Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

India-Pakistan

For Insulting Prophet Mohammed, Muslim Youth Assaults A Bus Conductor In UP

2023-11-28

Sudden Jihad Syndrome. Wandering the landscape with a cleaver is not normal behaviour, after all.

[OneIndia] In a shocking incident, a Moslem youth brutally assaulted a bus conductor for allegedly insulting Prophet Mohammed. The incident occurred in Praygraj in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday.

The accused is identified as Lareb Hashmi and the victim is Harikesh Vishwakarma who was assaulted with a cleaver over a ticket fare dispute.

”How dare that Untermensch demand I pay as if I were not a member of the Master Religion!”
*Slice* *Chop* *Spurt -spurt*
“Rosebud, damn your eyes...”

Once attacking the conductor, he escaped into a university campus while the bus conductor was rushed to the hospital.

Later, the 20-year-old shared a video in which he is seen justifying his heinous act. "(The bus conductor) was abusing Moslems. So I attacked him with a cleaver. He will not survive. He will be dead soon. From India to La Belle France, whoever insults our Prophet will be exterminated," Hashmi is heard saying in the clip.

"We are ready to die for you and go to jail, O Prophet Muhammad. Dear Moslems, rise about this world's materialism and be ready to sacrifice your life for the Prophet," Lareb Hashmi added.

The individual with Islamist beliefs proclaimed "Allahu Akbar" and recited "La ilaha illallah Muhammadur Rasulullah" while rationalizing the vicious assault on the Hindu bus conductor.

Upon being alerted about the incident, law enforcement arrived at the college campus. Lareb Hasmi made an effort to flee and even discharged a firearm at the police. In response, the police fired back, injuring him in the leg.

Link

Olde Tyme Religion

Authorities in India shut 800-year-old mosque in BJP-ruled state

2023-07-17

[Dawn] Authorities in the BJP-controlled Maharashtra state have shut down an 800-year-old mosque for Moslem worshippers following a complaint by an RSS-linked Hindu group, The Wire said on Saturday.

It said the mosque in Jalgaon has suddenly become inaccessible to the community after the district collector passed an interim restraining order while hearing a complaint filed by the right-wing organization.

In the order, the collector also directed police deployment in the area. He asked the tehsildar to take charge of the mosque, which he described as "disputed".

The 800-year-old structure is an important place of worship in northern Maharashtra and a property registered under the Waqf Board.

While the collector’s order and his power to pass it have been challenged before the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court, Aslam (one name), a member of the Jumma Masjid Trust, fears that the unprecedented order marks the beginning of the communalisation of a centuries-old mosque in the state, said The Wire.

The mosque suddenly became a site of controversy because of the complaint filed by an unregistered organization called "Pandavwada Sangharsh Samiti". The complainant, Prasad Madhusudan Dandawate, moved a petition before the Jalgaon district collector Aman Mittal in mid-May.

Mr Dandawate, who is reportedly a member of the RSS and Bajrang Dal, claimed the mosque was built over a Hindu place of worship and should be taken over by the state authorities. The complainant also claims that the Jumma Masjid Trust has "illegally" encroached over the space.

A law passed after the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya prohibits damaging or reclaiming old monuments.

The Jumma Masjid Trust members said they were unaware of the claims made until they received a notice in June.

"By then, the collector had already been conducting hearings. In a restricted time, we were asked to defend our case. And on July 11, the collector simply passed a restraining order," Aslam, one of the ad hoc members of the trust committee, said.

Along with the mosque’s trust committee, the Waqf Board and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) were also issued notices.

The ASI has supported the trust’s claims that it is an ancient structure. It said that since the time the ASI was involved in 1986, prayers have been offered in the mosque.

The ASI stated that the mosque has been an open and accessible space for Moslems since time immemorial.

Moin Tahsildar, the CEO of the board, said the collector’s decision to issue a restraining order was outside his mandate and it infringed on the legal jurisdiction of the Waqf tribunal.

"We have challenged the interim order," Mr Tahsildar said.

