without due process and added to the power it already had – under the 1910 Press Act – both to imprison journalists without trial and to censor the press.[12] Now, as constitutional reform began to be discussed in earnest, the British began to consider how new moderate Indians could be brought into the fold of constitutional politics and simultaneously, how the hand of established constitutionalists could be strengthened.[12] However, since the reform plan was devised during a time when extremist violence had ebbed as a result of increased war-time governmental control and it now feared a revival of revolutionary violence,[11] the government also began to consider how some of its war-time powers could be extended into peace time.[12][12]
Consequently in 1917, even as Edwin Montagu announced the new constitutional reforms, a sedition committee chaired by a British judge, Mr. S. A. T. Rowlatt, was tasked with investigating war-time revolutionary conspiracies and the German and Bolshevik links to the violence in India,[13][14][15] with the unstated goal of extending the government’s war-time powers.[10] The Rowlatt committee presented its report in July 1918 and identified three regions of conspiratorial insurgency: Bengal, the Bombay presidency, and the Punjab.[10] To combat subversive acts in these regions, the committee recommended that the government use emergency powers akin to its war-time authority, which included the ability to try cases of sedition by a panel of three judges and without juries, exaction of securities from suspects, governmental overseeing of residences of suspects,[10] and the power for provincial governments to arrest and detain suspects in short-term detention facilities and without trial.[16]
With the end of World War I, there was also a change in the economic climate. By year’s end 1919, 1.5 million Indians had served in the armed services in either combatant or non-combatant roles, and India had provided £146 million in revenue for the war.[17] The increased taxes coupled with disruptions in both domestic and international trade had the effect of approximately doubling the index of overall prices in India between 1914 and 1920.[17] Returning war veterans, especially in the Punjab, created a growing unemployment crisis[18] and post-war inflation led to food riots in Bombay, Madras, and Bengal provinces,[18] a situation that was made only worse by the failure of the 1918-19 monsoon and by profiteering and speculation.[17] The global influenza epidemic and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 added to the general jitters; the former among the population already experiencing economic woes,[18] and the latter among government officials, fearing a similar revolution in India.[19]
To combat what it saw as a coming crisis, the government now drafted the Rowlatt committee’s recommendations into two Rowlatt Bills.[16] Although the bills were authorised for legislative consideration by Edwin Montagu, they were done so unwillingly, with the accompanying declaration, “I loathe the suggestion at first sight of preserving the Defence of India Act in peace time to such an extent as Rowlatt and his friends think necessary.”[10] In the ensuing discussion and vote in the Imperial Legislative Council, all Indian members voiced opposition to the bills. The Government of India was nevertheless able to use of its “official majority” to ensure passage of the bills early in 1919.[10] However, what it passed, in deference to the Indian opposition, was a lesser version of the first bill, which now allowed extrajudicial powers, but for a period of exactly three years and for the prosecution solely of “anarchical and revolutionary movements,” dropping entirely the second bill involving modification of the Indian Penal Code.[10] Even so, when it was passed the new Rowlatt Act aroused widespread indignation throughout India and brought Mohandas Gandhi to the forefront of the nationalist movement.[16]
Meanwhile, Montagu and Chelmsford themselves finally presented their report in July 1918 after a long fact-finding trip through India the previous winter.[20] After more discussion by the government and parliament in Britain, and another tour by the Franchise and Functions Committee for the purpose of identifying who among the Indian population could vote in future elections, the Government of India Act 1919 (also known as the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms) was passed in December 1919.[20] The new Act enlarged the provincial councils and converted the Imperial Legislative Council into an enlarged Central Legislative Assembly. It also repealed the Government of India’s recourse to the “official majority” in unfavorable votes.[20] Although departments like defense, foreign affairs, criminal law, communications and income-tax were retained by the Viceroy and the central government in New Delhi, other departments like public health, education, land-revenue and local self-government were transferred to the provinces.[20] The provinces themselves were now to be administered under a new dyarchical system, whereby some areas like education, agriculture, infrastructure development, and local self-government became the preserve of Indian ministers and legislatures, and ultimately the Indian electorates, while others like irrigation, land-revenue, police, prisons, and control of media remained within the purview of the British governor and his executive council.[20] The new Act also made it easier for Indians to be admitted into the civil service and the army officer corps.
A greater number of Indians were now enfranchised, although, for voting at the national level, they constituted only 10% of the total adult male population, many of whom were still illiterate.[20] In the provincial legislatures, the British continued to exercise some control by setting aside seats for special interests they considered cooperative or useful. In particular, rural candidates, generally sympathetic to British rule and less confrontational, were assigned more seats than their urban counterparts.[20] Seats were also reserved for non-Brahmins, landowners, businessmen, and college graduates. The principal of “communal representation”, an integral part of the Minto-Morley reforms, and more recently of the Congress-Muslim League Lucknow Pact, was reaffirmed, with seats being reserved for Muslims, Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians, and domiciled Europeans, in both provincial and Imperial legislative councils.[20] The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms offered Indians the most significant opportunity yet for exercising legislative power, especially at the provincial level; however, that opportunity was also restricted by the still limited number of eligible voters, by the small budgets available to provincial legislatures, and by the presence of rural and special interest seats that were seen as instruments of British control.[20]
