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Kerala HC: Religion does not propagate terrorism; fundamentalists have distorted religion

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 09:18:07 +0000

Image: Bar and Bench

“No religion propagates terrorism or hatred. But, unfortunately, some fanatics or religious fundamentalists have distorted the views of religion”

A division Bench of Kerala High Court made these observations while considering pleas of persons convicted of supporting and associating with ISIS. While the bench of Justices Alexander Thomas and Sophy Thomas, did not grant the bail, considering the nature of their offence to be very serious, these observations were included in the order with the intention to save an entire religion from being vilified for acts of terrorism committed by a few.

The applications were filed by accused no 1, 2 and 5 seeking suspension of sentence. They were convicted under sections 38 (membership of a terrorist organization) and 39 (support given to a terrorist organization) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for seven years and fine. The applicants (accused) were arrested in October 2017 and were neve granted bail until completion of trial. They were sentenced in July 2022 which means they had only 2 years of sentence left to be served (considering the period in remand).

They contended that the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt and they claimed that they have every chance to succeed in appeal and hence they pleaded that their sentence be suspended otherwise their appeal will become infructuous. As per NIA, the trial court based on legal evidence, found that the applicants, with the intention of joining ISIS, a proscribed terrorist organisation, tried to cross over to Syria to further its activities and there was sufficient evidence to conclude that they associated themselves with ISIS.

Speaking on terrorism, in general, the court opined,

“Terrorism is an evil affecting the life and liberty of people. It affects the growth of the nation in all respects. In fact, no religion propagates terrorism or hatred. But, unfortunately, some fanatics or religious fundamentalists have distorted the views of religion, for spreading messages of terrorism and hatred, without realising the amount of damage it is doing to the society as well as to the country as a whole.” (Para 17)

The court observed that the nature of the allegations against the applicants were serious. The court also went through the evidence on the basis of which conviction was applied and found that there was a clear finding as to the conspiracy of the applicants and their intention to perform Hijra to Syria for indulging in Jihad. “No patent infirmity is there in the order of conviction which would render it prima facie erroneous… Prima facie nothing is there, cogent enough to raise substantial doubts regarding the validity of the conviction” (para 23), the court held.

The court, while considering their plea that 80% of their sentence has been served and their appeals if not heard within 2years will become infructuous held that normally section 436A of CrPC can be applied. However, evidence that points towards the applicants accepting the call of ISIS and their intention to perform Hijra to Syria to indulge in Jihad. The court said that the applicants acted against the security and integrity of the nation and their applications must be considered with all seriousness and not casually.

“So, even if the applicants/appellants have undergone major portion of the sentence imposed on them, it is not safe to release them on bail, as we do not know whether they still entertain the idea of performing Hijra to Syria for indulging in violent jihad.” (Para 27)

Thus, the court held that even though they have undergone a major portion of their sentence, it was not inclined to suspend their sentence and release them on bail. The court clarified that the observations were limited to these applications and shall not have an impact on the appeals proceedings.

The complete order may be read here:

Adivasi activist Hidme Markam walks out of jail 22 months after being branded a “terrorist”

More 90k undertrials in UP prisons with 24% SCs, 5% ST and 46% OBC: MHA

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“There is no room for religious fundamentalism among us”

Wed, 10 Oct 2018 11:03:57 +0000

The 2018 Justice Sunanda Bhandare Memorial Lecture

When Murlidharji asked me to deliver this lecture in his wife’s memory, I was intimidated by the long list of eminent speakers before me. But I accepted because these lectures are in memory of a woman who made a distinguished mark in a man’s world. We live in a conservative medieval-minded patriarchy. The majority of women in this country are not allowed to make decisions that intimately concern them like marriage and giving birth. The majority do not own or handle money, even when they themselves are earning it. They don’t own their bodies and they are not in control of their lives. The abuses they may suffer in their homes remain secret and unreported, for fear of the consequences if they speak out, or social stigma, or fear of the police.

Many women who are privileged, and in a position to strike out, don’t do so. They accept the limitations imposed on them. They are content to remain protected by privilege in return for recognizing that it’s a man’s world. Sunanda Bhandare accepted no limitations, and was supported by a family that took pride in her ambition and her achievements. She achieved the heights in her chosen profession – which, incidentally, is a profession that is much in need of women – and she would have gone on to greater distinction if illness had not tragically cut short her life. I have been struck by two statements of hers. One defines her position on the meaning of a judge’s role in a developing society, and the other statement is her view on the very meaning of civilization. On what a judge’s role should be she said: “In developing societies, judges can be the sentinels of progress.” This interpretation of justice, and of judges as guardians of progress, is crucial to any society but more specially to a developing society. Laws can light the way ahead to take a country forward for human betterment, but they will remain pieces of paper unless they are upheld in judgements, and unless judges stand guard over them. On the meaning of civilization this is what she said: “A woman’s place in society marks the level of civilization.” To put it differently, a society is only as civilized as the way it treats its women. No society has the right to call itself civilized unless its women citizens have the same rights and freedoms as men have. So let me begin by saluting the woman for whom justice in general, and gender justice in particular, was crucial for progress, and whose memory we are honouring today.

According to her view of what civilization means, India in 2018 is a country that does not deserve to be called civilized. The enlightened vision of our founding fathers who established gender equality at independence – overturning centuries of injustice by establishing equality in law – and who aspired to give women their equal and dignified place in society at long last – that vision has degenerated into an environment where India is now seen as the world’s most dangerous country for women. We do not need foreign observers to tell us this. It is a fact that Indian women and even little girls are not safe, in the home, on the street, or in the workplace. Gender injustice is much too weak a phrase to apply to this shameful state of affairs. Added to the hangover of persisting age-old injustices, and crimes against women, there is now a lawless climate of violence, which of course targets men, as well as women and children, and is emboldened by a fundamentalist mindset that is the subject of my talk. But although this situation endangers all citizens, women are its special targets and always its worst sufferers. It has made life specially dangerous for them if we look at the rising graph of gang rapes. Rape is central to the mob violence we see today. It makes brutal use of women’s bodies to humiliate and assert its power over an entire community.

This prevailing climate is different from anything we have seen in India before. It is not merely criminal, or ‘communal’, or ‘divisive’. It is a result of, and it has the authority of, a fundamentalist mindset given free rein by a political ideology. But before I get on to fundamentalism, let me explain what true believers mean by religion. And I am speaking as a true believer.

Religion is a relationship between a human being and God. All the men and women of every nationality and every religion whom we revere as saints, have held this view. A whole Bhakti movement crossing religious frontiers has held this view. It is human beings who are in need of religion. A mountain does not have a religion. A tree does not have a religion. A block of land has no religion. Therefore there is a nonsensical fallacy about giving land masses a religious identity, and calling them a Muslim country, or a Hindu country, or a Jewish country. The nation state has no role to play in the intensely personal relationship between an individual and God. This personal view of religion is thrown aside by fundamentalism. For the fundamentalist, the state – which is a political entity – rules over religion.