The Masjid Trust, meanwhile, has moved the high court with documents that are from pre-independence times — including court orders from time to time and those passed by the British Indian government.

Link

India-Pakistan

India’s extradition request for Dawood aide Tiger Hanif refused by UK

2020-05-19

[Daily Excelsior] India’s request for the extradition of Tiger Hanif, an alleged aide of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim wanted in India in connection with two kabooms in Surat in 1993, has been turned down by the UK government, official sources have confirmed.

Hanif, whose full name is Mohammed Hanif Umerji Patel, was traced to a grocery store in Bolton, Greater Manchester, and arrested by Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant in February 2010.

The 57-year-old since lost a number of legal bids to stay in Britannia, claiming that he will be tortured in India.

However,
denial ain't just a river in Egypt...
his final bid to then Home Secretary Sajid Javid succeeded as the Pak-origin minister refused the request last year.

"We can confirm that the extradition request for Hanif Patel was refused by the then Home Secretary and Mr Patel was discharged by the court in August 2019," a UK Home Office source said on Sunday.

Hanif’s extradition to India was first ordered by then Home Secretary Theresa May in June 2012.

During an appeal at the High Court in London in April 2013, Justice Kenneth Parker noted the information provided in India’s request described how, following the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992, "internecine hostilities" broke out between the Moslem and Hindu communities in Gujarat
...where rioting seems to be a traditional passtime...
"The requesting state’s case is that the appellant was part of a Moslem group which obtained explosives, guns and other weapons and then carried out Dire Revenge terrorist attacks on the Hindu community, including two explosions which resulted in loss of life, injury and damage," the judge noted.

The first explosion was in January 1993 in a market on the Varacha Road in Surat, which killed an eight-year-old girl and the second explosion was in April 1993 at Surat railway station.

Arguments made on behalf of Hanif claimed there was "a real risk of torture" if Hanif was extradited to India.

"There is nothing to suggest that the appellant [Hanif] is now no longer able to recall the events in question, or that the court in India would be unwilling or unable to consider the extent, if any, of any prejudice to the fairness of the criminal trial by reason of the passage of time," the judge had ruled, clearing Hanif’s extradition.

Under the India-UK Extradition Treaty, India is category two country, which means the Home Secretary has final sign-off on any extradition request, which in this case was turned down.

Similarly, the Indian government’s request for the extradition of liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya in the fraud and money laundering case involving loans to his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines is with UK Home Secretary Priti Patel for a formal certification, after he lost a last-ditch attempt seeking leave to appeal in the UK Supreme Court last Thursday.

The 64-year-old businessman, who remains on bail, can also make representations to the minister, though his legal avenues now remain limited and may only involve a temporary reprieve due to the coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)

coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)

...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...

Link

India-Pakistan

Multiple agencies warn central govt of possible ‘terror attack’ by JeM

2019-11-10

[HindustanTimes] Multiple agencies like the Military Intelligence, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) have simultaneously warned the government of a possible attack.

Over the last 10 days, as state governments were asked to gear up for the Supreme Court’s verdict in the Babri Masjid- Ram Janmabhoomi case, the "dark web" had been buzzing with messages from the Pakistain-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), and multiple security agencies have now warned the government about a "major terror attack," a senior officer who did not want to be named said.

Importantly, multiple agencies like the Military Intelligence, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) have simultaneously warned the government of a possible attack. "It just indicates the seriousness of the threat," the senior officer said. "Each of these agencies have come to the same conclusion individually," the officer said.

"The frequency of the communication jumped several-fold in the last 10 days as it was increasingly clear that the judgment could be expected anytime," the bigwig said. Importantly, much of the communications through the "dark web," are encrypted and "coded", making the task of security agencies that much more difficult, a second bigwig who did not want to be named said.

With the judgment delivered, the apprehension of a "desperate terror" attack by Pakistain-based terror groups within the security establishment is at an all-time high. "The idea is to trigger communal backlash," the second bigwig said.

Analysing the communications and matching it with other intelligence, security agencies have zeroed in on possible targets and initiated measures to counter the possible threat. The targets include New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.