In 1935, after the Round Table Conferences, the British Parliament approved the Government of India Act 1935, which authorised the establishment of independent legislative assemblies in all provinces of British India, the creation of a central government incorporating both the British provinces and the princely states, and the protection of Muslim minorities.[3] The future Constitution of independent India would owe a great deal to the text of this act.[21] The act also provided for a bicameral national parliament and an executive branch under the purview of the British government. Although the national federation was never realised, nationwide elections for provincial assemblies were held in 1937. Despite initial hesitation, the Congress took part in the elections and won victories in seven of the eleven provinces of British India,[22] and Congress governments, with wide powers, were formed in these provinces. In Great Britain, these victories were to later turn the tide for the idea of Indian independence.[22]
With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, declared war on India’s behalf without consulting Indian leaders, leading the Congress provincial ministries to resign in protest. The Muslim League, in contrast, supported Britain in the war effort; however, it now took the view that Muslims would be unfairly treated in an independent India dominated by the Congress. The British government—through its Cripps’ mission—attempted to secure Indian nationalists’ cooperation in the war effort in exchange for independence afterwards; however, the negotiations between them and the Congress broke down. Gandhi, subsequently, launched the “Quit India” movement in August 1942, demanding the immediate withdrawal of the British from India or face nationwide civil disobedience. Along with all other Congress leaders, Gandhi was immediately imprisoned, and the country erupted in violent demonstrations led by students and later by peasant political groups, especially in Eastern United Provinces, Bihar, and western Bengal. The large war-time British Army presence in India led to most of the movement being crushed in a little more than six weeks;[23] nonetheless, a portion of the movement formed for a time an underground provisional government on the border with Nepal.[23] In other parts of India, the movement was less spontaneous and the protest less intensive, however it lasted sporadically into the summer of 1943.[24]
With Congress leaders in jail, attention also turned to Subhas Bose, who had been ousted from the Congress in 1939 following differences with the more conservative high command;[25] Bose now turned to the Axis powers for help with liberating India by force.[26] With Japanese support, he organised the Indian National Army, composed largely of Indian soldiers of the British Indian army who had been captured at Singapore by the Japanese. From the onset of the war, the Japanese secret service had promoted unrest in South east Asia to destabilise the British War effort,[27] and came to support a number of puppet and provisional governments in the captured regions, including those in Burma, the Philippines and Vietnam, the Provisional Government of Azad Hind (Free India), presided by Bose.[28] Bose’s effort, however, was short lived; after the reverses of 1944, the reinforced British Indian Army in 1945 first halted and then reversed the Japanese U Go offensive, beginning the successful part of the Burma Campaign. Bose’s Indian National Army surrendered with the recapture of Singapore, and Bose died in a plane crash soon thereafter. The trials of the INA soldiers at Red Fort in late 1945 however caused widespread public unrest and nationalist violence in India.[29]
In January 1946, a number of mutinies broke out in the armed services, starting with that of RAF servicemen frustrated with their slow repatriation to Britain.[30] The mutinies came to a head with mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy in Bombay in February 1946, followed by others in Calcutta, Madras, and Karachi. Although the mutinies were rapidly suppressed, they found much public support in India and had the effect of spurring the new Labour government in Britain to action, and leading to the Cabinet Mission to India led by the Secretary of State for India, Lord Pethick Lawrence, and including Sir Stafford Cripps, who had visited four years before.[30]
Also in early 1946, new elections were called in India in which the Congress won electoral victories in eight of the eleven provinces.[31] The negotiations between the Congress and the Muslim League, however, stumbled over the issue of the partition. Jinnah proclaimed August 16, 1946, Direct Action Day, with the stated goal of highlighting, peacefully, the demand for a Muslim homeland in British India. The following day Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Calcutta and quickly spread throughout India. Although the Government of India and the Congress were both shaken by the course of events, in September, a Congress-led interim government was installed, with Jawaharlal Nehru as united India’s prime minister.
Later that year, the Labor government in Britain, its exchequer exhausted by the recently concluded World War II, decided to end British rule of India, and in early 1947 Britain announced its intention of transferring power no later than June 1948.
As independence approached, the violence between Hindus and Muslims in the provinces of Punjab and Bengal continued unabated. With the British army unprepared for the potential for increased violence, the new viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, advanced the date for the transfer of power, allowing less than six months for a mutually agreed plan for independence. In June 1947, the nationalist leaders, including Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad on behalf of the Congress, Jinnah representing the Muslim League, B. R. Ambedkar representing the Untouchable community, and Master Tara Singh representing the Sikhs, agreed to a partition of the country along religious lines. The predominantly Hindu and Sikh areas were assigned to the new India and predominantly Muslim areas to the new nation of Pakistan; the plan included a partition of the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal.
Many millions of Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu refugees trekked across the newly drawn borders. In Punjab, where the new border lines divided the Sikh regions in half, massive bloodshed followed; in Bengal and Bihar, where Gandhi’s presence assuaged communal tempers, the violence was more limited. In all, anywhere between 250,000 and 500,000 people on both sides of the new borders died in the violence.[32] On August 14, 1947, the new Dominion of Pakistan came into being, with Muhammad Ali Jinnah sworn in as its first Governor General in Karachi. The following day, August 15, 1947, India, now a smaller Union of India, became an independent country with official ceremonies taking place in New Delhi, and with Jawaharlal Nehru assuming the office of the prime minister, and the viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, staying on as its first Governor General.
—
Yogesh Kumar Saxena Advocate Supreme Court