Added to the fallacy of a nation giving itself a religion, is the fact that religion everywhere has been boiled down into laws and rules made by men. The Manusmriti which is considered a dharmashastra, dates from around 200 BC, and is believed to have been written by Brahmin males over a period of time. It leaves us in no doubt about its upper caste masculine authorship. Central to the laws it lays down about how a society should be run is the inferior position it gives to women, defining a woman’s role as subservient to her husband, and her only duty being to serve and please him. One translation defines a ‘good’ woman in these words: ‘Though he may be bereft of virtue, given to lust, and totally devoid of good qualities, a good woman should always worship her husband like a god.’ Offensive as this sounds to our contemporary ears, doesn’t this attitude still survive, and even flourish, in various degrees in our culture today? Our male-inspired cultural practices have come out of this sexist frame of mind. Has there ever been any cultural practice more inhuman and barbaric than sati? No husband was ever burned alive on his wife’s dead body. This duty was reserved for wives. And as far as other punishments are concerned, we have never heard of a man being stoned to death for adultery. And of course female infanticide and foetal killing have been common and they still go on. The heavy hand of male dominance and male superiority is ingrained and embedded as a divine right in the mindset that has been imposed upon our people, making women inferior beings according to the laws laid down by men. And the laws which this authority lays down for Dalits in the caste system must be as offensive and obnoxious, since Ambedkar and E.V. Ramasamy ‘Periyar’ both publicly burned the Manusmriti in the 1920’s.

I will now come to what women are up against today, in the background of this ingrained mindset, which now has the backing of religious fundamentalism.

There is no greater danger to the meaning of religion than when it is made use of as a weapon of war. When it takes this turn and becomes militant, it loses the right to be called religion. It becomes political policy for national reasons. In this garb it has been the most divisive and destructive force in history. This happened in Europe in the sixteenth century’s religious wars – Catholic against Protestant – based on an intolerance of religious differences – but an intolerance that had more to do with an assertion of political power and pressure than with religion. And this is the mindset that is at work in India today, which rejects religious differences and calls for a single national religion. Again, the rising graph of rapes shows us the way this demand is affecting Indian women.

Rape is nothing new. It happens in the home, within what is known as the sanctity of marriage. And stories of mass rapes in shelter homes have come to us. All this in peacetime, and it has always been a weapon of war. But what we are seeing today is a valorization of rape, and a justification of it, as of the mass rapes by Pakistan’s armies when they invaded East Bengal during the war for Bangladesh, or in the atrocities during the Partition. And now we are looking at the same phenomenon here, of rape and murder of a particular community, the intention being to alter the population figures, in this case by cutting down the Muslim population figures. We are looking at religious fundamentalism in its modern meaning, assisted in places by the use of modern technology. A beginning was made with the massacre of mainly Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, and now we keep hearing of assaults and assassinations.

These assaults have several features in common: They are, without exception, well organized. They are often committed by gangs. They do not spare children, or infants, or unborn babies. And when possible, the families of victims are also killed. They are also, without exception, accompanied by prolonged and horrific torture. These have been described – in fact we have seen some attacks on men on TV – and otherwise they have been described by some of the women who have gone through them and survived, to investigators who have taken up their cases, and they are so horrifying that I will spare you the details by not reading out the women’s testimonies that have come to light. So there is a pattern to these events. I should add that this inhumanity has long targeted Dalits and tribals – as the writers Mahashweta Devi, and Kiran Nagarkar, and others, have shown us so vividly in their unforgettable fiction. Hindus who will not support such acts or such an ideology, have also been targeted, and there are instances of non-Muslim Indians who, at risk to themselves, have tried to protect their Muslim neighbours.

Yet another fact that is common to the attacks on Muslim men and women by those who have been indoctrinated in fundamentalism is that they have not been regarded as crimes, if we look at the official, and in general, the public silence about them, and at what happens when justice is sought by victims or their families in these cases. Typically there has been delay, or no action, by the police in acknowledging that they took place, and in arresting the criminals who have been named by their victims. In some cases, victims have been threatened with punishment if they name names, and there are even cases of the families of murdered victims being held responsible for the crimes committed upon them or against them. The police have also suppressed or tampered with evidence, and in some cases the indifference of witnesses in the villages and towns where mob violence took place have made convictions difficult or impossible. Then, standing out from the general official silence, there has been the very vocal support of well-known legislators for these crimes.

I have said these are features that are common to the crimes committed by the fundamentalist mindset, and I will enumerate these from one case, now well known, of Bilkis Bano, because it has all these features. It attracted public attention because of the extraordinary persistence and courage of this young survivor of incredible brutality. As the only survivor and eye witness of a massacre that took place, she went on fighting for justice.

On May 3rd, 2002, in a post-Godhra riot-hit area of Ahmedabad, Bilkis Bano and her family – seventeen of them – were in a truck, trying, like thousands of Hindu and Muslim families, to escape to a safer place, when a mob attacked the truck. Bilkis was nineteen years old. She had a two-year-old daughter, and she herself was five months pregnant. Her daughter was smashed to death on a rock. The female members of her family were gang-raped and killed. Altogether fourteen of her family were murdered. Bilkis herself was stripped and gang-raped by twelve men and left to die. She recovered consciousness hours later and saw her family’s dead bodies lying around her. She covered herself with what clothes she could find and went looking desperately for help and shelter. She found shelter with a tribal family who were fearful for themselves but they took her in. Later, when she saw a police van she begged for protection and was taken to a police station. There she lodged a complaint and gave the names of her rapists. The police refused to accept the names and told her that if she spoke out she would be taken to a government hospital and given a poisonous injection. They then falsified her evidence and made her put her thumb print on it. Her complaint was dismissed and her case was closed for want of evidence. Later she went to the National Human Rights Commission for help and they backed her petition in the Supreme Court. The court ordered a CBI enquiry, shifted the trial of her case from Gujarat to Mumbai, and the bodies of her family members were exhumed and examined. Finally, fourteen years after the slaughter, thirteen of the twenty men she had accused – including the police who had falsified her evidence and the two doctors who had suppressed evidence in the post mortems – were found guilty and eleven of them were given life sentences for rape and murder. The twelfth rapist had died. The verdict was delivered on May 4, 2017. Vrinda Grover, human rights activist and senior advocate at the Supreme Court, has pointed out that the conviction of the policemen and doctors who were found guilty showed, and I quote, that “there was institutional state complicity in sexual violence.” Bilkis meanwhile had been under threat of attack. She had had to keep changing her place of residence for her own safety, but she had refused to give up her search for justice.

Fanaticism of this selective kind, targeting a particular community has not been confined to India. It took place during the civil war in Yugoslavia in the 1990’s, in a highly organized manner. Muslim women from Bosnia, Albania, and Croatia were kept confined in camps where Christian Serbs raped them. This selectivity, here as in Yugoslavia or elsewhere, has a specific purpose. It is aimed at ethnic cleansing, and is part of a policy to alter population figures by denying a particular community its right to exist. The persecution of the Rohingyas is also a case in point, along with the rape of Rohingya women that has been going on in Myanmar.

All these examples come under the label of crimes against humanity. The term was first used in the Nuremberg trials after World War Two and it was defined as follows: ‘a deliberate act, typically as part of a systematic campaign that causes human suffering or death on a large scale.’ The International Criminal Court says these crimes against humanity include: murder, torture, sexual violence, persecution against a group, and other acts causing injury to body, or to mental or physical health. They can be committed by non-state groups, or paramilitary forces, or individuals, in peacetime or wartime, either as part of government policy, or condoned by a government. It is important that such crimes have been recognized and labelled by international law, since many governments around the world have denied that any such thing has happened in their countries. One of the cases which our own government and our public have not acknowledged, or taken steps to provide relief or justice to the sufferers, is the mob attack on Christians ten years ago in Kandhamal that killed more than a hundred Christians, destroyed their homes, schools, churches, and made thousands of them homeless. Similarly, the United States has never acknowledged the outbreak of lynchings of black Americans in the American South in the early part of the 20th century.