Security agencies have been in a state of heightened alert since August 5, when Parliament scrapped the special status of Jammu & Kashmir
Kashmir

...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it Azad (Free) Kashmir. The remainder they refer to as "Indian Occupied Kashmir". They have fought four wars with India over it, the score currently 4-0 in New Delhi's favor. After 72 years of this nonsense, India cut the Gordian knot in 2019, removing the area's special status, breaking off Ladakh as a separate state, and allowing people from other areas to settle (or in the case of the Pandits, to resettle) there....
. "The current effort to carry out a terror attack is separate and appears more determined," the second bigwig said.

Link

India-Pakistan

Hindus Win Dispute in Babri Masjid Case in Historic Verdict.

2019-11-09

Supreme Court Gives Ayodhya Land to Hindus in Historic Verdict.

This is a big deal. It is a blow to the islamists and leftist diversity lovers within India. It is the equivalent of the Temple Mount to the hindus, and a muslim bugbear since the 90s.

The Ayodhya Dispute.

In '92 the hindu right-wingers attacked and partly destroyed a masjid built by the mughals over an ancient temple to lord Ram, the primary hindu deity. Ayodhya, said to be the birth place of Ram since then became a place of considerably militant religious fervor. A large muslim community lived around the Babri Masjid and had to scatter in the riots that followed. The event began the decade long litigation which embarrassingly dragged the purview of modern day jurists into questions of myth, historicity and even the tracing of lineages of deities and their progeny. We are immensely glad that one - the muslims are further dis-empowered and two - the SC can go back to doing actual work that affects actual living people. Not that this verdict wasn't a piece of work, but the credit for this only goes to PM Modi and his merry band, for consolidating an iron hold on every source and conduit of power from the legislatures to mainstream media. The basically right-wing govt has built an atmosphere of secular strictures and non-tolerance of islamist thuggery. Which is a good thing, if you ask the right people.

Ayodhya Verdict Live Updates: Bringing down curtains on the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid issue, one of the longest running title disputes in India, the Supreme Court has given the entire disputed 2.77-acre land to the Hindu parties with a trust to be formed by the Centre within three months to monitor the construction of a Ram Temple. The Sunni Waqf Board will be given 5 acres of alternate land, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court ruled in the unanimous verdict. The Nirmohi Akhara also suffered some setback with the court. The CJI Ranjan Gogoi-led bench of Justices SA Bobde, DY Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer, said the Akhara's suit was barred by limitation.

The Ayodhya title suit verdict comes nine years after the 2:1 judgment of the Allahabad High Court that ordered a three-way division of the disputed 2.77 acres of land between the three parties - Ram Lalla, Sunni Waqf Board and the Nirmohi Akhara. The Lucknow Bench of the High Court, on September 30, 2010, held that Hindus and Muslims as joint title holders of the disputed land.

Crux of the Ayodhya Verdict

The disputed land in Ayodhya goes to the Hindus in its entirety for the construction of Ram Mandir. The Sunni Waqf Board will get five acres of alternate land, which will be accorded either by the state or the Centre.

Centre will hand over the disputed site to the Board of trustees and a suitable alternative plot of land measuring five acres at Ayodhya will be given to Sunni Waqf Board.

Link

India-Pakistan

Coming to avenge Babri, Kashmir, Gujarat, Muzaffarnagar: ISIS video

2016-05-22

[NATION.PK] The Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
has released a new 22-minute Arabic-language documentary on purported Indian jihadists in its ranks, providing the first interviews with five runaway jihadists known to have joined the ranks of fighters in Iraq and Syria since 2014.

The video, released online on Friday, is the first propaganda the Islamic State has produced with content focused on India and South Asia.

Thane engineering student Fahad Tanvir Sheikh who travelled to Syria in 2014 along with three other men from the city, as first reported in The Indian Express, is the only individual conclusively identified in the video, in which he uses the pseudonym Abu Amr’ al-Hindi.