American Airlines Pilot Speaks His Mind

From: Satish Oberio

From: Tehmasp Mogul
AMERICAN AIRLINES PILOT SPEAKS HIS MIND
No name calling, no hatred, no political agenda.

CANADIAN COMMENT APPEARS AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE AND IS MEANINGFUL.
THERE IS ALSO SOME RECENTLY ADDED BRITISH COMMENT.

This pilot hit the nail right on the head in his open letter.

A newspaper stated that some Muslim doctor is saying we are profiling him because he has been checked three times while getting on an airplane. The following is a letter from a pilot. This well- spoken man, who is a pilot with American Airlines, says what is in his heart, beautifully.

YOU WORRY ME!
By Captain John Maniscalco, American Airlines Pilot

I’ve been trying to say this since 911, but you worry me. I wish you didn’t. I wish when I walked down the streets of this country that I love, that your color and culture still blended with the beautiful human landscape we enjoy in this country. But you don’t blend in anymore. I notice you, and it worries me.

I notice you because I can’t help it anymore. People from your homelands, professing to be Muslims, have been attacking and killing my fellow citizens and our friends for more than 20 years now. I don’t fully understand their grievances and hate, but I know that nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.

On September 11, ARAB-MUSLIMS hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into buildings, killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants, and children’s mothers.

The Palestinians celebrated, the Iraqis were overjoyed as was most of the Arab world. So, I notice you now. I don’t want to be worried. I don’t want to be consumed by the same rage, hate and prejudice that has destroyed the soul of these terrorists. But I need your help. As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to tell the difference between you, and the Arab/Muslim terrorist.

How do I differentiate between the true Arab/Muslim Americans and the Arab/Muslim terrorists in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, and living in OUR communities under the protection of OUR constitution, while they plot the next attack that will slaughter MORE of the same good neighbors and children?

The events of September 11 changed the answer.. It is not MY responsibility to determine which of you embraces our great country, with ALL of its religions, with ALL of its different citizens, with all of its faults. It is time for every Arab/Muslim in this country to determine it for me.

I want to know, I DEMAND to know and I have a right to know, whether or not you love America ….. Do you pledge allegiance to its flag? Do you proudly display it in front of your house, or on your car? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation; that He will protect it and let it prosper? Or do you pray that Allah will destroy it in one of your Jihads? Are you thankful for the freedom that this nation affords, a freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots who gave their lives for this country? Are you willing to preserve this freedom by also paying the ultimate sacrifice? Do you love America?? If this is your commitment, then I need YOU to start letting ME know about it

Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions YOU are taking as a community and as a religion to protect the United States of America. Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the innocent, because I worry about who you regard as innocent…. No more benign overtures of condemnation for the unprovoked attacks, because I worry about what is unprovoked to you. I am not interested in any more sympathy; I am interested only in action. What will you do for America – our great country – at this time of crisis, at this time of war?

I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting ‘Allah Bless America’. I want to see young Arab/Muslim men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money, time and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole.

The FBI has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the WTC attack. Many of these people live and socialize right now in Muslim communities. You know them. You know where they are. Hand them over to us, NOW! But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action. Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets. You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisals.
The very few Arab/Muslim representatives that HAVE appeared in the media were defensive and equivocating. They seemed more concerned with making sure that the United States proves who was responsible before taking action. They seemed more concerned with protecting their fellow Muslims from violence directed towards them in the United States and abroad than they did with supporting our country and denouncing ‘leaders’ like Khadafi, Hussein, Farrakhan, and Arafat.