What makes people behave in this way? What makes such crimes possible? How can they be committed on this scale, and repeatedly, and then be brushed aside, or forgotten, or treated as justifiable? This is an interesting question- political and psychological – for us to think about in view of what is happening here. A philosophy professor at Yale University, Dr. Jason Stanley, has made a study of why and how such a situation of intolerance and Right wing extremism has arisen in different countries across the world and is making itself felt in many countries today. He has written about it in a book called How Propaganda Works, and a second book that is about to be published called How Fascism Works. He says that the ground is first prepared so that a mood can be created that makes hatred and violence acceptable to society. And there is a standard formula by which this is accomplished, and it is a formula that is common to all such breakdowns of democracy wherever they have occurred and are now occurring. The method is as follows:

The values of liberty and equality have to be replaced by authority and hierarchy – hierarchy which is ethnic, or religious, or gender-based. The dominant group, ie. the majority community, is made to feel it is being victimized by minority groups. This builds up a mood of hysteria against minorities, and in some cases against socialism and communism. In this atmosphere the nation’s leader and the military are glorified, and dissenters are treated harshly.
The truth has to be destroyed and this is done by spreading a fear of so-called outsiders and so-called enemies of the state. And this is done by appealing to the emotions and cutting out all rational debate. Conspiracy theories are manufactured and an irrational fear is let loose. When this happens there is a complete breakdown of the truth. A myth has taken its place.

This is how Professor Stanley describes the myth that replaces the truth : “The myth of a glorious bygone era, where the nation was supposedly ethnically or religiously pure, and rural patriarchal values reigned supreme…Outgroups are represented as threats to the dominant culture (and) its men are cast as criminals or sexual predators…” This myth places one ethnic group over others, men are placed over women, and all opposition is called anti-national. On this prepared ground the mood that has been built up in society sanctions all kinds of behavior that would not be acceptable otherwise. And obviously there is no place for liberty, equality, or democracy, or the give-and-take of democratic politics, in this situation. In a chilling conclusion he says: “History shows that such propaganda licenses extreme brutality.” One recent example, about a month ago comes from Germany where a Syrian migrant was attacked by three men in a park and whipped with an iron chain. And Germany has seen the biggest riot against ‘outsiders’ in 26 years where the rioters have given the Hitler salute and hurled missiles. Hitler-worship now celebrates the most terrible era in German history. What should deeply disturb us is how accurately Professor Stanley’s analysis explains what is happening here.

At a time when human rights are in such poor shape in India, let me acknowledge the debt we owe to the contribution of an Indian woman, Hansa Mehta, to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There was no such concept as human rights until the end of the Second World War and for the non-Western world, with large chunks of it under colonial rule, there was no question of any rights at all. It was because of the atrocities committed during the Second World War, and during the period leading up to it, that the concept was finally addressed. Hansa Mehta had been one of the fifteen women who had helped to shape the Indian Constitution, and it was her absolute insistence on sexual equality that influenced the language of our Constitution. She had been a trail-blazer in the field of women’s rights in India and had been part of a Committee to draft the Hindu Code Bill, which as we know was a major reform after independence, and had a major impact on women’s lives. As a delegate to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 1947-48, it was Hansa Mehta who changed the phrase “All men are born free and equal” to “All human beings are born free and equal”. It took a woman to realize that this change of wording was crucial if whole societies were to be shaken out of masculine dominance. And to go further back, it is the determined struggle of Indian women reformers fighting for equality since the nineteenth century onward – not just for women’s rights, but against the cruelties and injustices of caste – that has brought us to where we stand today. And, of course, the fight is far from over. Under religious fundamentalism the minorities are feeling hunted. The poor and helpless among them, some of whom have been driven out of their villages and homes and jobs, live in terror. And India is no longer safe for its women.

I have spoken as a Hindu and I am one of millions of Indians who practise their different religions. At independence our founding fathers had the wisdom to respect this diversity, and to declare India secular and democratic – democracy to guarantee equal citizenship with equal rights, and secularism to provide the space and fresh air for the practise of all religions and different ways of life and thought. No other nation in the world gave its people democracy before development, or its women the right to vote at the very start of nationhood. And no other country has achieved the multi-cultural miracle that is the meaning of Indian civilization. There is no room for religious fundamentalism among us. It is an insult to religion, a danger to all who disagree with it, and a frontal attack on the Constitution.

This is the text of the 25th Justice Sunanda Bhandare Memorial Lecture delivered by Nayantara Sahgal at the India International Centre on 9th October 2018.

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‘Hefazat’ protest across Bangladesh: Remove statue of ‘un-Islamic’ Lady Justice from SC premises or else

Sat, 25 Feb 2017 05:45:46 +0000

“Remove the Greek idol at once from the Supreme Court premises. Please douse the smouldering fire in the hearts of the Muslims. Otherwise, the fire will soon catch you"

Hefazat-e-Islam activists take part in a protest demanding removal of Greek sculpture from the Supreme Court premises in port city Chittagong on February 24, 2017 Photo: Rabin Chowdhury/Dhaka Tribune

Hundreds of supporters of hardliner Hefazat-e-Islam staged protests on Friday in Dhaka, Chittagong and Narayanganj, calling for the statue of a Greek goddess installed at the Supreme Court to be destroyed or removed.

This is a part of their ongoing protest demanding the removal of the Lady Justice statue from the Supreme Court premises.

Earlier on February 14, they had submitted memorandums to the prime minister and the chief justice. They stated the “idol” was anti-Islamic and threatened to stage demonstrations and bring out processions if their demand went unheeded.

Hefazat-e-Islam activists in a mass procession in Narayanganj city demanding the removal of the Greek statue from the Supreme Court premises on February 24, 2017 Photo: Dhaka Tribune

Court officials, however, defended the statue as “a symbol of justice.” The image of Greek goddess Themis, depicted with her eyes shielded and holding the scales of justice, represents fairness, law and custom across the world.

The Dhaka procession began from Baitul Mukarram National Mosque.

Hundreds of Hefazat supporters chanted slogans and wielded placards with phrases such as “Demolish the statue on the court premises and replace it with the Qur’an,” states a report from AFP.

“If you do not remove this idol, we will be forced to march to the Supreme Court and remove it ourselves.”

Hefazat’s Central Committee Joint Secretary General Junaid Al Habib said the “idol” had to be removed by any means.

In a country with a 92% Muslim population, people would not tolerate any “idol” in the country’s apex court premises, Habib added.

Conservative Bangladesh has seen increasing tension between hardliners and secularists in recent years: A spate of killings of atheist bloggers, religious minorities and foreigners combined with a series of changes in school textbooks, which are overwhelmingly secular, to reflect Muslim traditions.

According to sources, several leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, a BNP ally which has been absent from recent street demonstrations, and members of its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir are supportive of the recent radical Islamist moves to remove the Supreme Court statue of Lady Justice, avenge the persecution of Rohingya Muslims and make changes in school textbooks.