"We will return," Sheikh vows, "but with a sword in hand, to avenge the Babri Masjid, and the killings of Muslims in Kashmire, in Gujarat
...where rioting seems to be a traditional passtime...
, and in Muzaffarnagar."

Sheikh also pays homage to his friend from Thane, Shahim Tanki, who is said to have been killed in a kaboom in Raqqa last year.

The third member of the group, Areeb Majid, is now being prosecuted by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

The video also features several still-to-be-identified members, suspected to be once of the Indian Mujahideen
A locally recruited auxilliary of Pakistain's Lashkar-e-Taiba, designed to give a domestic patina to Pakistain's terror war against its bigger neighbor...
, whose members are known to have been serving with Islamic State forces after breaking with their Pakistain-based leadership.

Link

India-Pakistan

Outrage over religious intolerance in India, while silence over similar incidents at home

2015-10-10

[NATION.PK] Over the past many days the social media is outraged over the recent incidents of religious intolerance in India. For those who have managed to miss it, I am talking about the lynching of a Muslim man in Dadri, UP. According to the news reports available the man was alleged to have slaughtered a cow and consumed its meat. Some hard boyz didn't like this and decided to go and kill the poor guy and injured his son badly. Reactions from both sides then erupted, where a vast majority of people condemned the act and insisted that the culprits behind it be brought to justice immediately. Much politico point scoring was also carried out and all the bigwigs made a beeline towards the small inconspicuous Dadri to express 'sympathies' with the family and the Muslim community of the area. Since this incident, the police has made several arrests and many people are already under investigation. At the same time a few human angle stories have also sprouted up. Non-Muslims have provided a safe passage to Muslims who were in danger, at great personal risk.

This incident, coupled with a few others related to the beef ban, has put the Muslim sympathizing people of Pakistain into some kind of frenzy. Most of us feel personally betrayed at the grave intolerance which is taking place in India. This has also given some people a free for all to bring in other Muslim victimization issues like the atrocities committed in Kashmire, the acts of Mukti Bahni in 1971, the Babri Masjid incident, etc. However,
a poor excuse is better than no excuse at all...
what I didn't see was anyone juxtaposing these incidents with those that have taken place in Pakistain in the recent past, like the lynching of the Christian couple last year, or the ongoing kidnapping and forced conversions of young Hindu girls mainly in Sindh. Then there was also the horrible incident of the destruction of the Ahmadi house on the instigation of a famous televangelist. How about the atrocities committed on Shias in this country day in and day out? All of this is done on the basis of the religious beliefs. Political instigation, point scoring and even capital gains are motivations.

Link

India-Pakistan

JuD terms PM attending Modi's oath-taking 'betrayal' of Kashmir cause

2014-05-27

[DAWN] Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the founder of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa
...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba...
(JuD), on Sunday asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf...
not to attend the oath-taking ceremony of India's prime minister-elect Narindra Modi as it would be a betrayal to the Kashmire cause and would hurt millions of Mohammedans in Jammu and Kashmire and other parts of the gargantuan eastern neighbour where Mohammedans lives in large numbers.

"I will advise Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif not to sit beside Narindra Modi who is the killer of thousands of Mohammedans of India as it will bleed the cause of Kashmire's freedom and irreparably hurt the sentiments of Kashmiris and millions of other Mohammedans living in India," said Hafiz Muhammad Saeed

...who would be wearing a canvas jacket with very long sleeves anyplace but Pakistain...
while addressing a rally titled 'Takbeer convention' outside the Quaid's mausoleum to mark the 16th anniversary of nuclear tests conducted by Pakistain.

The fiery
...a single two-syllable word carrying connotations of both incoherence and viciousness. A fiery delivery implies an audience of rubes and yokels, preferably forming up into a mob...
leader of the JuD was standing on a stage made up of containers full of the group's cadres and leaders in the backdrop of a large banner showing everything eulogising the country's defence more prominently the ballistic missiles like Ghauri, Shaheen, Ghaznavi and Babur, submarines, armada and fighter jets.

Just beneath the floor of the stage another banner was prominently read as: "An atomic Pakistain guarantees security to Pakistain and the rest of the Ummah."