IF the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people, then I want chapter and verse from the Koran and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. What good is it if the teachings in the Koran are good, pure, and true, when your ‘leaders’ ARE teaching fanatical interpretations, terrorism, and intolerance? It matters little how good Islam SHOULD BE if huge numbers of the world’s Muslims interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion. A form that has been demonstrated to us over and over again. A form whose structure is built upon a foundation of violence, death, and suicide. A form whose members are recruited from the prisons around the world. A form whose members (some as young as five years old) are seen day after day, week in and week out, year after year, marching in the streets around the world, burning effigies of our presidents, burning the American flag, shooting weapons into the air. A form whose members convert from a peaceful religion, only to take up arms against the great United States of America, the country of their birth. A form whose rules are so twisted, that their traveling members refuse to show their faces at airport security checkpoints, in the name of Islam.

We will NEVER allow the attacks of September 11, or any others for that matter, to take away that which is so precious to us — our rights under the greatest constitution in the world. I want to know where every Arab Muslim in this country stands and I think it is my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to DEMAND it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters who died protecting the very constitution that is protecting you and your family.

I am pleading with you to let me know. I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American…… But there can be no grey areas or ambivalence regarding your allegiance, and it is up to YOU, to show ME, where YOU stand. Until then, “YOU WORRY ME!”

CANADIAN COMMENTS:
I totally agree with this sentiment. I hope you will forget all about the ‘political correctness’ mandate we’ve had rammed down our throats, and see if this doesn’t ring true in your heart and mind. For Canada, with all the multiculturalism we’ve been told is so important….why should we not, as Canadians, expect that the millions of new people immigrating to our country will show their love for our country, their allegiance to our country, their willingness to obey the laws of our country, and acceptance that we are a Christian country? Just because they are able to enjoy exercising their own religion, they should NOT expect us to be ashamed of ours. They knew Canada was a Christian country when they came here. Why are we erasing Christianity because immigrants who are unwilling to adopt our way of life expect us to? There is just too much insanity in the world, and we have to start taking a stand.
I hope you will forward this, so that others will feel they are not alone if they are starting to feel the same.

BRITISH COMMENTS:
At last a clear non-racist example of the concerns that the vast majority of our Nation’s population probably share. The pilot’s letter encapsulates all that is fair and just about national pride and protection of one’s national culture. I fear it may be too late here in UK, BUT we too want our country back in the form that attracted all these different cultures to come here in the first place!! In all our conversations with a wide range of friends and acquaintances we have not met one that disagrees with our own views. If only we all had the courage of our convictions to pass this on, it is a statement that should be accepted as the heart-felt feelings of someone with honest commendable national pride.

AUSTRALIAN COMMENT:
Best email I have had in years it needs to be in every paper every day until we get some answers.

SKANDA’S (A VEDIC’S) COMMNET:
Anyone who studies Islam’s whole 1400 years history that is full of violence and forcible conversions against the non-Muslims, and the messages in Koran, Hadith, and Sira, will objectively conclude that all the kafir (non-Muslim) people and countries should worry if Islam is present within or in the neighborhood. India – the country of the Hindus since millenniums – has suffered from Islam the most since 1000 years than any other country. The only way to become free from the worry is to purge Islam out of the country or neighborhood. There are now may websites that expose Islam. No, Islam is not a religion of peace at all but contrary. There cannot be peace where there is Islam. Below link has some articles that expose Islam.
https://skanda987.wordpress.com/category/islam/

Profiles of the Peoples’ rights provocateurs and armed conflict resolvers in USA

Profiles of the Peoples’ rights provocateurs and armed conflict resolvers in USA

From: Rakhal Saha via returns.groups.yahoo.com
Mar 9, 2014

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/peoples-rights-provocateurs-and-armed.html

Peoples’ rights provocateurs and armed conflict resolvers — profiles.

The key statement is here: “… technical protocols… implemented with the aid and participation of civil society and affected populations; it would serve as a model for other countries.”
In American idiom, this can be countered: Don’t fix things that ain’t broke. Mind your business. Don’t make India an American academic guinea pig for armed conflicts.

It is time for Capitol Hill and Whitehouse to re-evaluate purpose of ‘scholarly’ American traditions while engaging in ‘Hindu studies’.

American academe, mind your own business of education. Don’t step on India’s toes. Don’t try to make a model for your protocols of armed conflicts.

This is a follow-up of
http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2014/03/american-university-prepares-for-riots.html

American University prepares for riots in India. Should this be called academic research activism?

On further deliberation, the University research project in collaboration with an affiliate apparent ‘science’ outfit called Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is clearly an interference in the internal affairs of an independent, sovereign nation — India.
The usual cover for the covert initiative is human rights and conflict resolution.

Why does it take an American institution to be uninvited guests for resolution of an imagined conflict? Shouldn’t Obama administration get concerned that such parallel academic interventions undermine the US foreign policy and the imperative of maintaining with a nation with over 1250 million people striding an Indian Ocean Rim with over 59 nations which live under the traditions of dharma-dhamma?

