Saturday, July 11, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
on Arundhati Roy's writing.
... Roy, on the other hand, seems to be more a victim of her own intellectual laziness. Her recent article in this paper is mostly third-hand information, cherry-picked from a single Sunday Telegraph interview of a disgraced former Sri Lankan foreign minister. Instead of delving into the real issues, Roy chooses to skim across what pricks her outrage the most. At least MIA pretends she knows what she’s talking about, but Roy prefers emotion and drama, and makes even well-established facts sound like tribal tom-toms in the jungle. In addition to echoing MIA’s genocide charge, she claims that the Sri Lankan government is busily setting up concentration camps to enslave the Tamils of the island.
From an article on Sri Lanka by David Blacker
From an article on Sri Lanka by David Blacker
On Sufis
Unraveling the Sufis of India: Villains in the Guise of Saints
by Ibrahim Lone
25 Dec, 2008
India Has always was a land of diversity. Secularism and peaceful co-existence is not a concept in this land, it is a way of life. The credit goes to the understanding of our great Vedic ancestors (I count Hinduism as practiced today as not Vedic in spirit or essence) who were men of great letters and a mighty spirit. Christianity reached the Indian shores much before it reached Europe. There are Christians, know as Syrian Christians, whose links with the Christian doctrine far outdates that of any other country outside the Middle East. Jews, Zoroastrians, Bahai’s all have found home and safe refuge in this great country.
However the only exception to these immigrants was the Muslim, who did not come here to adapt himself to the local culture and live in peace and harmony. He had only one aim, which was to subdue the native populations and wave the flag through the length and breadth of this once great Nation which extended from Dhaka in the East to Khyber in the west.
Islam changed smeared the face of this country with a paint so horrific that the colours still refuse to wither out. While there is no denying the fact that Islam was spread in India mostly by the sword, there is another aspect of Islamic proselytization, which is ignored. This face is that of Sufism and the Sufis.
Most people in the India have been mislead into believing that the Sufis mostly by their own soft-headed scholars, to cherish the fond belief that the Sufis were spiritual seekers, and that unlike the Mullahs, they loved Hindu religious lore and liked their Hindu neighbors. The Chistiyya Sufis in particular have name chosen for such fulsome praise. The orthodox among the Muslims protest that the Sufis are being slandered. But the gullible Hindus remain convinced that they themselves know better. Professor Aziz Ahmad, a renowned scholar of Islam in India, clinched this matter in the following words: "In Indian sufism anti-Hindu polemics started with Muinal-din Chisti. Early sufis in Punjab and early Chistis devoted themselves to the task of conversion on a large scale. Missionary activity slowed down under Nizam al-din Auliya, not because of any new concept of eclecticism, but because he held that the Hindus were generally excluded from grace and could not be easily converted to Islam unless they had the opportunity to be in the company of the Muslim saints for considerable time." In other words the native Hindus were as a nation, not fitting to become Muslims. This is the sort of hatred that the Sufis had for the Hindus.
Of course, the Auliya who lived in a sprawling mansion and received rich gifts out of plunder was convinced that he himself was such a Muslim saint. His temper and teachings can be known easily from the writings of Amir Khusru, the poet, and Ziauddin Barani, the historian. Both of them were leading disciples of the Auliya. Both of them express intense hatred for Hindus, and regret that the Hanafi school of Islamic Law had come in the way of wiping out the "curse of infidelity" completely from the face Hindustan (India).
A similar Sufi saint who died a mere 79 years before Waliullah's birth, was Ahmad Sirhindi (1564-1624). He was always foaming at the mouth against Akbar's policy of peace with the Hindus. He proclaimed himself the Mujaddid-i-alf-i-sdni, (renovator of the second millennium of Islam). Besides writing several books, he addressed many letters to several powerful courtiers in the reign of Akbar and Jahangir. His Maktiibctt-i-Imdm Rabbant have been collected and published in three volumes. According to Professor S.A.A. Rizvi, "Sharia can be fostered through the sword' was the slogan he raised for his contemporaries.
Let us see a few specimens of his writings in which he expressed the love for the Indian infidels: "The honour of Islam lies in insulting kufr and kafirs. One who respects the kafirs dishonours the Muslims. The real purpose of levying jiziya on them is to humiliate them to such an extent that they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It is intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honour and might of Islam." In Letter No. 81, he said: "Cow-sacrifice in India is the noblest of Islamic practices. The kafirs may probably agree to pay jiziya but they shall never concede to cow-sacrifice." After Guru Mun Deva had been tortured and done to death by Jahangir, he wrote in letter No. 193 that "the execution of the accursed kafir of Gobindwal is an important achievement and is the cause of the great defeat of the Hindus."
Sirhindi ranks with Shah Waliullah as one of the topmost sufis and theologians of Islam. Referring to his role, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first Education Minister of independent India, writes in his Tazkirah: "but for these letters Muslim nobles would not have stood by Islam and but for the efforts of Shaikh Ahmad, Akbar's heterodoxy would have superseded Islam in India."' Later on, when K.A. Nizami published a collection of Shah Walilullah's letters addressed to various Muslim notables, including Ahmad Shah Abdali, he dedicated it to Maulana Azad. The Maulana wrote back, "I am extremely happy that you have earned the merit of publishing these letters. I pray from the core of my heart that Allah may bless you with the felicity of publishing many books of a similar kind." That should give us a measure not only of 'Muslim Revivalism' but also of many Maulanas who masqueraded as ardent nationalists in order to fight the battle for Islam from within the Indian National Congress.
It is strange that most of the present-day Muslim scholars refuse to cite the actual statements made about Hindus and Hinduism by their heroes such as Ahmad Sirhindi and Shah Waliullah while praising them to the skies as saviours of Islam in India. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Allama lqbal were shining examples of this intriguing silence. The late Professor Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi published two significant books on the history of Islam in India - Ulema in Politics (1972), and The Muslim Community of the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent (1977). He has devoted many pages to Ahmad Sirhindi and Shah Waliullah in both the books. But he has not cited a single sentence written or spoken by the 'great sufis' on how they looked at Hindus and Hinduism. I have no doubt that Nizami has also suppressed those letters of Shah Waliullah in which the latter has poured out his heart about kufr and the kafirs. It is only Professor S.A.A Rizvi who has taken us into the secret chambers so to say. Professor Rizvi is a Shia. And the venom which characters like Ahmad Sirhindi have poured on Hindus and Hinduism is quite comparable to that which they poured out on Shi’as and Shi’ism.