“The demands brought up by the Islamist parties are irrational and baseless. There is no reason to think that the sculpture will be removed just because someone demanded that it be so”: Attorney General Mahbubey Alam

Sources also said all paper materials and information for these movements are supplied by Jamaat-Shibir to the other parties, including Hefazat.

Security has been increased in the area around Baitul Mukarram, according to local police official Rafiqul Islam.

He added that at least 1,000 people had joined the rally there and a similar rally had also been held at Chittagong.

‘You too will burn’

Chittagong unit of Hefazat organised their rally at the Anderkillah Shahi Mosque premises.

Hefazat Joint Secretary General Mainuddin Ruhi threatened: “Remove the Greek idol at once from the Supreme Court premises. Please douse the smouldering fire in the hearts of the Muslims. Otherwise, the fire will soon catch you.

“Hefazat believes in systemic movement. We will be compelled to hold another rally at Shapla Chattar if our demand is unheeded.”

Azizul Haque Islamabadi, Hefazat’s organising secretary, said the premier was unaware that the “idol” had been installed on the Supreme Court premises.

“The idol was installed on the advice of a handful of atheists only to put the government in an awkward position,” he said.

He also reminded his audience of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s pledge that the country would run as per the Medina Charter and that installing an “idol” was a direct contradiction of the Medina Charter.

When contacted, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Nayeb-e-Amir Nur Hossain Kashemi told the Dhaka Tribune that they would launch a tougher movement against the government if their demand was not met.

Narayanganj Hefazat to take action

The Narayanganj unit of Hefazat also held a mass rally in front of the city’s DIT Jame Mosque after Jumma prayers on Friday.

At their programme, they threatened that if their demands went unmet, they would rally their forces and go destroy the Lady Justice statue.

Hefazat’s Narayanganj district unit President Mawlana Abdul Awwal said: “You can establish however many idols at the different temples in Bangladesh, but we will not tolerate the presence of an idol in front of the highest court in the country.”

“The protest to remove this idol from the Supreme Court begins here. It begins today, from Narayanganj,” he exclaimed, adding: “If you do not remove this idol, we will be forced to march to the Supreme Court and remove it ourselves.”

Mawlana Abdul Quadir, secretary of Narayanganj unit of Hefazat, spoke at the rally along with Hefazat leaders Ferdausur Rahman, Mufti Harunur Rashid, Ismail Siraji and Anis Ansari.

On Friday, Islami Andolan Bangladesh Chief Rezaul Karim told the Dhaka Tribune that if the sculpture was not removed, the public would “create a river of blood” in protest.

Also Read- AQIS supports Hefazat on SC statue removal

No justice for Lady Justice

Hefazat is hardly the only group to oppose the statue of Lady Justice on the Supreme Court premises.

Other Islamist parties and groups opposing the installation of the statue are Awami Olama League, Bangladesh Khelafat Majlish, Islami Andolon Bangladesh and Jamaat-Shibir.

Last year, divided Dhaka Hefazat Committee Convener Nur Hossain Kashemi, Islami Oikya Jote (IOJ) leader Abul Hasnat Amini and IOJ Secretary General and Hefazat Central Joint Secretary General Mufti Faizullah met and began working together to unite all Islamist groups.

Recently, Ansar al-Islam, the Bangladesh affiliate of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), has also extended support for the ongoing movement of radical Islamists who demand that the “idol” of Lady Justice be removed from the Supreme Court premises.

Yet even with a similar agenda, not all of these radical Islamist groups can see eye to eye.

An al-Qaeda member, Mohammad bin Maslama, accused Hefazat Secretary General Junaid Babunagari of double standards, saying: “You are playing with Islam. Islam is not so insignificant that you will need to submit a memorandum or application to the kufr [government].

“You have cheated the people by signing the fatwa against the mujahids of Islam. You are trying to please the government and Islam at the same time.”

The senior member, however, said they would continue to support Hefazat, disregarding differences, as long as the radical platform was working to continue the spread of Islam.

The flip side reactions

Earlier, civil society members, lawyers and government officials dismissed the demands for the removal of a sculpture installed on the Supreme Court premises, calling it “irrational” and “baseless.”

Former law minister Barrister Shafique Ahmed told the Dhaka Tribune that the sculpture was nothing but the symbol of unbiased conscience of justice, honoured by the countries all over the world, including Islamic countries like Iran.

Khushi Kabir, head of rights organisation Nijera Kori, told the Dhaka Tribune: “There are many sculptures in our country which carry the significance of our identity, history and tradition. They have no authority to demand the destruction of these historical and aesthetic sculptures.”

She feared that if this demand was fulfilled, these groups would raise questions about other sculptures such as Oporajeyo Bangla, Raju Bhashkorjo, or Amar Ekushey.

“The demolition of the Lalon sculpture from in front of Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport [in 2008] encouraged the religious zealots to make such demands,” she added.

Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee demanded action against the people who threatened the highest court and judiciary system and stated in a statement: “Calling this sculpture an idol is politically motivated.”

The Islamist groups’ demands came at a time when the apex court issued two major verdicts – a banning of the use of scales as an electoral symbol and the erasing of the names of 20 convicted war criminals and anti-liberation people from roads and educational institutions across the country.

Republished with permission from Dhaka Tribune.

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Resurgent Sikh Fundamentalism in the UK: Time to act?

Thu, 20 Oct 2016 07:55:51 +0000

Growing confidence among resurgent Sikh fundamentalist networks in the UK was evident in recent protests against inter-faith marriage. A desire to control Sikh women’s relationship choices is a key focal point for their mobilisation.

Masked men disrupt an inter-faith marriage at Leamington and Warwick gurdwara, UK. Image: Independent.

On Sunday 11th September 2016, as world attention focused on the 15th anniversary of Islamist attacks on the Twin Towers, local press attention momentarily shifted to the arrest of 55 members of Sikh Youth UK at the Leamington and Warwick gurdwara (place of worship for Sikhs). The group claimed that this was a ‘peaceful protest’ against the scheduled Anand Karaj (Sikh wedding ceremony) between a Sikh bride and non-Sikh groom.

They also claimed that they are not opposed to interfaith marriage per se – stating that Sikh and non-Sikh couples can have a civil marriage and also receive a gurdwara blessing – but that the Rehat Maryada, a code of conduct developed in the 1930s, reserves the Anand Karaj for Sikhs exclusively. This prohibition was re-iterated in an August 2015 agreement reached by 300 Sikh organisations.

There are problems with these claims. The protest was clearly intended to intimidate. Protestors turned up with heads and faces covered and some were carrying kirpans. Although they claimed that kirpans are ceremonial daggers and that these had been misrepresented by the media as ‘blades’ and ‘weapons’, religious references were used to obfuscate the blindingly obvious. It’s true that kirpans are usually only carried by a small minority of baptised Sikhs but there is also a history in the UK of kirpans, and Sikh martial arts weapons, being used during violent in-fighting within gurdwaras and especially by Sikh fundamentalist factions. Moreover, this particular incident followed other aggressive interventions at gurdwaras in Southall, Birmingham, Coventryand Swindon.