Has American academe forgotten the wisdom imparted by the great American historian: Will Durant? Will Durant who authored a 11-volume history of philosophy and narrated the story of civilizations observed: “India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all”.
See more at: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2014/02/call-for-us-commission-of-inquiry-into.html?q=will+durant
The analyses of the American University project are presented in two parts: 1. A Few issues; 2. Some Questions

We hope that the deliberations will be joined by many citizens of the world elaborating further on the issues and answering some questions raised.

Part 1: A Few Issues

1. The project list reads like a “Who’s Who” of the Forum of Indian/Inquilabi Leftists (FOIL), and the “Coalition Against Genocide” (CAG), a loose coalition of groups including the FOIL and IAMC. Members of this Coalition have been associated with the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence Agency, and other suspected connections to international organizations as well as political parties, particularly the Indian National Congress, the Communist Party of India (Marxist/Leninist/Maoist) and to Evangelist Christian organizations and their activist arms such as the Christian Aid group. There are some suspected links to foreign terrorist organizations such as the Khalistan groups, the SIMI, through the Indian Muslim Council, the Maoists in India, to secessionist groups active in Jammu-Kashmir, and to interests in Odisha and Chhattisgarh.

The FOIL and CAG have been studied in articles in the early 2000s, in the book titled “NGOs and Foreign Funding: Anti-National Industry” edited by Kishan Kak and Radha Rajan and a recent report by the Hindu American Foundation. In 1997-2002, Ms. Teesta Setalwad’s “Sabrang” organization channeled funds to the FOIL to develop a “5-year comprehensive research report” that attacked the India Development and Relief Fund. Dr. Angana Chatterji was a primary author of that report. Dr. Vinay Lal was the spokesman for the FOIL. The attack was proven to be baseless. The thorough debunking of that report was published in the book “IDRF: Let the Facts Speak”. Since then, the FOIL has reorganized on several occasions to launch campaigns, generally against India and particularly against the government of Gujarat.

2. It may be useful to remember the past. In October 2001, while the world was in upheaval after the 9/11 attacks in the USA, and Pakistani terrorism was spiking in Kashmir, the Oberlin College Trust in Ohio announced a conference to be held in April 2002, titled: “Siting Secularism in India”. The Oberlin Foundation, a Christian missionary organization, has excellent relations with the Shanxi University in China, with specific approval from the government of the PRC. (See http://shansi.org/about-shansi/history/ for a recently sanitized version).

Around that time, the FOIL seemed to have received a sudden influx of funding, and started an active campaign. They hurriedly revived their dormant publication, “Ghadar” citing the urgent need to get organized and conduct a media campaign, since they expected “a loud noise that will be heard around the world” or words to that effect. In January they held a meeting in Maryland, USA. The Siting Secularism in India conference occurred just a few weeks after the events of late February 2002, with many visitors from the US, India, UK and France, most of them with Communist/Islamist leanings.

The only business at that conference for which any record can be found, is an Oberlin Resolution condemning the government of India for alleged genocide against minorities. Those who remember this, find the parallels with the present Project to be chilling. We wonder what “loud noise” is anticipated this time. Note that we have no evidence to link any of these entities directly to any violence, and are not claiming any. However, their apparent foresight and timing seem remarkable.

3. Dr. Angana Chatterji’s activities and visits in India have perhaps coincidentally, preceded violence in the parts where she focused her activities. Examples are Gujarat, Chattisgarh, Odisha, and Jammu-Kashmir.

4. Circa 2010, Dr. Chatterji and her US citizen husband Dr. Richard Shapiro, were asked to terminate their visit to Jammu-Kashmir. Shapiro was asked to leave India, and later denied a visa to enter India.

5. On July 19, 2011, Ghulam Nabi Fai, Kashmir activist in the USA, was indicted in US Federal Court for being an agent of the Pakistani ISI. The indictment listed his contacts with/ funding of a woman code-named “Mary” for making a presentation before a UN panel, presenting the Pakistani point of view on Jammu-Kashmir.
In May 2011, Dr. Chatterji made a presentation to a UN Panel to raise Kashmir issues.

On July 19, 2011, the California Institute for Integral Studies suspended Drs. Chatterji and Shapiro, tenured full professors (he was Department Head), citing financial and other irregularities. Both were later dismissed after faculty hearings. CIIS denied any link to their outside activities.

6. Although the project claims to develop policies and protocols for nations around the world, there is no indication of any activities directed at any nation other than India.

7. The project claims interest in various troubled parts of India, including Jammu-Kashmir, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, the Northeast, and Punjab. The inclusion of Teesta Setalwad and Harsh Mander suggest that the main interest is in Gujarat. Ms. Setalwad has several allegations filed against her in India and has sought anticipatory bail again. Mr. Mander, during and after his tenure as IAS officer, has a history of association with the British NGO Action Aid, which shares origins and close synergy with Christian Aid, which is active in conversions in the tribal regions of Gujarat and elsewhere in India.