Professor Rizvi has cited select passages from the original Persian of Ahmad Sirhindi's letters. It is only recently that the letters have become available in Urdu translation. Ahmad Sirhindi wrote to many Muslim notables in the reign of Akbar and Jahangir. Some of these letters were in strong protest against Akbar's liberal, equitable policies vis-à-vis Hindus. One of Sirhindi's patrons was Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan whom many Hindus cherish as a Hindi poet and a devotee of Krishna. It is unfortunate that quite a few recipients of these letters cannot be identified straight away because they are addressed by their titles and not by their names. As the letters are not dated, it is difficult to say whether the bearer of a particular title belonged to the reign of Akbar or Jahangir. The same title was given to several persons in succession. I reproduce below some passages from these significant letters in order to show how the mind of this great sufi functioned. He was the leading light of the Naqshbandi sufi silsila, and the foremost disciple of Khwaja Baqi Billah who brought this silsila to India in the reign of Akbar. I may add that the Prophet appeared quite frequently to both Baqi Billah and Ahmad Sirhindi in their dreams or states of trance, and gave guidance to them.
Some of his statements translated from the original Urdu script have been reproduced below:
"It is said that the Sharia prospers under the "shadow of the sword" (al-Shara' tahat al-sait). And the glory of the holy Sharia depends on the kings of Islam."
"Islam and infidelity (kufr) contradict one another. To establish the one means eradicating the other, the coming together of these contradictories being impossible. Therefore, Allah has commanded his Prophet to wage war (jihad) against the infidels, and be harsh with them. The glory is Islam consists in the humiliation and degradation of infidels and infidelity. He, who honours the infidels, insults Islam. Honouring (the infidels) does not mean that they are accorded dignity, and made to sit in high places. It means allowing them to be in our company, to sit with them, and talk to them. They should be kept away like dogs. If there is some worldly purpose or work which depends upon them, and cannot be served without their help, they may be contacted while keeping in mind all the time that they are not worthy of respect. The best course according to Islam is that they should not be contacted even for worldly purposes. Allah has proclaimed in his Holy Word (Quran) that they are his and his Prophet's enemies. And mixing with these enemies of Allah and his Prophet or showing affection for them, is one of the greatest crimes."
"The abolition of jizyah in Hindustan is a result of friendship, which (Hindus) have acquired with the rulers of this land... What right had the rulers to stop exacting jizyah? Allah himself has commended imposition of jizyah for their (infidels) humiliation and degradation. What is required is their disgrace, and the prestige and power of Muslims. The slaughter of non-Muslims means gain for Islam. To consult them (the kafirs) and then act according to their advice means honouring the enemies (of Islam), which is strictly forbidden."
"The prayer (goodwill) of these enemies of Islam is false and fruitless. It should never be called for because it can only add to their numbers. If the infidels pray, they will surely seek the intercession of their idols, which is taking things too far. A wise man has said that unless you become a dewanah (crazy) you cannot attain Islam. The state of this mania means going beyond considerations of profit and loss. Whatever one gains in the service of Islam should suffice..."
"Ram and Krishan whom Hindus worship are insignificant creatures, and have been begotten by their parents... Ram could not protect his wife whom Ravan took away by force. How can he help others? It is thousands of times shameful that some people should think of Ram and Krishan as rulers of all the worlds. To think that Ram and Rahman are the same, is extremely foolish. The creator and the creature can never be one... The controller of the Cosmos was never called Ram and Krishan before, the latter were born. What has happened after their birth that they have come to be equated with Allah, and the worship of Ram and Krishan is described as the worship of Allah? May Allah save us!"
"Our prophets who number one hundred and twenty four thousand have encouraged the created ones to worship the Creator. The gods of the Hindus (on the other hand) have encouraged the people to worship them (the gods) instead. They are themselves misguided, and are leading others astray. See, how the (two) ways are different!"
"Before that kafir (Guru Arjun Dev) was executed, this recluse (meaning himself) had seen in a dream that the reigning king had smashed the skull of idolatry. Indeed, he was a great idolater, and the leader of the idolaters, and the chief of unbelievers. May Allah blast him! The Holy Prophet who is the ruler of religion as well as the world, has cursed the idolaters as follows in some of his prayers - "O Allah, demean their society, create divisions in their ranks, destroy their homes, and get at them like the mighty one."
"It is required by religion (Islam) that jihad should be waged against the unbelievers, and that they should be dealt with harshly. It is obligatory on Muslims to acquaint the king of Islam with the evil customs of false religions. Maybe the king has no knowledge of these evil customs. Some Ulama of Islam should come forward, and proclaim the evils present in their (unbelievers') ways... It will be no excuse or, the Day of Judgment that they did not proclaim the tenets of the Sharia because they were not called upon (to do so)."
"Therefore, it is necessary that infidelity should be cursed in order to serve the faith (Islam). Cursing unbelief in the heart is the lesser way. The greater way is to curse it in the heart as well as with the body. In short, cursing means to nourish enmity towards enemies of the true faith, whether that enmity is harboured in the heart when there is fear of injury from them (infidels), or it is harboured in the heart as well as served with the body when there is no fear of injury from them. In the opinion of this recluse, there is no greater way to obtain the blessings of Allah than to curse the enemies of the faith (be impatient with them). For Allah himself harbours enmity towards the infidels and infidelity..."
"Once I went to visit a sick man who was close to death. When I meditated on him, I saw that his heart was layered with darkness. I intended to remove those darkness. But he was not yet ready for it... When I meditated more deeply, I discovered that that darkness had gathered due to his friendship with the infidels. They could not be dispersed easily. He had to suffer torments of hell before he could get purged of them."
"Every person cherishes some longing in his heart. The only longing which this recluse (meaning himself) cherishes is that the enemies of Allah and his Prophet should be roughed up. The accursed ones should be humiliated, and their false gods disgraced and defiled. I know that Allah likes and loves no other act more than this. That is why I have been encouraging you again and again to act in this way. Now that you have yourself arrived at that place, and have been appointed to defile and insult that dirty spot and its inhabitants, I feel grateful for this grace (from Allah). There are many who go to this place for pilgrimage. Allah in his kindness has not inflicted this punishment on us. After giving thanks to Allah, you should do your best to ruin that place and their false gods ... whether the idols are carved or uncarved. Let us hope that you will not act slow. Physical weakness and severity of the cold weather, comes in my way. Otherwise, I would have presented myself, and helped you in doing the job. I would have liked to participate in the ceremony and mutilate the stones."