As with these other episodes, the protestors filmed the incident and circulated the film footage in a move to publicly shame families already pushing against deeply conservative proscriptions. The film footage shows protestors referring to interfaith marriage (not just the Anand Karaj) as ‘messed up’, stating that ‘Leamington is finished when we’ve got elders saying it’s alright to marry white people, black people’. Jagraj Singh has been one of the main spokespeople defending the protests. One need look no further than the youtube videos ofBasics of Sikhi to see him opposing interfaith relationships. In one such clip, he states ‘relationships or dating are not part of Sikhi, marriage is part of Sikhi’. Relationships outside the conjugal union are presented as uncontrolled lust and marriage is clearly seen as something that only takes place between two Sikhs.

The Rehat is highly gendered and presents a problem for minority Sikhs who do not subscribe to the Khalsa version of the religion. The section on marriage states ‘a Sikh’s daughter must be married to a Sikh’ and tells Sikh women to treat their (Sikh) husbands with ‘deferential solicitude’. Fortunately, more liberal Sikhs have spoken out about the hypocrisy of protestors who selectively focus on one section of a man made code of conduct that has itself been amended three times while turning a blind eye to serious issues like familial sexual abuse. Herpreet Kaur Grewal noted that the focus is always on Sikh girls marrying out while there is relative silence and inaction on caste discrimination and female foeticide. Throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, the prohibition on mixed relationships manifested itself in regular reprisals between Sikh and Muslim gangs for targeting ‘their’ women. The question is, why has this resurfaced now? Why has a rule invented in the 1930s gained renewed significance in the last few years? The Leamington incident has given rise to some intense theological debates but one needs to focus, instead, on the political context of these events to comprehend their dynamics.

Resurgent Sikh fundamentalist forces in the UK

In the past decade, but particularly since the 2012 I Pledge Orange campaign for a stay of execution of Balwant Singh Rajoana (one of four Sikh fundamentalist activists responsible for the suicide bomb that in 1995 killed the Chief Minister of Punjab and 17 other people) there has been an exponential rise in the numbers and confidence of Sikh fundamentalist forces in the UK. This growing momentum is particularly visible at the annual commemoration in London of Operation Bluestar, the name given to the Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi’s assault on the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar in June 1984.

Importantly, a number of Sikh fundamentalist activists had fled to the US, Canada and Europe in anticipation of Indira Gandhi’s crackdown on Sikh militancy. Two organisations behind the annual June 1984 commemoration events – Dal Khalsa and Sikh Federation UK – are the main Sikh fundamentalist organisations in England. The Dal Khalsa is a right wing political party that emerged as a cover for Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale’s electoral ambitions so that he could present himself as an orthodox protector of the religion. The group have been implicated in the murder of members of minority sects and its primary objective is to establish a Sikh theocratic state otherwise known as Khalistan.

Sikhs rally in Trafalgar Square, 2011, to mark the attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984. Image: BBC

The Sikh Federation UK are a large Sikh political party (conventions numbering 10,000 delegates) but it’s leadership are almost entirely formermembers of the organisation International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF). ISYF was established by Bhindranwale’s nephew Jasbir Singh Rode and others living in Walsall in order to mobilise international support for secession from India. ISYF was banned in Britain in 2001 under anti-terror laws because its members had been responsible for assassinations, bombings and kidnappings. Along with the Babbar Khalsa International, they were implicated in the 1985 bombing of the Air India flight 182 from London to Montreal which killed 329 people and also the attempted bombing of the Air India flight 301. But key members of the ISYF founded the Sikh Federation UK. The ISYF and the Sikh Federation UK have the same objectives but through their seemingly ‘reasonable’ and ‘civilised’ lobbying tactics, Sikh Federation have successfully garnered support among key politicians leading to their success in lifting the UK’s ban on ISYF.

The annual commemoration in London of Operation Bluestar has become a space where many of the nodes in the constellation of Sikh fundamentalist networks in the UK become highly visible. Sikh organisations that otherwise pass as moderate welfare providers or civil rights groups reveal their ideological leanings at these events. Moreover, the organisers are actively involved in reconstructing collective memory as the terror instilled by Bhindranwale and his men is overlooked or forgotten and Sikh fundamentalist claims are sanitised. Every major political party now sends an MP to address the rally in Trafalgar Square. These demonstrations have grown from a hundred or so fairly marginal student groups, to tens of thousands of participants of varied ages from around the country. The demand for Khalistan and the pressure to live by the rules of a very narrow version of Sikhism have been intensely invigorated. Sikh fundamentalism now has many foot soldiers who have become a major thorn in the side of gurdwara committees up and down the country, organising talks at gurdwaras and bussing people in to impose their world view.

Policing Sikh mores: women in the firing line

Within the last couple of years, Sikh fundamentalists discovered the political mileage of public policy attention to child sexual exploitation. Following a series of headline cases in which networks of predominantly Pakistani men were convicted of sexually exploiting white British girls, Sikh fundamentalists claimed that girls from their communities had also been targeted by Muslim men. In September 2013, the BBC’s Inside Out documentary series publicly applauded the ‘services’ of Mohan Singh of the Sikh Awareness Society(SAS). Twitter activity after the Inside Out documentary was very telling – while outraged Sikh women said they would never trust Mohan Singh and his men to assist them with any difficulties, Sikh men felt vindicated by a programme that validated their own communal anxieties.

In the last three or four years, Mohan Singh has become something of a celebrity and a regular speaker at gurdwaras and Sikh student societies up and down the country, whipping up anxieties about women’s relationships and the activities of young people. At one of his talks at a gurdwara in east London, which I attended with a friend, there was deafening silence as he told a packed audience – men, women, young people and small children – that their daughters and sisters were being raped by Muslim men. A series of pictures of Asian men convicted of sexual offences against children were referred to as a ‘long list of Muslim perpetrators’. These images ran seamlessly into paintings of Moghul warriors beheading and suffocating Sikh leaders during the 1500s in order to make the argument that Muslims represent an historical threat to the ‘Sikh nation’ or ‘Qaum’. Flagging a crisis among Skihs, Mohan Singh admonished the liberalism of Sikh parents with respect to alcohol consumption and allowing their children to choose their own partners. No mention was made of the fact that violence and abuse is still far more likely to take place within the home, nor were there words of condemnation for familial sexual abuse perpetrated by Sikhs themselves.

It is no coincidence that inter-faith marriages have become a growing concern during the same period. Nor that the Birmingham based Sikh Awareness Society has grown in popularity, as has the Wolverhampton based Sikh Federation UK. Young men from the Midlands are bussed into areas around the country to stop inter faith marriages from taking place. Indeed Sikh Youth UK, the group claiming responsibility for the incident on 11th September, is also speaking at gurdwaras and Sikh student societies. Their topic of choice is, unsurprisingly, sexual exploitation and proscriptions on drug and alcohol consumption. Mohan Singh called for Sikhs to establish a national network to ‘protect’ their women and children – Sikh Youth UK are just one of a number of groups that appear to have heeded that call.

In 2014, Mohan Sigh’s growing popularity and his tour of the UK’s gurdwarastranslated into a new section of a draft Sikh Manifesto- entitled ‘action against perpetrators of grooming and forced conversions’- by the Sikh Federation UK, Sikh Council and Sikh Network. The document was used to lobby MPs in the run up to the 2015 General Election to meet specific ‘Sikh demands’. The document reveals skills among Sikh fundamentalists for working through the spaces of governance and power. The Manifesto was endorsed by all the main political parties, an irony indeed for the Sikh Labour councillors in Leamington Spa who are currently under attack by the same Sikh fundamentalist forces.