8. The Lok Sabha elections in India are only two and a half months away.

Part 2: Some Questions

1. Who is sponsoring this project?

2. Who are the Members of the Indian Parliament and other lawmakers in India that this project intends to “engage” or co-opt? Have they already been approached and have they agreed? Are they also sponsoring it?

3. Given the background of Ms. Teesta Setalwad’s fundraising and past activities, is the Congress Party funding this enterprise as well?

4. Why are such Protocols and Policies for India, the largest sovereign democracy in the world, being developed in America, and by a group that has a clearly one-sided political bias and record?

5. Why is a person whose primary employment is with a US Federal Laboratory focused on bringing science to public welfare, engaged in such a project which has clear overtones and undertones of interfering in the politics/public policy dealing with internal armed conflict of a friendly foreign nation?

6. Why is this project within Dr. Buluswar’s or the LBNL’s mandate?

7. Why is this project dealing with making protocols for armed conflict, sited within a Business School?

8. Why is the staffing of such a project done exclusively with people who have such a colored record, with no effort to strike a balance between law enforcement interests and secessionist/subversive interests?

9. Is the University of California, Berkeley, aware of Dr. Angana Chatterji’s prior activities involving Kashmir and the United Nations, among others?

APPENDIX: Quotes from the website
http://nonprofit.haas.berkeley.edu/research/acr.html#Network
“This project seeks to create a policy and protocol framework for protecting people’s rights in situations of internal armed conflict and mass violence. Interdisciplinary in practice and rooted in local knowledge, this project seeks to define steps in conflict resolution through capacity building for psychosocial healing and the amelioration of abuses. In so doing, we contend with the condition of violence and the contested terrain of human rights and transitional justice.

India serves as a case in point, given that several diverse parts of the country are beset by armed conflict. Civilian populations—especially children, youth, women and minorities—suffer in the absence of adequate governance, access to responsible development, and the preservation of human rights.
The National Human Rights Commission of India, in its submission to the UN Human Rights Council for India’s Second Universal Periodic Review (2008), stated: “There are inordinate delays in the provision of justice… There is still no national action plan for human rights.” but separate outputs: a Policy document and several Protocols.
Contemporary conflicts and transitional contexts will inform the development of this policy and the protocols.

The regions of Jammu Kashmir, Manipur, and Chhattisgarh are differently but persistently affected by conflict, with conflict-related issues intermittently occurring in Punjab. Additionally, areas such as Gujarat and Odisha have been impacted by far-reaching violence on minority communities in recent history.

These conflicts are spurred by a myriad of issues, including cultural and communal identity, religionization, self-determination, and economic empowerment. Such conflicts can have far-reaching human impact and lead to intense psychosocial and economic suffering of civilian populations in the affected areas, collapse of responsible governance, development, and social protection mechanisms, and can also have a broader disruptive effect impacting national, regional, and global security.

The importance of this project lies in the fact that nothing close to a policy framework with attendant protocols currently exists in India that protects civilians and their rights in areas of armed conflict and mass violence, in a way that is consistent with India’s legal, ethical, and constitutional obligations, even as brutal conflicts and suffering continue.

If such a policy framework is adopted in India, and appropriate technical protocols are implemented with the aid and participation of civil society and affected populations, it would serve as a model for other countries.”

Objectives

In the development of the Policy and Protocols, this project will focus on questions of transitional and transformative justice.
These questions pertain to issues of access to justice and conflict resolution; accountability and human rights; governance and the rule of law; gendered violence; minority rights; religious freedom; memory and healing; commitment to nonviolence; mechanisms for restitution and redressal; and people’s rights and humanitarian considerations during and after conflict; as well as multi-sectoral approaches, including involving education technology and social enterprise, toward inclusive development.
Policy and Protocols:

The Policy will be a document proposing a general course of action with the long-term goal of justice and stability across the country.
The Protocols –blueprints of standards and steps for accountability and reparation pertaining to healing through reparatory, transitional, and transformative justice in areas of current conflict and post-conflict–will be specific to the issues presented by various conflicts in India. Topics of the protocols will include:

• Gendered violence and human rights during armed conflict and massified violence.
• Casualties and missing persons.
• Supporting survivors through holding all parties to the conflict accountable (army, paramilitary, police, and non-state armed groups).
• Impunity laws and failures of legal justice.
• Historical dialogue and alliance-building.
• Social trauma, memory, and psychosocial restitution.
• Humanitarian and socioeconomic development, such as women’s health, and access to education.
In the course of producing these outputs, the project will involve those affected by conflict in conceiving redress.
• It will initiate cross-cultural dialogue.
• The project will facilitate remembrance and documentation, and undertake to create an archive and web-based memorialization installations.
• It will involve progressive civil society and the next generation in India, the Diaspora, and the global community in dialogue on peace, nonviolence, and justice.
• The project will initiate pilot processes through which to identify mechanisms for psychosocial restitution and humanitarian efforts.
• The project will draw on diverse and plural imaginations of rights and justice in local, customary, and global traditions, in creating a framework for acknowledgement and remorse, accountability and justice, and healing and restitution.
• The project will avoid taking positions on political questions, focusing instead on human rights and humanitarian concerns.”