Calling the PM's decision to visit India as 'hasty', Hafiz Muhammad Saeed said the people wanted to see a Nawaz Sharif of May 1998 who, despite all pressures, lucrative offers and threats, decided to conduct nuclear tests to offer a 'befitting reply to Banya India'.

He said the prime minister was 'an ambassador for Kashmiris and the Mohammedans of India' and he should not go to India. However,
death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate...
the JuD leader was ready to give a positive nod to Mr Sharif's visit to New Delhi but not without certain conditions.

"If it is so important for you to attend Modi's oath-taking ceremony, then you should represent the Kashmiris and Indian Mohammedans who are at present are suffering persecution. You should pronounce that you will not allow to build Ram Mandir in place of Babri Masjid, you will have to oppose the Indian authorities decision against the slaughter of cow and all other issues, which directly relate to Mohammedans' faith."

Besides, he went on, "You make Modi to accept that Kashmire's fate will be decided only as enshrined in the United Nations
...boodling on the grand scale...
resolution".

Otherwise, he warned, the issues would get worse, the situation will deteriorate and the whole Pakistain will make you accountable for. "Everything over Kashmire should be done openly and we don't accept any back-channel diplomacy."

He said the election of Mr Modi in India and 'imminent' coming into power of Abdullah Abdullah
... the former foreign minister of the Northern Alliance government, advisor to Masood, and candidate for president against Karzai. Dr. Abdullah was born in Kabul and is half Tadjik and half Pashtun...
in Afghanistan was a part of a big conspiracy perpetrated by the United States and its allies La Belle France and the United Kingdom, who "want to punish Pakistain for their worst defeat in Afghanistan".

He held India and the US responsible for the unrest in Pakistain.

"Our enemies want to malign Pak forces and ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) before their people. Especially India has longstanding designs to create endless disarray in our country."

He said the army chief, General Raheel Sharif, should remember that the army owed to the Quaid-e-Azam whose order to protect Kashmiris was not obeyed 67 years ago. "It is time to act in the light of Quaid-e-Azam's orders and vision," he said.

He lauded former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
...9th PM of Pakistain from 1973 to 1977, and 4th President of Pakistain from 1971 to 1973. He was the founder of the Pakistain Peoples Party (PPP). His eldest daughter, Benazir Bhutto, would also serve as hereditary PM. In a coup led by General Zia-ul-Haq, Bhutto was removed from office and was executed in 1979 for authorizing the murder of a political opponent...
and governments came subsequently for launching the country's nuclear programme and stuck to it till the capability was successfully achieved through tests on May 28, 1998.

Sahibzada Awais Noorani, leader of the Jamaat Ulema-e-Pakistain, Asadullah Bhutto of the Jamaat-e-Islami
...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
, Chun Zaib of the Pakistain Mohammedan League-Nawaz, Hafeezuddin of the Pakistain Tehrik-e-Insaf
...a political party in Pakistan. PTI was founded by former Pakistani cricket captain and philanthropist Imran Khan. The party's slogan is Justice, Humanity and Self Esteem, each of which is open to widely divergent interpretations....
and local leaders of several other groups and parties also spoke.

Link

India-Pakistan

Ahmedabad Blasts Suspect Held In Aurangabad

2012-03-28

In a major success for the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad, its officers locked away Mohammad Abrar Babu Khan alias Abrar Sheikh, a suspect in the 2008 Ahmedabad blasts, and his accomplice Mohammad Shakir, 32, following a fierce shootout at the Himayat Baug area in Aurangabad on Monday.

Their aide Khaleel Qureshi, 20, was killed in the cross-fire.

All the cool authorities do crossfires, these days.

The group reportedly has links with the banned terror outfit, Indian Mujahideen
A locally recruited auxilliary of Pakistain's Lashkar-e-Taiba, designed to give a domestic patina to Pakistain's terror war against its bigger neighbor...
(IM).