This is short history of the love that Sufis has for the native Indians. With the advent of Wahabism in India more and more Muslims are abandoning the practice of going to the tombs of these Sufis and offering Fatiha to them. However the funding to these shrines continues as Hindus visit these tombs. In fact many of these tombs in India get more Hindu visitors than Muslim visitors. Needless to say large amounts of money are dolled out by the gullible non believers at these tombs. What exactly this money goes on to fund is anybody’s guess. However all I can say here is that : Viva Hindus keep it up!
by Ibrahim Lone
25 Dec, 2008
India Has always was a land of diversity. Secularism and peaceful co-existence is not a concept in this land, it is a way of life. The credit goes to the understanding of our great Vedic ancestors (I count Hinduism as practiced today as not Vedic in spirit or essence) who were men of great letters and a mighty spirit. Christianity reached the Indian shores much before it reached Europe. There are Christians, know as Syrian Christians, whose links with the Christian doctrine far outdates that of any other country outside the Middle East. Jews, Zoroastrians, Bahai’s all have found home and safe refuge in this great country.
However the only exception to these immigrants was the Muslim, who did not come here to adapt himself to the local culture and live in peace and harmony. He had only one aim, which was to subdue the native populations and wave the flag through the length and breadth of this once great Nation which extended from Dhaka in the East to Khyber in the west.
Islam changed smeared the face of this country with a paint so horrific that the colours still refuse to wither out. While there is no denying the fact that Islam was spread in India mostly by the sword, there is another aspect of Islamic proselytization, which is ignored. This face is that of Sufism and the Sufis.
Most people in the India have been mislead into believing that the Sufis mostly by their own soft-headed scholars, to cherish the fond belief that the Sufis were spiritual seekers, and that unlike the Mullahs, they loved Hindu religious lore and liked their Hindu neighbors. The Chistiyya Sufis in particular have name chosen for such fulsome praise. The orthodox among the Muslims protest that the Sufis are being slandered. But the gullible Hindus remain convinced that they themselves know better. Professor Aziz Ahmad, a renowned scholar of Islam in India, clinched this matter in the following words: "In Indian sufism anti-Hindu polemics started with Muinal-din Chisti. Early sufis in Punjab and early Chistis devoted themselves to the task of conversion on a large scale. Missionary activity slowed down under Nizam al-din Auliya, not because of any new concept of eclecticism, but because he held that the Hindus were generally excluded from grace and could not be easily converted to Islam unless they had the opportunity to be in the company of the Muslim saints for considerable time." In other words the native Hindus were as a nation, not fitting to become Muslims. This is the sort of hatred that the Sufis had for the Hindus.
Of course, the Auliya who lived in a sprawling mansion and received rich gifts out of plunder was convinced that he himself was such a Muslim saint. His temper and teachings can be known easily from the writings of Amir Khusru, the poet, and Ziauddin Barani, the historian. Both of them were leading disciples of the Auliya. Both of them express intense hatred for Hindus, and regret that the Hanafi school of Islamic Law had come in the way of wiping out the "curse of infidelity" completely from the face Hindustan (India).
A similar Sufi saint who died a mere 79 years before Waliullah's birth, was Ahmad Sirhindi (1564-1624). He was always foaming at the mouth against Akbar's policy of peace with the Hindus. He proclaimed himself the Mujaddid-i-alf-i-sdni, (renovator of the second millennium of Islam). Besides writing several books, he addressed many letters to several powerful courtiers in the reign of Akbar and Jahangir. His Maktiibctt-i-Imdm Rabbant have been collected and published in three volumes. According to Professor S.A.A. Rizvi, "Sharia can be fostered through the sword' was the slogan he raised for his contemporaries.
Let us see a few specimens of his writings in which he expressed the love for the Indian infidels: "The honour of Islam lies in insulting kufr and kafirs. One who respects the kafirs dishonours the Muslims. The real purpose of levying jiziya on them is to humiliate them to such an extent that they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It is intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honour and might of Islam." In Letter No. 81, he said: "Cow-sacrifice in India is the noblest of Islamic practices. The kafirs may probably agree to pay jiziya but they shall never concede to cow-sacrifice." After Guru Mun Deva had been tortured and done to death by Jahangir, he wrote in letter No. 193 that "the execution of the accursed kafir of Gobindwal is an important achievement and is the cause of the great defeat of the Hindus."
Sirhindi ranks with Shah Waliullah as one of the topmost sufis and theologians of Islam. Referring to his role, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first Education Minister of independent India, writes in his Tazkirah: "but for these letters Muslim nobles would not have stood by Islam and but for the efforts of Shaikh Ahmad, Akbar's heterodoxy would have superseded Islam in India."' Later on, when K.A. Nizami published a collection of Shah Walilullah's letters addressed to various Muslim notables, including Ahmad Shah Abdali, he dedicated it to Maulana Azad. The Maulana wrote back, "I am extremely happy that you have earned the merit of publishing these letters. I pray from the core of my heart that Allah may bless you with the felicity of publishing many books of a similar kind." That should give us a measure not only of 'Muslim Revivalism' but also of many Maulanas who masqueraded as ardent nationalists in order to fight the battle for Islam from within the Indian National Congress.
It is strange that most of the present-day Muslim scholars refuse to cite the actual statements made about Hindus and Hinduism by their heroes such as Ahmad Sirhindi and Shah Waliullah while praising them to the skies as saviours of Islam in India. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Allama lqbal were shining examples of this intriguing silence. The late Professor Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi published two significant books on the history of Islam in India - Ulema in Politics (1972), and The Muslim Community of the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent (1977). He has devoted many pages to Ahmad Sirhindi and Shah Waliullah in both the books. But he has not cited a single sentence written or spoken by the 'great sufis' on how they looked at Hindus and Hinduism. I have no doubt that Nizami has also suppressed those letters of Shah Waliullah in which the latter has poured out his heart about kufr and the kafirs. It is only Professor S.A.A Rizvi who has taken us into the secret chambers so to say. Professor Rizvi is a Shia. And the venom which characters like Ahmad Sirhindi have poured on Hindus and Hinduism is quite comparable to that which they poured out on Shi’as and Shi’ism.