Why has BJP forgotten its nationalist agenda?

Why has BJP forgotten its nationalist agenda?

By J.G. Arora

Patriots Forum: March 11, 2014

Ever since it ruled the country from 1999-2004, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been substantially de-based and de-Hinduised. Though its opponents term BJP as a Hindu outfit, BJP prefers to be known as a ‘secular’ party; and its leaders prefer to be known as ‘secular’ leaders.

And BJP’s pseudo-secular leaders have forsaken BJP’s nationalist ideology.

Though in their massive public meetings held across the country, BJP’s top leaders including its national president as also its Prime Ministerial candidate have proclaimed their ‘development’, ‘India first’, ‘vote for India’ and pseudo-secular agenda; they are silent about uniform civil code, abolition of Article 370, rehabilitation of Kashmiri Hindus in Kashmir, and infiltration of crores of Bangladeshis into India.

Besides, they have never asserted that if voted to power, they would implement the policy of genuine secularism which means justice for all and appeasement of none; and have never claimed that they would undo the fake secularists’ division of the nation into majority and minority, and would review the government’s policies and programmes which have been motivated by the politics of appeasement of minority.

Furthermore, though vide its judgement dated July 12, 2005, Supreme Court termed Bangladeshi infiltration as “external aggression” and held that “Bangladeshi nationals who have trespassed into Assam or are living in other parts of the country have no legal right to remain in India and they are liable to be deported”, like other fake-secular outfits, BJP is silent over crores of Bangladeshi infiltrators grabbing India. Not a single Bangladeshi infiltrator has been deported even from BJP ruled states.

This write-up explains that BJP must revive and re-assert its nationalist agenda if it wants to save India from disaster.

Sophistry of fake-secularism

Logically in 1947, on India’s partition on religious basis and creation of Pakistan as demanded by Muslims, truncated India should have been declared a Hindu republic to re-assert its Hindu identity. However, a perverse ‘secularism’ has been foisted on Bharat where anything which is anti-Hindu, pro-Muslim, divisive and sectarian is ‘secularism’ though genuine secularism connotes separation of state and religion; and non-discrimination on grounds of religion.

Most of Indian political parties practise the outrageous and fake ‘secularism’ which has resulted, inter alia, in crores of Bangladeshi infiltrators grabbing India bit by bit; genocide and eviction of Hindus from Kashmir; government control over all prominent Hindu temples whereas no mosque or church is covered by such control; special rights to Muslim majority Jammu & Kashmir under Article 370; scholarships, free-ships and incentives to non-Hindus by central and many state governments; demand for reservation for Muslims in government jobs even after the creation of Pakistan; and provision of Haj subsidy though none of 57 Islamic countries gives any such subsidy.

Congress-isation of BJP

Successor to nationalist Bharatiya Jana Sangh, ‘secularized’ and de-Hinduised BJP was formed in 1980. Because of its ‘secularisation’ and de-Hinduisation, BJP got just two Lok Sabha seats in 1984 elections. Shell-shocked BJP went back to Bharatiya Jana Sangh’s nationalist ideology; and attacked the Congress on issues of pseudo-secularism and appeasement, terrorism, pathetic plight of Kashmiri Hindus, Article 370, uniform civil code, infiltration of Bangladeshis, Shree Ram Janmabhoomi temple; and increased its tally to 182 seats in 1999 elections.

But during its 1999-2004 rule of the country, BJP forgot its nationalist ideology and agenda. It did not punish even the Pakistan-sponsored attack on Indian Parliament in December, 2001 since the then Prime Minister’s ‘fight to finish’ never started.

And though a really secular government cannot fund any religious pilgrimage, BJP increased the amount of Haj subsidy. Moreover, during the 2004 elections, the then Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee offered two lakh jobs of Urdu teachers and substantial grants to Madrassas.

BJP’s traditional supporters were shocked at the Congress-isation of BJP. Consequently, BJP was unseated from power in 2004 when it won 135 Lok Sabha seats as against 182 seats in 1999.

Subsequently, L.K. Advani’s remarks about M.A. Jinnah’s secularism and BJP’s deplorable dilution of its ideology reduced its Lok Sabha tally to 116 seats in 2009 elections despite UPA’s atrocious policies during 2004-2009.

BJP’s defeat in 2004 and 2009 Parliamentary elections was not the defeat of BJP’s nationalist ideology; it was the defeat of BJP’s forsaking of its nationalist ideology.

Way out

BJP’s embrace of pseudo-secularism and forsaking of its nationalist ideology have destroyed its once unique identity. To save the nation from ruin, BJP must re-assert its nationalist agenda; and take the following steps:

i. BJP must reject the fake secularists’ division of the nation into majority and minority. BJP must proclaim that if voted to power, it would implement the policy of genuine secularism which means justice for all and appeasement of none; and same rights and duties for all citizens.