The group, all former Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) members,

Kicked out because they're too old...

had also plotted to eliminate the judges of the Allahabad high court who had pronounced the verdict in the Babri Masjid case, said sources.

"We must have dire revenge!"

For the last three months, the police had been working on information that the group, led by second-in-command Abrar, has been trying to set up their base in Maharashtra and were active in Aurangabad, Jalna and Buldhana, revealed ATS chief Rakesh Maria.

Mahmoud the Weasel's Indian cousins do thriving business on their side of the border...

"They were planning to commit robberies in the state and we have been trying to track them," he said.

Typical of the noble Lions of Islam -- unable to get enough dosh legitimately from their fellow worshippers, they turn to a life of crime.

In July-June 2011, the Madhya Pradesh police had locked away Abu Faisal, who has links with the IM, from the Juhu Gully area in Mumbai.

"The group had carried out a spate of robberies in Madhya Pradesh and used the money for terror funding. After Faisal was locked away, Abrar took charge," said Maria.

During interrogation,

"Corporal Mukkerjee: bring the utensils of questioning!"

"Even the number seven Craftsman, Captain?"
"Especially the number seven Craftsman!"

Faisal had told the police that his group was planning to kill two high court judges who had given judgment in the Babri Masjid case," said a police officer, requesting anonymity.

On the formation of the group, an officer said that after security agencies turned the heat on Faisal, he had gone into hiding at at his in-laws' place in Madhya Pradesh.

"There he met senior SIMI leader Safdar Nagori, who is currently in jail. Later Faisal went to Kerala for terrorist training. Faisal and Abrar were also in touch with top SIMI functionary Abdus Subhan Qureshi alias Tauqeer. Abrar's name also figures in the 2008 Ahmedabad blast case charge sheet. Another key member of the group Aqeel Khilji, 42, is still on the lam," said the officer.

"The group had bought a house in Jamshedpur in Jharkhand where fake passports could be prepared," said another police officer.

It would be a bit difficult to bring the usual in from Pakistan...

On Monday, the Aurangabad ATS had got a tip-offthat Abrar Shakir and Qureshi would arrive at Himayat Baug.

"When the police approached them, they opened fire. The police fired nine rounds, while the three men fired five rounds. Constable Sheikh Arif Sheikh Ismail got shot on his left shoulder and Qureshi was killed in the encounter.

Those Indians are showing initiative again. Not just a crossfire, but an encounter, too! D'you suppose the X marking the spot would show up on Google Earth?

Shakir, who was shot on both his thighs, is in hospital," said Maria.

Dr. Quincy awaits events with his customary sang froid.

Link

India-Pakistan

Jawed Naqvi: The growing lure of barbarism

2011-12-16

[Dawn] IT was several years ago that Prof Eric Hobsbawm cautioned us about the revival of barbarism in the 20th-century West and its spread to the rest of the world.

His profound and worrying prescience has only become more forbidding with each passing day.

Be it in warfare, which has progressed from the holocaust of Ypres to the precision-driven callousness of pilotless planes, or an ever-present readiness to annihilate the opponent with nuclear weapons, or be it the well-funded experiments in torture to deal with adversaries from an ever-widening definition of terrorism, barbarism has acquired a prescriptive legitimacy of its own.

And though he illustrated his thesis by showing up a penchant for bloody methods applied by the all too briefly civilised West, there is hardly a region including South Asia today where Prof Hobsbawm's argument falters.

'Disappearances' is routinely another word to define possible cold-blooded murder by state agencies of individuals they fear fighting frontally. Terrorists equally viciously partake of the methods invented by the nation states in the early 20th-century Europe.

Pakistain, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh are firmly in step with brutal methods used by the region's largest democracy to get even with perceived foes. Indian security forces are not averse to courting barbarism to tame the restive regions of Kashmire and the predominantly tribal north-eastern states.

In New Delhi, just a few weeks ago, a woman teacher suspected of being a tribal conduit for Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh was ordered by a court to be handed over to her state police. Soni Sori pleaded she would be tortured in Chhattisgarh but was assured it wouldn't happen.