Professor Rizvi has cited select passages from the original Persian of Ahmad Sirhindi's letters. It is only recently that the letters have become available in Urdu translation. Ahmad Sirhindi wrote to many Muslim notables in the reign of Akbar and Jahangir. Some of these letters were in strong protest against Akbar's liberal, equitable policies vis-à-vis Hindus. One of Sirhindi's patrons was Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan whom many Hindus cherish as a Hindi poet and a devotee of Krishna. It is unfortunate that quite a few recipients of these letters cannot be identified straight away because they are addressed by their titles and not by their names. As the letters are not dated, it is difficult to say whether the bearer of a particular title belonged to the reign of Akbar or Jahangir. The same title was given to several persons in succession. I reproduce below some passages from these significant letters in order to show how the mind of this great sufi functioned. He was the leading light of the Naqshbandi sufi silsila, and the foremost disciple of Khwaja Baqi Billah who brought this silsila to India in the reign of Akbar. I may add that the Prophet appeared quite frequently to both Baqi Billah and Ahmad Sirhindi in their dreams or states of trance, and gave guidance to them.
Some of his statements translated from the original Urdu script have been reproduced below:
"It is said that the Sharia prospers under the "shadow of the sword" (al-Shara' tahat al-sait). And the glory of the holy Sharia depends on the kings of Islam."
"Islam and infidelity (kufr) contradict one another. To establish the one means eradicating the other, the coming together of these contradictories being impossible. Therefore, Allah has commanded his Prophet to wage war (jihad) against the infidels, and be harsh with them. The glory is Islam consists in the humiliation and degradation of infidels and infidelity. He, who honours the infidels, insults Islam. Honouring (the infidels) does not mean that they are accorded dignity, and made to sit in high places. It means allowing them to be in our company, to sit with them, and talk to them. They should be kept away like dogs. If there is some worldly purpose or work which depends upon them, and cannot be served without their help, they may be contacted while keeping in mind all the time that they are not worthy of respect. The best course according to Islam is that they should not be contacted even for worldly purposes. Allah has proclaimed in his Holy Word (Quran) that they are his and his Prophet's enemies. And mixing with these enemies of Allah and his Prophet or showing affection for them, is one of the greatest crimes."
"The abolition of jizyah in Hindustan is a result of friendship, which (Hindus) have acquired with the rulers of this land... What right had the rulers to stop exacting jizyah? Allah himself has commended imposition of jizyah for their (infidels) humiliation and degradation. What is required is their disgrace, and the prestige and power of Muslims. The slaughter of non-Muslims means gain for Islam. To consult them (the kafirs) and then act according to their advice means honouring the enemies (of Islam), which is strictly forbidden."
"The prayer (goodwill) of these enemies of Islam is false and fruitless. It should never be called for because it can only add to their numbers. If the infidels pray, they will surely seek the intercession of their idols, which is taking things too far. A wise man has said that unless you become a dewanah (crazy) you cannot attain Islam. The state of this mania means going beyond considerations of profit and loss. Whatever one gains in the service of Islam should suffice..."
"Ram and Krishan whom Hindus worship are insignificant creatures, and have been begotten by their parents... Ram could not protect his wife whom Ravan took away by force. How can he help others? It is thousands of times shameful that some people should think of Ram and Krishan as rulers of all the worlds. To think that Ram and Rahman are the same, is extremely foolish. The creator and the creature can never be one... The controller of the Cosmos was never called Ram and Krishan before, the latter were born. What has happened after their birth that they have come to be equated with Allah, and the worship of Ram and Krishan is described as the worship of Allah? May Allah save us!"
"Our prophets who number one hundred and twenty four thousand have encouraged the created ones to worship the Creator. The gods of the Hindus (on the other hand) have encouraged the people to worship them (the gods) instead. They are themselves misguided, and are leading others astray. See, how the (two) ways are different!"
"Before that kafir (Guru Arjun Dev) was executed, this recluse (meaning himself) had seen in a dream that the reigning king had smashed the skull of idolatry. Indeed, he was a great idolater, and the leader of the idolaters, and the chief of unbelievers. May Allah blast him! The Holy Prophet who is the ruler of religion as well as the world, has cursed the idolaters as follows in some of his prayers - "O Allah, demean their society, create divisions in their ranks, destroy their homes, and get at them like the mighty one."
"It is required by religion (Islam) that jihad should be waged against the unbelievers, and that they should be dealt with harshly. It is obligatory on Muslims to acquaint the king of Islam with the evil customs of false religions. Maybe the king has no knowledge of these evil customs. Some Ulama of Islam should come forward, and proclaim the evils present in their (unbelievers') ways... It will be no excuse or, the Day of Judgment that they did not proclaim the tenets of the Sharia because they were not called upon (to do so)."
"Therefore, it is necessary that infidelity should be cursed in order to serve the faith (Islam). Cursing unbelief in the heart is the lesser way. The greater way is to curse it in the heart as well as with the body. In short, cursing means to nourish enmity towards enemies of the true faith, whether that enmity is harboured in the heart when there is fear of injury from them (infidels), or it is harboured in the heart as well as served with the body when there is no fear of injury from them. In the opinion of this recluse, there is no greater way to obtain the blessings of Allah than to curse the enemies of the faith (be impatient with them). For Allah himself harbours enmity towards the infidels and infidelity..."
"Once I went to visit a sick man who was close to death. When I meditated on him, I saw that his heart was layered with darkness. I intended to remove those darkness. But he was not yet ready for it... When I meditated more deeply, I discovered that that darkness had gathered due to his friendship with the infidels. They could not be dispersed easily. He had to suffer torments of hell before he could get purged of them."
"Every person cherishes some longing in his heart. The only longing which this recluse (meaning himself) cherishes is that the enemies of Allah and his Prophet should be roughed up. The accursed ones should be humiliated, and their false gods disgraced and defiled. I know that Allah likes and loves no other act more than this. That is why I have been encouraging you again and again to act in this way. Now that you have yourself arrived at that place, and have been appointed to defile and insult that dirty spot and its inhabitants, I feel grateful for this grace (from Allah). There are many who go to this place for pilgrimage. Allah in his kindness has not inflicted this punishment on us. After giving thanks to Allah, you should do your best to ruin that place and their false gods ... whether the idols are carved or uncarved. Let us hope that you will not act slow. Physical weakness and severity of the cold weather, comes in my way. Otherwise, I would have presented myself, and helped you in doing the job. I would have liked to participate in the ceremony and mutilate the stones."
This is short history of the love that Sufis has for the native Indians. With the advent of Wahabism in India more and more Muslims are abandoning the practice of going to the tombs of these Sufis and offering Fatiha to them. However the funding to these shrines continues as Hindus visit these tombs. In fact many of these tombs in India get more Hindu visitors than Muslim visitors. Needless to say large amounts of money are dolled out by the gullible non believers at these tombs. What exactly this money goes on to fund is anybody’s guess. However all I can say here is that : Viva Hindus keep it up!