Moreover, since actions speak louder than the words, BJP must dismantle “Minority Cell” in BJP, and Minority Commissions in BJP ruled states. Human Rights Commissions would safeguard every citizen’s rights.

ii. Since nationalism includes development, good governance and pro-people policies, BJP must oppose divisive, communal and appeasement policies being pursued by fake-secular political parties in the name of ‘secularism’.

iii. BJP must work for uniform civil code as stipulated in Article 44 of the Constitution. Besides, it must work for deletion of Article 370 to bring Jammu & Kashmir’s complete integration with the rest of India.

iv. Lacs of Kashmiri Hindus have been driven out of Kashmir and forced to live like refugees in their own country. BJP should work for their rehabilitation in Kashmir.

v. BJP should work for liberation of Hindu temples and shrines from government control so that Hindus enjoy the same religious rights as enjoyed by other communities.

vi. BJP must work for implementation of Supreme Court’s judgements dated July 12, 2005 and December 5, 2006 to deport crores of Bangladeshi infiltrators; and for curbing the continuing infiltration of Pak-Bangla nationals.

vii. BJP should work for discontinuing all Indo-Pak and Indo-Bangla road and rail journeys, cultural and sports relations, and peace talks till Pakistan and Bangladesh stop their terrorist and demographic invasion against India.

Since politics of appeasement and fake-secularism pursued by various political parties has crippled India and divided the nation into majority and minority, BJP must re-embrace its nationalist ideology and take the above-mentioned steps if it wants to save the nation from looming disaster.

वो सुबह अभी तो आयेगी – Modi’s Promise when elected as PM

The hearts of the people of Bhaarat desh is singing below song now when they have determined to vote for Narendra Modi.

वो सुबह अभी तो आयेगी (२)
इन काली सदियों के सर से अब रात का आंचल ढलकेगा
अब दुःख के बादल पिघलेंगे अब सुख का सागर छलकेगा
अब अम्बर झूम के नाचेगा अब धरती नगमे गायेगी
वो सुबह अभी तो आयेगी

जिस सुबह कि खातिर जुग जुग से हम सब मर मर कर जीते थे
जिस सुबह के अमृत कि बून्द में हम ज़हर के प्याले पीते थे
इन भूखे प्यासे रुहों पर अब तो करम फ़रमायेगी
वो सुबह अभी तो आयेगी

मानो कि अभी तेरे मेरे अरमानो कि किमत कुछ भि तो है
मिट्टि का भि है कुछ मोल और इन्सानो कि कीमत कुछ भि तो है
इन्सानो कि इज्जत अब झूठें सिक्कों में ना तोली जायेगी
वो सुबह अभी तो आयेगी

Aryan Invasion theory busted

From: Sudhir-Architect

All Indians have the same genes

It is established through genomic analyses that people in north India were no different from those in the south and that all shared the same genetic lineage. It also established that people of north and south were part of the same culture. former CCMB director Lalji Singh and two US researchers analyzed over 500,000 genetic markers across diverse groups, including the traditional “upper” /” lower” castes and tribal groups and proved that there was no difference between tribal populations and castes.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-01-01/special-report/30578749_1_genetic-mutation-disease-population

Aryan Invasion — History or Politics?
By Dr. N.S. Rajaram
Aryans: race or culture?

The evidence of science now points to two basic conclusions: first, there was no Aryan invasion, and second, the Rigvedic people were already established in India no later than 4000 BCE. How are we then to account for the continued presence of the Aryan invasion version of history in history books and encyclopedias even today?

http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/aryan-invasion-history.html
No foreign Genes or DNA entered India after 6000BC: Study [Myth Busted] ‏

A paper published on American Journal of Human Genetics exposes the famous lie that Europeans systematically planted into Indian brains: Aryan Invasion/ Migration theory. According to the research Dr Gyaneshwer Chaubey, Estonian Bio centre, Tartu, Estonia “We have proved that people all over India have common genetic traits and origin. All Indians have the same DNA structure. No foreign genes or DNA has entered the Indian mainstream in the last 60,000 years,”

Dr Chaubey had already proved in 2009 that Aryan migration is a false theory just made to divide Indians. He says “The decoding of human genome and other advances in this area help us in unraveling the ancestry in 60,000 years”

If we think straight, we do not need any genetically science to prove that Aryan invasion is a false theory. None of our Vedic scriptures gives direct information about this theory and also the Vedas can be still older than 5th century BC. India was eternally an Aryan nation, Aryan only means Noble. Even Ravana, who is an iconic figure for Dravidian parties, was a Brahmin.

http://www.newsofdelhi.com/society-religions/no-foreign-genes-or-dna-entered-india-after-60000-bc-study.