Both the Dal Khalsa and Sikh Federation UK were quick to defend the Sikh Youth UK’s protest at Leamington and Warwick gurdwara. While the Dal Khalsa picketed the police station where 55 protestors were held, the Sikh Federation were quick to go on the media offensive. They issued a press release and gained sympathetic press coverage from the tabloids. While claiming to represent ‘the Sikh community’, SFUK defended ‘the justifiable objection’ of Sikhs to interfaith marriage, they applied pressure on the police to apologise for their ‘over reaction’, and demanded a ‘more sensitive’ response to future protests. Moreover, by stating they would raise media coverage of this issue at a government meeting on hate crime they sought to equate opposition to fundamentalist mobilisations and conservative codes of conduct with hate crime! The press release claims that ‘virtually all gurdwaras’ have been implementing an agreement reached in August 2015 but they fail to mention that this agreement was meant to be voluntary but is, in fact, being imposed through force; this so called ‘agreement’ came about after an assault on an inter faith marriage in Southall in August 2015 and after pressure on thatgurdwara to heed the most right wing Sikh voices. Surrounded by the rising tide of fundamentalism, Leamington and Warwick gurdwara committee’s defiance on inter-faith marriage must be applauded and supported. It is a much needed breath of fresh air.

(This article was first published on OpenDemocracy.net.)

Also read: Proud to be 'anti-national': Gurpreet Singh

The post Resurgent Sikh Fundamentalism in the UK: Time to act? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Mob within Indian Democracy

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 18:30:00 +0000

When the editors of Communalism Combat asked us to write for the re-launch of their portal, we unhesitatingly said yes, since we were probably among the first few to contribute to the very early editions of this brave venture which has been in the vanguard of the struggle against deepening communalism in India. The task became a particularly challenging enterprise and after several false starts, we raced to meet another deadline.

This is perhaps because we are attempting to do the impossible: trying to capture in the space of an article a much larger canvas. At one level we have been overtaken by earth shattering global events that are dictating predictable reactions post Paris. The global ‘war on terror’ is back with a fury which is both primitive and dangerous as it ignores the complex and layered, reality and history, of the Wests’ engagement with countries of the Middle East.

Coming closer home, within this broader canvas, we are trying to situate and analyse the equally complex picture of events and trends in our own country – the political upheavals, the cultural and ideological battles; and above all the sense of [deliberately manufactured?] growing intolerance. In all this atmosphere of gloom, if there is one event which restores one’s faith in the intrinsic wisdom, good sense and secular roots of our people, it has been the election results from Bihar where people have delivered a resounding verdict of NO to communal politics.

We note the symbiotic relationship between the global, the regional and the national scenarios. The seeming ease with which corporate, military, economic and political interests are able to cynically exploit race, ethnicities, linguistic and religious differences into violence of such a scale, it would certainly have Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Mandela turning in their graves. It is as if there is an unwritten sanction for violent responses, enhanced a hundred times because of the fearsome way in which such an extent of modern science, technology and finance has been converted into a terrifying dance of death and destruction. An eye for an eye indeed – and we are all rapidly turning blind.

Unfortunately the media is playing its own powerful and not necessarily or always ethical or constructive role in all of this. Today – be it print, electronic and especially the very recent phenomena of social media – it is compulsively caught up in a race to be the first to bring the sound bytes, the shocking, heartbreaking and provocative visuals, i.e. in short BREAKING NEWS. Here too, the march of technology has been a double edged weapon which we must use with care and caution. But given the varying compulsions at play, there is lesser time for dialogue, thought or reflection about the consequences of those actions.

The Role of Watchdogs in Civil Society
So what is the significance of an agency like Communalism Combat which completes 22 years of existence despite all odds about which enough has been said and written. Interestingly there is a shared history and synergy between CC and our move from a typical urban, services environment into a totally unfamiliar and tough rural reality – completing 22 years this September.

For many of us, coming from the experience of some decades of work in civil society and peoples’ movements, it has been increasingly apparent that we have moved far away from many of the original values, principles and concepts about the nature of our society and polity as was enshrined in the Constitution of India. The politics of vote banks, especially the cynical cultivation of religious and sectarian groups for electoral purposes, was started by Congress soon after the heady days of independence and then taken to further lethal practices by many political parties – national and regional. What we term as “communalisation” has been happening over a period of time. Indira Gandhi’s assassination followed by the pogrom against Sikhs represented the tragic consequences of communal politics played in the Punjab.

We have truly reached the nadir in terms of public discourse and tolerance of differing points of view.

For many of those intimately involved with relief, rehabilitation after the carnage against the Sikhs, this was the first real eye opener to the ugly face of the state and its leadership. It was also to bring home to a large number of citizens the dangers of the relative ease with which it was possible to manipulate mob frenzy and anger around issues of religion, caste and community. The first large scale civil society mobilisation around the issue of communalisation began already in 1984 as can be seen in the brief overview of the Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan below.

“A Brief History of the Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan (1984-1993)

1. The Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan (SVA), or Movement Against Communalism, was founded by some of the activists working in the relief camps in Delhi in November 1984. Its original concept was to engage in systematic activity designed to pre-empt communal violence, rather than merely react to its consequences. One of the first acts of the group was to help organise (along with certain political groups and unions outside the established left parties), a protest demonstration on November 24, 1984. Participants still consider this one of the most memorable demonstrations in Delhi in many years, despite the abstention of the national Opposition. Students and professors; butchers and auto-rickshaw drivers; workers, political activists, women's groups, all took part with great enthusiasm in a march lasting nearly four hours, and comprising some four to five thousand people. Citizens belonging to virtually every national community were present. ‘Bhai-bhai’ slogans were not raised – the focus was quite simply, the demand for punishment to the guilty. Significantly, the demonstration was given little or no coverage in the media, barring an editorial page article in The Statesman some days later that stated that “thousands of Sikhs” had marched in Delhi crying for vengeance – a classic case of distortion.

In 1986 we submitted a memorandum to the National Integration Council, which focussed on the need to implement the criminal law with respect to the Delhi carnage. This document we believe, is the only public statement drawing attention to the communal nature of the Rajiv Gandhi-Longowal accord of 1985 for its presumption that the Akali Party had the natural right to take up the matter of the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi.

We argued that the government was constitutionally bound to identify and punish the guilty, regardless of the religious affiliation of the victims, and that the investigation of the allegation of conspiracy (as undertaken in the Accord) was a red herring which left this duty unattended. The SVA's predictions in this matter have unfortunately, been proven correct.

An important aside especially important to record in view of vicious abuse and accusations of treason directed at the Admiral following the open letter that he recently wrote to the President and the Prime Minister (Vijayadashmi, 2015).

***NB Admiral Ramdas was very much still in service, and was commanding the Eastern Fleet based in Visakhapatnam at the time. It was Lalita Ramdas who was living in Delhi, and who was deeply involved in justice and reparation, post 1984 pogrom, over a nearly three year period. It was a full time commitment, along with hundreds of young and old people from very different social and political backgrounds. Under the umbrella of Nagrik Ekta Manch, we co-ordinated work in Nanaksar, Farsh Bazaar and other relief camps. Volunteers sat up night after night, collating first person testimonies from survivors. We interacted with the police and Delhi administration demanding that FIRs be registered, and necessary action be taken.