J Sri Raman
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
The Decline and Fall of the British Empire
An interesting book that provides a comprehensive look at the British Empire - in the end although it gives examples of the atrocities they committed it exonerates them as being a well intentioned liberal Empire. Well, as the wag said history is written by the victors or as someone else put it " 'The victor will always be the judge and the vanquished the accused'"
What follow are some extracts from this book.
__________________________________________________
In the 1600s the Mughal Empire was a byword for might, majesty and magnificence. Its court was a self-proclaimed paradise of gems, silks, perfumes, odalisques, ivory and peacock feathers. English visitors were humbled by its luxury; when “John Company (as the East India Company was called) presented the Emperor Jahangir with a coach – the Emperor had all its fittings of base metal replaced with ones of silver and gold. The Mughals cities were bigger and more beautiful than London or Paris. Their bankers were richer than those of Hamburg and Cadiz. Their cotton producers clothed much of Africa and Asia and their hundred million population matched that of all Europe. What is more the seventeenth century was a golden age of Mughal art, poetry, painting and architecture.
After Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 however the empire started to disintegrate, as internal revolts spread and the Marathas devastated large tracts of central India. Delhi was sacked by the Persians in 1739 and the Afghans in 1756, the former carrying of the famed Peacock and the Koh-i-noor diamond as treasures worth billions. The Afghans carried out rape and massacre on an inconceivable scale. Britain and France exploited and exacerbated the disorder – forming alliances with local rulers and fighting increasingly for political as well as for commercial ends although these were inextricably intertwined. Thus cash from commerce paid native troops (sepoys) to take territory which yielded tax revenues and opportunities for further gain.
Bengal where the British first established themselves was one of India’s richest provinces whose fertile alluvial plain was watered by the great rivers, Ganga and Brahmaputr. The Mughals called this region “the paradise of the earth.” The East India Company officers came to this region as tyrants who were described as “hybrid monsters” (J W Kaye: Lives of Indian Officers 1889). Clive himself garnered several hundred thousand pounds as well as rights to valuable annual tax revenues from land, others exhorted lavish “presents” exacted vast profits and levied taxes on the local population. They made fortunes comparable to those of great English proprietors or large West Indian planters. They outdid the Roman proconsuls who in year or two squeezed outo f a province the means of raising marble palaces and baths on the shores of Camania, drinking from Amber, of feasting on songbirds, of exhibiting armies of gladiators and flocks of camelopards. They transformed Calcutta into a Gomorrah of corruption. The deluge of gold coins from India dazzled the whole western world. In Corsica, the young Napoleon Bonaparte dreamed of going to India and returning rich. Bismark in his youth had much the same idea until he thought, “after all, what harm have the Indians done me?” The British had no such conscience.
Bengal was bled white and by 1756 its people were provoked into a desperate revolt that was brutally crushed and further taxes imposed. Indian revenues (which perhaps amounted to a billion pounds sterling between Plassey and Waterloo) spelled the redemption of Britain but for Indians, pushed Bengal into a hellish existence. Millions died of starvation and famines wiped out a third of the population while British “bullies, cheats and swindlers” continued to prey on a hapless population.
William Hastings - first Governor-General of British India from 1773 to 1785.
p. 36
Hastings connived at the judicial murder of one Maharaja. He despoiled rich provinces. To local rulers who could afford it, he hired out his sepoy army, the best equipped force in India, equipped with firelocks and bayonets. Hastings also acquired a small fortune (tiny by Clive’s standards), sending 70,000 pounds sterling home in diamonds alone. He was particularly indulgent towards his second wife Marian, who dressed like an Indian princess,, braiding her red hair with gems and amusing herself by throwing kittens into a bowl full of enormous pearls which slid under their paws when they tried to stand up.
Partly due to the excesses of Hastings the homeland took political control away from the East India Company (The Pitt’s India Act of 1784) and vested it in the British Government. This change was accompanied by the growth of a racist aggressive nationalism and missionary zeal among the British in the following years. Smarting from the guilt induced by the excesses exposed by Hasting’s trial the colonizers took on the mantle of noblesse oblige – they were there because the Indians needed to be civilized and ruled because they were backwards and inferior.
Cornwallis (the next Governor-General of India, 1786-93), defeated Tipu Sultan of Mysore and took his little sons (aged eight and ten) captive holding them hostage to ensure that the defeated ruler stayed under his control. Cornwallis extorted vast territorial concessions plus a huge financial indemnity from Tipu. On the suface Cornwallis made a great show of taking care of the princes – but under the guise of guardianship he was using the princes as human pawns in a ruthless game of realpolitik. The charge that their Empire was a system of hypocrisy was one which irked the British because it came so close to the truth.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Shame on India!!
Saurabh Kalia’s parents waging a lone battle to highlight war crimes
The Hindu July 6, 2009
PALAMPUR: Capt Saurabh Kalia, the first to report Pakistani incursion in Kargil in 1999, was taken captive by the Pakistani troops and a few weeks later his mutilated body was handed over to Indian authorities. Ten years on, the martyr’s parents fight a lone battle to highlight war crimes against their son and other Indian soldiers.
N.K. Kalia and his wife Vijaya, who have settled in this town in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, have been waging a war to highlight Pakistani violations of human rights and brutalities committed on their son, Saurabh Kalia, and other soldiers during the Kargil war in 1999.
Saurabh Kalia of 4 Jat Regiment, who was the first Army officer to report incursion by the Pakistani Army on Indian soil, had along with five soldiers - Sepoys Arjun Ram, Bhanwar Lal Bagaria, Bhika Ram, Moola Ram and Naresh Singh - for a routine patrol of the Bajrang Post in the Kaksar sector when they were taken captive by the Pakistani troops May 15, 1999.
They were barbarically tortured for weeks before being killed. Their mutilated bodies were handed over to Indian authorities June 9, 1999.
“Of course, his supreme sacrifice has made us proud, but what has exhausted, disappointed and dejected us is that the nation for which he has sacrificed his life least bothered to highlight the plight of war crimes at the international fora,” N.K. Kalia, 61, a retired senior scientist from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, told IANS.
“We have been shuttling between various government offices and organisations with the hope of highlighting the plight of the war victims. The Indian government has failed to deliver justice as it has forgotten atrocities meted out on six heroes. For days, they were tortured. Their limbs were chopped and bodies burnt,” rued Mr Kalia.
“Though the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre expressed concern over the heinous crime and promised to take up the issue at the international level, in all these years the issue got diluted,” he recalled.
“Even today our only demand is that it should keep its promise so that no POWs (prisoners of war) could face Saurabh’s fate. Had this happened to any American or Israeli soldier, the culprits would have been brought to justice.”