In the event the state police mercilessly battered her. Her gruesome torture according to her medical reports involved pushing large stones into her. Meanwhile,
...back at the Council of Boskone, Helmuth had turned a paler shade of blue. Star-A-Star had struck again...
Anna Hazare, the self-styled messianic Indian apparently fighting corruption, has decreed that those drinking alcohol should be strapped to a tree and whipped till they promise to give up.

His barbaric advice earned him the sobriquet of an Indian Ziaul Haq not the Gandhi his followers project him to be. Do Pakistain's human rights
...not to be confused with individual rights, mind you...
activists and other assorted admirers of Mr Hazare detect a hint of fascism
...a political system developed in Italia symbolized by the Roman fasces -- thin reeds, each flimsy in itself but unbreakable when bound into a bundle. The word is nowadays thrown around by all sorts of people who have no idea what they're talking about...
he is feared to be leading the country into?

Prof Hobsbawm suggests that barbarism results from the disruption and breakdown of the systems of rules and moral behaviour by which all societies had regulated relations among their members and, to a lesser extent, between their members and those of other societies.

It denotes "the reversal of what we may call the project of the 18th-century Enlightenment, namely the establishment of a universal system of such rules and standards of moral behaviour, embodied in the institutions of states dedicated to the rational progress of humanity: to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, to Equality, Liberty and Fraternity or whatever."

Where are we headed then? India's tryst with its intellectually shored up barbarism offers a glimpse. An entire school of right-wing ideologues has the tacit blessing of the state in promoting a callous polity. Not that the Maoists on their day are any better even without state patronage.

The soufflé rose twice -- first in the vendetta lynching of thousands of Sikhs in 1984. It rose again in 1992 with the destruction of the Babri Masjid by a frenzied mob looking to elusively reclaim national honour against alleged historical injustices blamed on Babar possibly the most romantic and misunderstood 16th-century king to rule India.

It was the 13th of December on Tuesday, a day observed in memory of the security personnel killed when five Kashmiri gunnies tried to attack the Indian parliament. Calls to hang Afzal Guru, a convicted conspirator, rang through the news media again.

To ask how the former Kashmiri myrmidon who had surrendered to the security forces and was under regular surveillance after that had got involved in the heinous plot would leave you open to charges of sedition. The fact that his former captor boasted on TV how he tortured Guru was virtually treated as the right thing to do.

It is no secret that those who see torture as a legitimate tool to fight the enemies of state belong mostly to the right-wing; its practitioners are more evenly spread and include mainstream communists.

Possibly the most ardent advocate of India's reliance on questionable methods in the war on terror is Arun Shourie, respected in right-wing circles as an intellectual par excellence. A former minister and journalist Mr Shourie, like Anna Hazare, was an icon in the fight against corruption.

Prof Hobsbawm gave his lecture in 1994. Mr Shourie published his landmark piece in the Indian Express, curiously on Dec 12, 2001, a day before parliament was attacked!

"No war has been won by deploying 'minimum force' -- the quantum that liberals concede when the terrorist leaves them no
option but to allow that something just has to be done. Wars are won by overpowering the opponent with overwhelming force.

And so it must be in the case of terrorism, and of the states that sponsor it: not 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'; for an eye, both eyes, for a tooth, the whole jaw."

The questionable way the Indian state dealt with the allegedly Pakistain-backed Sikh insurgency draws a prescription from him: "It is a fatal error to judge what needs to be done in an area or in times infested by terrorists, by standards honed from normal places and quieter times."

The soft Indian state -- a right-wing description of the country's not yet completely vanquished liberal ideals -- may not be quite ready to accept all of Mr Shourie's prescriptions. Still, countries like Pakistain, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh appear to have not let him down in the lure of barbarism.

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India-Pakistan

Indian court divides holy site

2010-10-01

[Al Jazeera] A disputed Indian holy site in the ancient city of Ayodhya claimed by both Mohammedans and Hindus is to be divided among three religious groups, a court has ordered on Thursday.
Sounds rather Solomonic to me...
The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court issued the much anticipated order on Thursday. Each of the three judges in the case - SU Khan, Sudhir Agarwal, and DV Sharma - issued their own summary of the judgement.