Our reports became part of the seminal report published by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and the People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), Who are the Guilty? And several of us testified before the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission.

We remember vividly the conversation that preceded the decision that Lalita would testify before the commission – especially since advice from the admiral’s colleagues was that this would go against Ramu’s service career. His position and words to his wife were clear and unambiguous. “You must follow your conscience. If your conscience tells you to testify, just go ahead. And if that affects my service career – that’s too bad. I am ready to put in my papers at any time.”

Interrogation, Dissent and Democracy
Across print, web journals and social media, it has been a shock for us to be at the receiving end of such ill-informed and vicious attacks – where it is clear that it is not dissent that has been manufactured as was famously said recently by a senior minister in the government. These are personal, slanderous attacks which are carefully manufactured, synchronised and propagated through the network of both the party and others who call the shots. We have truly reached the nadir in terms of public discourse and tolerance of differing points of view.

The blind loyalty to an individual, a political party and an ideology has been deliberately bred and encouraged over the decades – a natural feature of our continuing feudal mindsets. Political parties are encouraging caste, community and religion based identity politics in today’s India. And it is for this reason that any discussion on combating communalism must also be located within a rigorous critique of what is understood by democracy and democratic governance.

The true value of what the initiatives like Communalism Combat represent can be best evaluated when examined within the political and social contexts of the time. Just as much as 1984 provided a kind of watershed experience for citizens; the events leading up to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1993 was to alter the discourse on communal politics as encouraged by the BJP. This entire narrative was reinforced and underpinned ever more strongly by the members of the extended sangh parivar.

It is with remarkable insight that both Teesta and Javed – two far sighted journalists – could look ahead into a future which most of us discarded, realise the kind of horrors that were likely to surface, and who then went on to make it their life’s mission to perform the function of efficient and committed watchdogs to anticipate and eventually to book and prosecute those who were guilty of the most unspeakable crimes against humanity. This requires the courage of conviction to act according to the diktats of one’s conscience.

From the Archives of Communalism Combat
In the course of charting the focus for this article, we spent time visiting the archives of Communalism Combat – at least those that have been uploaded from 1998 to 2012. It is a veritable store-house of important milestones – especially in this period between the genocide of 1984 – to the genocide of 2002. While majoritarian communal behaviour comes in for considerable scrutiny CC has not spared minority communal patterns of behaviour. The range and span of essays and reports from some of the finest minds provide a critical source and access to serious analysis and perspectives which help in contextualising both historically and ideologically, the course of events which have brought us to where we are today.

In particular it is most important to understand the thin but critical dividing line between religious fundamentalism and communalism.

The Contradictions About Conversions
Rajeev Dhavan, in a former issue of CC terms India’s anti conversion legislation as one which has caused lasting damage and endless repercussions.
“India’s present controversies over ‘conversions’ have little meaning outside the politics of Hindutva. An anxious and vindictive sangh parivar’s stance – that no conversions of Hindus should take place – is clearly that conversions out of Hinduism are bad but reconversions back into Hinduism are welcome. What is flaunted as a policy against all conversions has been tailored to suit Hindutva’s needs. There are therefore clear contradictions in the Hindutva standpoint. According to this view, conversions must stop but reconversions are to be encouraged. People should move into Hinduism but not out of Hinduism.

The sangh parivar’s stance on conversion and reconversion is mired in communal fundamentalism. No argument on conversion exists in a vacuum, and the sangh parivar’s policies on conversion are also part of a communal policy of persecution of Christians and Muslims. Unlike fundamentalism which consists of a diehard belief in one’s own faith, communalism goes further to pursue a policy of persecution towards other faiths through legal and illegal coercive methods. Fundamentalism and communalism may feed each other. A fundamentalist is entitled to cling to his orthodoxy but a communalist is as menacing as his persecution. Proselytism is not communal per se. Many faiths claim to seek to convert others, just as present-day Hindus seek to ‘reconvert’ non-Hindus.”

Not only has this theme of conversions and Ghar Wapsi been widely used by the present regime, today in 2015 we find ourselves at a moment where those who were guilty in 1984 have been displaced and replaced, without being punished, by those who were responsible for and who turned a blind eye towards the guilty of 2002. And it is this party and this power which is presiding over the destinies of the people of India today as they continue to target Muslims and to a lesser extent, Christians, for not being the true inheritors of the soul of India.

Singling Out The Muslim in India
Quoting from a January 1998 issue of Communalism Combat:
“Similarly, the hatred directed at Indian Muslims by a certain political tendency has tended to produce a post-facto justification for the two-nation theory of Jinnah upon which the Partition was based. In turn, that hatred appeared to those possessed by it as a consequence of the “separatism” of Muslims in general and retribution for the pain and trauma suffered by Hindu and Sikh refugees in 1947. Who is to blame? This is a question fraught with ambivalence. But for those who have succumbed to communal ideology, it is a very simple question indeed, and the easy answer is always – They…”

And again in 2012 they point out:
“The sangh parivar is not just a sick organisation suffering from a blind and incurable hatred of Muslims and Christians. It is far worse than that. There is a method in the murder and mayhem that it promotes and perpetrates, which clearly points to an evil genius at work.

‘Go Back to Pakistan’
Recent statements by many levels of functionaries – both of the party and the parivar – have pointedly asked all those who criticise either the party, the prime minister, or the sangh and its policies, to “go to Pakistan”. This reveals a frightening mindset which has been systematically propagated, refined, polished and presented in increasingly sophisticated forms over several decades. At the level of the mobs and the lumpen elements, it manifests itself in blind fury which will not stop at brutal violence that we have seen time and again. It is dangerous because it is also marketed and sold as defending the faith and the nation.

We are also seeing that this product in its modernised version, has found traction with large numbers of urban, educated, middle class – NRIs and upwardly mobile youth – seduced by the same rhetoric of this being the essence of India, and herein lies the protection and the promotion of both religion and nationalism. The message is brilliant, while also frightening in its simplicity – the essential soul of India is Hindu; Hindutva is the sword arm which will restore India to its glory and deserved place in the sun; all those who would live here, especially those who follow the book like Muslims and Christians, can only do so under terms dictated by the majority. By extension of this logic, the creation of a Hindu Rashtra is our political goal.

Analysts have consistently pointed out that the foundations of project ‘Hindu Rashtra’ were indeed laid several decades ago – and in many ways Babri Masjid followed by Gujarat were part of the trial run whereby the religious-cultural units were either deployed by the political leadership, or the members of the parivar/sangh were the ones who set the agenda and drove the political engine.

Communalism Combat from October 1998 carries an unforgettable headline¸ Welcome to Hindu Rashtra http://www.sabrang.com/cc/comold/octob98/edit.htm)

“Over forty incidents, of arson, assault, loot, demolition (remember the ‘kar sevaks’ in Ayodhya?) and forcible evictions have taken place in the past six months in Gujarat, the land of Gandhi’s birth. The targets: the state’s Christians and Muslims.
As a social activist from Gujarat put it, "lived fascism is a grim reality in Gujarat today." Those who are putting up a brave resistance in Gujarat today experience a chilling isolation from the rest of the country.

The concerted attacks on the country’s minorities have been possible thanks to the failure of the custodians of law to fulfil their primary obligation of protecting the life and property of all citizens, irrespective of community, caste or gender. The murderers and assailants have functioned with utter impunity before the guardians of the law, either browbeating the administration into inaction or engineering complicity from within its ranks. This bodes ill for the health of Indian democracy.”