Vijaya, who runs an LPG agency allotted by the Indian Oil Corporation to honour his martyrdom, asked: “Is this the way the government treats its heroes?”
To highlight the plight of the war victims, Saurabh Kalia’s father has started an online signature campaign.
“The pain of losing a young son is hard to describe in words. But we feel contended with the fact that many citizens have supported us through online signature campaign. Till date more than 13,000 people have put up their signatures,” N.K. Kalia said.
Saurabh Kalia, who was posted in Kargil as his first posting after passing out of the Indian Military Academy, did not even live long enough to receive his first pay packet as an officer.
Today, his photographs, his uniforms, shoes and mementoes are kept in his room, which has been named ‘Saurabh Smriti Kaksha’ (a museum), in the Kalias’ four-bedroom house in the serene hills of Palampur.
The Himachal Pradesh government as a mark of respect has raised ‘Saurabh Van Vihar’ in a sprawling area of 35 acres here besides renaming a street in the town as Capt Saurabh Kalia Marg. A nursing college in the proposed Vivekanand Medical Research Trust Hospital here is being raised in martyr’s memory. - IANS
The Hindu July 6, 2009
PALAMPUR: Capt Saurabh Kalia, the first to report Pakistani incursion in Kargil in 1999, was taken captive by the Pakistani troops and a few weeks later his mutilated body was handed over to Indian authorities. Ten years on, the martyr’s parents fight a lone battle to highlight war crimes against their son and other Indian soldiers.
N.K. Kalia and his wife Vijaya, who have settled in this town in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, have been waging a war to highlight Pakistani violations of human rights and brutalities committed on their son, Saurabh Kalia, and other soldiers during the Kargil war in 1999.
Saurabh Kalia of 4 Jat Regiment, who was the first Army officer to report incursion by the Pakistani Army on Indian soil, had along with five soldiers - Sepoys Arjun Ram, Bhanwar Lal Bagaria, Bhika Ram, Moola Ram and Naresh Singh - for a routine patrol of the Bajrang Post in the Kaksar sector when they were taken captive by the Pakistani troops May 15, 1999.
They were barbarically tortured for weeks before being killed. Their mutilated bodies were handed over to Indian authorities June 9, 1999.
“Of course, his supreme sacrifice has made us proud, but what has exhausted, disappointed and dejected us is that the nation for which he has sacrificed his life least bothered to highlight the plight of war crimes at the international fora,” N.K. Kalia, 61, a retired senior scientist from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, told IANS.
“We have been shuttling between various government offices and organisations with the hope of highlighting the plight of the war victims. The Indian government has failed to deliver justice as it has forgotten atrocities meted out on six heroes. For days, they were tortured. Their limbs were chopped and bodies burnt,” rued Mr Kalia.
“Though the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre expressed concern over the heinous crime and promised to take up the issue at the international level, in all these years the issue got diluted,” he recalled.
“Even today our only demand is that it should keep its promise so that no POWs (prisoners of war) could face Saurabh’s fate. Had this happened to any American or Israeli soldier, the culprits would have been brought to justice.”
Vijaya, who runs an LPG agency allotted by the Indian Oil Corporation to honour his martyrdom, asked: “Is this the way the government treats its heroes?”
To highlight the plight of the war victims, Saurabh Kalia’s father has started an online signature campaign.
“The pain of losing a young son is hard to describe in words. But we feel contended with the fact that many citizens have supported us through online signature campaign. Till date more than 13,000 people have put up their signatures,” N.K. Kalia said.
Saurabh Kalia, who was posted in Kargil as his first posting after passing out of the Indian Military Academy, did not even live long enough to receive his first pay packet as an officer.
Today, his photographs, his uniforms, shoes and mementoes are kept in his room, which has been named ‘Saurabh Smriti Kaksha’ (a museum), in the Kalias’ four-bedroom house in the serene hills of Palampur.
The Himachal Pradesh government as a mark of respect has raised ‘Saurabh Van Vihar’ in a sprawling area of 35 acres here besides renaming a street in the town as Capt Saurabh Kalia Marg. A nursing college in the proposed Vivekanand Medical Research Trust Hospital here is being raised in martyr’s memory. - IANS
Mother caned in Bangladesh for talking to Hindu man
By Shafiq Alam – Jun 6, 2009
DHAKA (AFP) — A Muslim mother has been caned for talking to a Hindu man in Bangladesh, police said Saturday, prompting fresh concerns about a rise in cases of harsh treatment of women under strict Islamic law.
The punishment was carried out in a remote village in Muslim-majority Bangladesh on the orders of village elders, local police chief Enamul Monowar told AFP by telephone.
The village elders found Kamala Begum, 38, a mother of four, guilty under Islamic sharia law of chatting with an unidentified Hindu man, Monowar said. Hindus make up around 10 percent of Bangladesh's population.
"The villagers got bundles of 25 sticks and hit her four times on the back. They claimed it was a symbolic punishment. But she's humiliated and has been in great mental pain," Monowar said.
It was the third such reported case in two weeks in the country and stirred concern among women's groups in Muslim-majority but officially secular Bangladesh, about what they say is a rise in the brutal treatment of women under locally applied Islamic laws.
"In the last few months, we have seen villagers invoking sharia to mete out barbaric punishments to women," said Salma Ali, the head of rights group Bangladesh National Woman Lawyers Association.
Police have arrested one man and are looking for others who meted out the punishment to the woman in Shason in northeastern Bangladesh, Monowar said.
Earlier this month a man and a woman were caned for adultery after being convicted by a village court, police said.
Village courts are common in Bangladesh, particularly in more conservative rural areas, but are not recognised as legitimate courts of law.
Also this month, a 22-year-old unwed woman was caned 39 times and left fighting for her life after saying a neighbour was the father of her six-year-old son.
The case caused a national outcry with Premier Sheikh Hasina ordering the woman shifted from her village home to the capital for treatment. The woman is now in a stable condition.
So far, Bangladesh has been little affected by the spread of hardline Islamic sentiment that has badly shaken its South Asian neighbour Pakistan.
But women's rights groups say there has been a spike in the number of "fatwas" -- judgments in line with sharia law -- in rural areas.
"In the last few months, we've seen villagers invoking sharia to mete out barbaric punishments to women," said lawyer Ali.
"It's disturbing sign and a real concern. It shows some parts of the country are becoming more conservative," she said.
Bangladesh has been ruled by female leaders for 16 of the last 19 years and prides itself for empowering women.