The judges gave control of the main disputed section of the site, where a mosque was torn down in 1992, to Hindus. Other parts of the site will be controlled by Mohammedans and another Hindu sect.
Hope it's fundamentalist Vedics, with horse sacrifices and swilling soma and that sort of stuff...
Officials urged all communities to remain calm and respect the high court's verdict.

The News Agency that Dare Not be Named news agency quoted a lawyer for the Mohammedan community as saying he would appeal the ruling. A final decision could take years to emerge.
Court cases in India are sometimes passed down from father to son to grandson...
'Partly disappointed'
The main Mohammedan group contesting the religious site said it was "partly disappointed" by the verdict.
"There's another part of us goin' 'woo-hoo!' though..."
"The suit of Mohammedans were liable to be dismissed. But they are still entitled to one third of the site," Zafaryab Jilani, the lawyer for the Babri Masjid Action Committee, told news hounds.

"We can say we are partly disappointed not fully because some of the stand of the Mohammedans has been vindicated."

Authorities in India tightened security across the country in advance of the ruling, with the police arresting more than 7,000 people as a preventive measure.

"Security measures have been enormous," Al Jazeera's Divya Gopalan reported from Lucknow.

"In the financial city of Mumbai we have seen over 10,000 coppers on the streets. So far we haven't heard of any unrest yet," she said.

The demolition of the mosque in the 1990s led to one of the country's worst riots since independence.

India's supreme court cleared the way on Tuesday for the lower court to decide on the ownership of the Babri mosque, over which the Hindus and Mohammedans have quarrelled for more than centuries.
"More than centuries" sounds like it should be eons or geological ages or something like that. I don't think they've been quarreling quite that long...
Hindu groups say the mosque stood on the birthplace of their god-king Rama and was built only after the destruction of the longstanding Hindu temple by Mohammedan invaders in the 16th century.
That's where they usually build their mosques, isn't it?
The dispute flared up in 1992 after a Hindu mob destroyed the mosque and nearly 2,000 were killed in rioting between Hindus and Mohammedans across the country.

Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister, has described the 60-year-old Babri mosque-Ram temple case as one of the biggest security challenges in India - in addition to the Maoist campaign and the Kashmiri separatist uprising.

In the western state of Gujarat
where rioting seems to be a traditional pastime
police have stepped up security at railway stations, bus terminals, shopping centres and were frisking all vehicles entering into the state.

SHS Khandwawala, Gujarat's police chief, said more than 70,000 security personnel have been deployed to ensure there is no violence in the state which witnessed nearly 2,000 deaths in 2002 violence between Hindus and Mohammedans.

Link

India-Pakistan

Indian court to deliver Babri mosque verdict tomorrow

2010-09-29

[Pak Daily Times] Decks have been cleared for the Babri Masjid judgement on Thursday, as the Indian Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted its stay on a pronouncement by the Special Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court that will decide whether Hindus or Mohammedans will get control of the disputed site on which the mosque was demolished in December 1992, triggering riots across India, killing over 2,000.

The high court would have pronounced its decision on the 60-year-old land title suit last Friday, but the apex court slapped a stay a day earlier on an urgent Special Leave Petition (SLP) by retired bureaucrat Ramesh Chandra Tripathi, to give time for an out-of-court settlement.

"Having considered in detail the arguments of the parties, we are of the view that the SLP has to be dismissed," said a summary order pronounced by a three-judge bench headed by Parsi Chief Justice Santosh Homi Kapadia. It gave no reason for overturning the stay granted by another bench of justices RV Raveendran and HL Gokhale last Thursday to allow the two communities a chance to settle it amicably.

The Centre also conveyed to the highest court through Attorney General Goolam E Vahanvati that it did not want any uncertainty over the high court's decision. "We cannot keep the security forces in suspended animation for long," the AG stated, pleading that the judgement on ownership of the disputed site, one way or the other, should come without any further hitches.

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