This graphic account of the modus operandi of the foot soldiers of the sangh parivar should be borne in mind as we switch gears to move fast forward to the overwhelming victory of the BJP in the general elections of 2014 – and the mounting evidence of a number of similar attacks on minorities in the past eighteen months since the BJP government came to power. The agenda is clear, put in place in all key positions from national to local, those who are loyalists of RSS and the Sangh Parivar – and they will take forward the Project of intimidation of the minorities and dalits, as also building the edifice of a Hindu Rashtra.

Public memory is notoriously short – and once again we are reminded by this quote in CC by the novelist Milan Kundera, when he wrote, “The struggle for power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

To make people forget, the template of popular memory requires reworking. The circumstances are propitious – the BJP is in power again and Rajnath Singh is the Home Minister. LK Advani has metamorphosed into a voice of moderation, even an elderly statesman.
From Personal to Political

In the final analysis, the measure of any effort to confront, interrogate and combat the kind of elements and forces we have tried to describe above will be the extent and intensity to which these are experienced at the personal level. Our earliest contributions to Communalism Combat, one was titled SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY, and the other THE FIRE NEXT TIME described in detail some challenging and tough situations and decisions made at a personal level – which in turn has influenced so many of the public or political decisions we have taken.

A Letter to Our Leaders From a Former Head of service
Here are a few extracts from a recent open letter from Admiral Ramdas as a former head of service, sent to the President and the Prime Minister of India. This letter clearly resonated with large numbers, it was translated into several languages – and we have received calls and messages of appreciation from across the world.

“It is with a heavy heart, that I write this open letter to you at a time when our beloved country and people are facing severe challenges and threats to our shared heritage.

I have served in the Armed Forces of India – joining soon after Independence as a 14 year old, to end up 45 years later Chief of the Indian Navy [1990 to 1993] I have witnessed many transitions in India – from the horrors of partition in 1947 to the very different world of digital connectivity that we see today.

Today, as a veteran in my eighties, I am forced to hang my head in shame as I witness a series of incidents and assaults on our fellow citizens, especially minorities and dalits. Our armed forces which I have had the honour to serve for 45 years, have been an exemplar of India’s secular ethos. Be it in ships and submarines, or in planes and battle formations, we do not discriminate on the basis of caste or religion – we train, we fight, we live, we eat and we die together.”

It appears that certain communities are being singled out for special attention – for instance Muslims.

There seems to be a systematic and well orchestrated attempt to impose a majoritarian single point agenda of creating a Hindu Rashtra in India – led by the RSS and their network of groups, which is disturbing to say the least.

Most shocking of all is the fact there has been no unambiguous condemnation of such actions and behaviour by those at the helm of affairs in the country.

I do not need to point out to the top leadership today, that this is playing with fire in a nation where minorities – especially Muslims and Christians, as also dalits and adivasis, are already feeling discriminated and marginalised.

The violence visited upon vulnerable sections reinforces the image of India as an imperfect democracy where all forms of dissent are discouraged and human rights trampled upon with impunity.

The Prime Minister and his ministers in the government are sworn in by the President of India, and they take an oath pledging to uphold the Indian Constitution.T heir failure to do so, as evidenced in the foregoing, is a serious matter and does not augur well either for national security or national integrity. The Central and State Governments must act swiftly, unequivocally condemn all such incidents and ensure that justice will be done and the guilty are punished.

The violence visited upon vulnerable sections reinforces the image of India as an imperfect democracy where all forms of dissent are discouraged and human rights trampled upon with impunity.

It is our bounden duty that the elected Government of this nation must honour the rights of every citizen of this land as amply spelled out in the Preamble of the Constitution and further elaborated in the Directive Principles of State Policy. As Supreme Commander and the Chief Executive – this is what you must ensure and implement by all the powers vested in you by the people of India.

If we do not stem the rot now – it might be too late. Indeed we the people of India look to you to take all steps necessary to restore faith in our democracy and in the promise of bringing dignity, fraternity and equality to each of our citizens.

— Admiral Ramdas

And in conclusion – as we also dealt with a barrage of abuse and accusations of treasonable conduct, with demands that not just we, but the family needed to be publicly hung, here is what Lalita Ramdas wrote and sent out on social media summing up where we are coming from.
“Is the soul and idea of India just Hindu? Says who? And which history- or religious text tells us that?

For me, and for many like me, it is the layered magnificence of five thousand years which has placed in its core for all manner of -isms ……..animism – for the five elements we have always revered; for tribal deities of the original inhabitants; for Buddha and Mahavira; for the Vedas and the Upanishads and million other interpretations and practice of Hinduism, for Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Judaism, for Islam, for Sikhism and Bahais – for socialism, secularism, and even capitalism; for believers and non believers, for atheists and agnostics – for dark skinned and fair and lovely – for sufis and dervishes – for devis and devatas – for gods and goddesses – for the many languages and dialects, for all the versions of the Ramayana – for LGBTs – and ardha narishwara, for the most bewildering expressions and creativity and fusion in art, architecture, food, our textiles, our music our poetry and literature and languages… for debate, and argument and dissent and as many opinions as there are people.

We worship rivers, mountains, and animals, the sun, the moon, the wind and fire… we worship learning, we worship people, but do not tell us to worship only in one way.

And as for Hindutva ? There is no such thing – except for a ‘manufactured’ and ugly distortion of all that was wise and good in one of the many many faiths of our fore mothers and fore fathers!

My mother in law – a devout Tamil Brahmin – accepted me, a girl whom her son decided to marry – even though according to the hierarchy of caste – I came from a Bangle seller Naidu clan! She did not care about her daughter in law being an OBC – she was my best friend and ally – and she had no problems in cooking beef in the one and only pressure cooker in her tiny kitchen for their beloved dog – sammy!

It was her who convinced my own cosmopolitan mother [and widely travelled Naval wife], that it was fine to bring in a Muslim daughter in law into the family. Her gutsy stance helped another cousin in his decision to marry the beauteous Nargis from Orissa.

Years later these intrepid ladies happily welcomed their Muslim – Pakistani/American son in law into the family with arathi and mithai and slokas!

And as time went by, and our daughters and their cousins, studied and travelled – we now have a mini UN community in the family – a burly African American Baptist who has a PIO card which our Pakistani/American son in law can never get! Another niece is married to a Sri Lankan Tamil – and yet another to a wonderful, brilliant young man from the UK. The next generation is already making choices – from Kashmiri pandit to a Dutch-New Zealander!

Our children speak in many tongues and are at home in many countries – but they all come back happily to India and feel comfortably at home. This is the genuine Ghar Wapsi – the glory and the wonder that is India – let no one take this away.

So who were the original dwellers? Our forest dwellers who are under siege like never before – victims of unrelenting corporate development – the adivasis – and they were never Hindus – until they were forcibly inducted into the fold.

Let us celebrate, not desecrate and distort, this marvellous diversity – this creative anarchy – possibly not to be found anywhere else on this planet except this South Asian land mass.

Good people are agonising today at what is happening, and it is time for each one of us to speak out and speak up about the ugly face of our country which seems to be on the rising.

This and only this can be the way forward – and yes the idea of India in its magnificent diversity – will surely overcome and survive.

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