But although women hold high government and private sector posts, a move last year to give equal property rights to women was scuttled by Islamist protests.
The Awami League government has vowed to eradicate militancy from the country, hit by series of blasts by outlawed Islamic groups in 2005, and has warned of "zero tolerance" for harsh sharia punishments.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Post WW II photographs that British authorities tried to keep hidden
Ian Cobain
The Guardian, Monday 3 April 2006
Archive pictures of German prisoners held by the British following the second world war.
For almost 60 years, the evidence of Britain's clandestine torture programme in postwar Germany has lain hidden in the government's files. Harrowing photographs of young men who had survived being systematically starved, as well as beaten, deprived of sleep and exposed to extreme cold, were considered too shocking to be seen.
As one minister of the day wrote, as few people as possible should be aware that British authorities had treated prisoners "in a manner reminiscent of the German concentration camps".
Many other photographs known to have been taken have vanished from the archives, and even this year some government officials were arguing that none should be published.
The pictures show suspected communists who were tortured in an attempt to gather information about Soviet military intentions and intelligence methods at a time when some British officials were convinced that a third world war was only months away.
Others interrogated at the same prison, at Bad Nenndorf, near Hanover, included Nazis, prominent German industrialists of the Hitler era, and former members of the SS.
At least two men suspected of being communists were starved to death, at least one was beaten to death, others suffered serious illness or injuries, and many lost toes to frostbite.
The appalling treatment of the 372 men and 44 women who were interrogated at Bad Nenndorf between 1945 and 1947 are detailed in a report by a Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Tom Hayward. He had been called in by senior army officers to investigate the mistreatment of inmates, partly as a result of the evidence provided by these photographs.
Insp Hayward's report remained secret until last December, when the Guardian secured its release under the Freedom of Information Act. The photographs seen here were removed before the Foreign Office released the report, apparently because the Ministry of Defence did not wish them to be published. That decision was reversed last week, following an appeal by the Guardian.
One of the men photographed, Gerhard Menzel, 23, a student, was arrested by British intelligence officers in Hamburg in June 1946. He had fallen under suspicion because he was believed to have travelled to the British-controlled zone of Germany from Omsk in Siberia, where he had been a prisoner of war. His weight, measured several weeks after his arrest at 10st 3lb, had fallen to 7st 10lb by the time he was transferred from Bad Nenndorf to a British-run internment camp eight months later.
In the meantime, he told Hayward, his hands had been chained behind his back for up to 16 days at a time, periods during which he was repeatedly punched in the face. He had also been held in a bare, freezing cell for up to two weeks at a time and doused in cold water every 30 minutes from 4.30am until midnight, a practice the detective discovered to have been common.
A doctor at the internment camp reported that Mr Menzel was one of a group of 12 inmates transferred from Bad Nenndorf, all emaciated and dressed in rags. Previous arrivals had also been half-starved. Some had facial scars, apparently the result of beatings. A few had scars on their shins, said to be the result of torture with shin screws which had been retrieved from a Gestapo prison at Hamburg.
Mr Menzel "was only skin and bones," the doctor wrote. "He could neither walk nor stand up without assistance, and could only speak with difficulty because his tongue and lips were swollen and broken open.
"It was impossible to take his body temperature because it was not higher than 35 degrees Celsius and the thermometer only starts at 35."
The prisoner was also confused, anxious and suffering memory loss, his lungs were badly infected and his blood pressure was dangerously low. Only after being washed, fed and heated with lamps could his body temperature be raised to 36.3C, but the doctor feared his chances of survival were slim.
Another man pictured, Heinz Biedermann, 20, a clerk, had been arrested in October 1946 because he was in the British zone, while his father, who lived at Stendal in the Russian zone, had been identified as "an ardent communist". By the time he was transferred from Bad Nenndorf four months later his weight had fallen from 11st 3lb to 7st 12lb. He said he had been held in solitary confinement for much of the time, threatened with execution, and forced to live and sleep in sub-zero temperatures while barely clothed.
One British army guard told Inspector Hayward that Mr Biedermann had "wasted like a candle" during his imprisonment. Another, a private in the Essex Regiment, told the detective that he complained that he and his comrades were behaving as badly as Germans. "I became very unpopular after this ... the sergeant appeared to take a poor view of my remarks."
On Mr Biedermann's transfer to the internment camp, an officer at Bad Nenndorf requested he be detained "for an adequate time" to prevent him giving the Soviets "detailed information on this centre and methods of interrogation".
Foreign Office records show that the navy officer commanding the internment camp, Captain Arthur Curtis, was so shocked by the condition of the men being sent to him that he ordered these photographs be taken to support his complaints about the treatment of these "living skeletons". Photographs of several other prisoners, taken at the same time, appear to have vanished from the Foreign Office files.
On the other side of the British zone, meanwhile, a Royal Artillery officer was complaining about the state of Bad Nenndorf inmates who were being dumped from a truck at the entrance to a military hospital. Some weighed little more than six stones, and two died shortly after their arrival.
The records show that Bad Nenndorf was run by a War Office department called the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC).
By late 1946, CSDIC appears to have lost interest in Nazis, and was targeting communists. It appears the prisoners were questioned about Soviet methods and intentions, rather than about the Communist party itself.
Some of Bad Nenndorf's inmates were indeed spying for the Soviets: one prisoner, who was half-Norwegian and half-Russian, told Hayward he was an officer in the NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB, and had been operating continuously in Germany since 1938. Another, a German journalist who had been freed by the Soviets from a Gestapo prison, was caught flying into Croydon aerodrome with false British papers. Both men were starved and badly tortured.
Others clearly were not spies, however. One man who was starved to death was a gay ex-soldier caught with forged papers while crossing into the British zone in search of his lover, while the other was a young German who was being interrogated because he had volunteered to spy for the British in the Russian zone, and was wrongly suspected of lying because of an official error over his medical records.
Four British officers were court martialled after Hayward's investigation. Declassified documents show that the hearings were held largely behind closed doors to prevent the Soviets from discovering that Russians were being detained.
Another consideration was admitted to be the determination to conceal the existence of several other CSDIC prisons. While it is now known that one interrogation centre was in central London, little is known about those in Germany, other than their locations.
Following the courts martial, the prison at Bad Nenndorf, which was in a converted bath-house, was replaced with a purpose-built interrogation centre near an RAF base at Gütersloh, and orders were issued for inmates to be examined by a doctor before interrogation. It is unclear when this centre closed.
The only officer at Bad Nenndorf to be convicted was the prison doctor. At the age of 49, his sentence was to be dismissed from the army. The commanding officer, Colonel Robin Stephens, was cleared of a charge of "disgraceful conduct of a cruel kind" and told he was free to apply to rejoin his former employers at MI5.
Britain has moral duty to allow Mau Mau case to proceed
June 23, 2009
Caroline Elkins
Times (London)
Since the 1950s, Mau Mau has often been synonymous with atavistic savagery. It was a grassroots movement that sought to end British rule in Kenya, and with it the privileges of an African minority loyal to colonialism. Comprised almost entirely of Kikuyu – Kenya’s largest ethnic group — Mau Mau perpetrated some heinous crimes. But, so, too, did the agents of British colonialism, and on an order of magnitude that dwarfed Mau Mau acts of violence.
For the duration of the emergency (1952-60), the colonial government embarked upon a campaign to suppress Mau Mau using a two-pronged offensive. The first campaign was waged in the Mount Kenya and Aberdares forest against some 20,000 Mau Mau guerrillas, over whom British forces gained the initiative by the end of 1954.
It was the second-prong of Britain’s offensive aimed at African civilians that was by far the largest, most violent and longest in duration. Targeted against some 1.5 million Kikuyu who were allegedly Mau Mau sympathisers, Britain’s civilian campaign grew in its intensity, systematising and brutality over time. By the end of 1955, colonial authorities had detained nearly the entire Kikuyu population in either one of some 150 detention camps – known as the Pipeline – or in one of more than 800 barbed-wired villages.
Behind the wire, British agents perpetrated unspeakable acts of violence against men, women, and children. Castrations, forced sodomies with broken bottles and vermin, tortures using fecal matter and gang rapes were but some of the tactics used to force detainees to comply.
Multimedia
Such acts were not the result of a few “bad apples”. The systematic use of violence was conceived and approved at the highest levels of British governance in Nairobi and London. There is much evidence to support this, despite the fact that British officials received, and executed, orders to purge their files at the time of decolonisation in 1963.
The years I spent trolling through documents in British and Kenyan archives revealed a story of Britain’s routine violation of international law in Kenya, and consistent efforts at cover-up, all with the knowledge of top officials in Nairobi and London. At the time, critics within and outside government demanded an end to British colonial violence. Barbara Castle, the Labour MP, condemned her country’s actions, stating: “In the heart of the British Empire there is a police state where the rule of law has broken down, where the murder and torture of Africans by Europeans goes unpunished and where the authorities pledged to enforce justice regularly connive at its violation.”
Today, survivors of the Mau Mau camps and villages seek their day in court, and with it, reparations. Despite – or perhaps because of – the evidence, it remains to be seen whether or not the British Government of today, like that of yesteryear, will attempt to silence their efforts, this time through legal manoeuvrings.
It is morally incumbent upon the British government to allow this case to go forward, not just for the survivors, but also for the British and Kenyan public who have a right to full knowledge of their pasts as they search for new directions in the future. At the very least, the weight of the archival evidence and survivor testimony warrants an official apology as the start of a new systematic effort, this time to make amends.
Caroline Elkins is a Professor of History at Harvard University and and Pulitzer prize- winning author of Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya
Caroline Elkins
Times (London)
Since the 1950s, Mau Mau has often been synonymous with atavistic savagery. It was a grassroots movement that sought to end British rule in Kenya, and with it the privileges of an African minority loyal to colonialism. Comprised almost entirely of Kikuyu – Kenya’s largest ethnic group — Mau Mau perpetrated some heinous crimes. But, so, too, did the agents of British colonialism, and on an order of magnitude that dwarfed Mau Mau acts of violence.
For the duration of the emergency (1952-60), the colonial government embarked upon a campaign to suppress Mau Mau using a two-pronged offensive. The first campaign was waged in the Mount Kenya and Aberdares forest against some 20,000 Mau Mau guerrillas, over whom British forces gained the initiative by the end of 1954.
It was the second-prong of Britain’s offensive aimed at African civilians that was by far the largest, most violent and longest in duration. Targeted against some 1.5 million Kikuyu who were allegedly Mau Mau sympathisers, Britain’s civilian campaign grew in its intensity, systematising and brutality over time. By the end of 1955, colonial authorities had detained nearly the entire Kikuyu population in either one of some 150 detention camps – known as the Pipeline – or in one of more than 800 barbed-wired villages.
Behind the wire, British agents perpetrated unspeakable acts of violence against men, women, and children. Castrations, forced sodomies with broken bottles and vermin, tortures using fecal matter and gang rapes were but some of the tactics used to force detainees to comply.
Multimedia
Such acts were not the result of a few “bad apples”. The systematic use of violence was conceived and approved at the highest levels of British governance in Nairobi and London. There is much evidence to support this, despite the fact that British officials received, and executed, orders to purge their files at the time of decolonisation in 1963.
The years I spent trolling through documents in British and Kenyan archives revealed a story of Britain’s routine violation of international law in Kenya, and consistent efforts at cover-up, all with the knowledge of top officials in Nairobi and London. At the time, critics within and outside government demanded an end to British colonial violence. Barbara Castle, the Labour MP, condemned her country’s actions, stating: “In the heart of the British Empire there is a police state where the rule of law has broken down, where the murder and torture of Africans by Europeans goes unpunished and where the authorities pledged to enforce justice regularly connive at its violation.”
Today, survivors of the Mau Mau camps and villages seek their day in court, and with it, reparations. Despite – or perhaps because of – the evidence, it remains to be seen whether or not the British Government of today, like that of yesteryear, will attempt to silence their efforts, this time through legal manoeuvrings.
It is morally incumbent upon the British government to allow this case to go forward, not just for the survivors, but also for the British and Kenyan public who have a right to full knowledge of their pasts as they search for new directions in the future. At the very least, the weight of the archival evidence and survivor testimony warrants an official apology as the start of a new systematic effort, this time to make amends.
Caroline Elkins is a Professor of History at Harvard University and and Pulitzer prize- winning author of Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya
THE TRUE FACE OF BRITISH IMPERIALISM
13 November, 2007
Andy Newman @ 2:12 pm
The following article by Mukoma Wa Ngugi appeared on the Pambazuka website, under the title “Justice for Mau Mau War Veterans”.
As the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) prepares to sue the British Government for personal injuries sustained by survivors of the Mau Mau war for independence whilst in British detention camps in Kenya, Mukoma Wa Ngugi unravels the Colonial myths of Christianisation and civilization and exposes the reality of torture, murder, slavery, landlessness, dehumanization and internment.
In February 2008, the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) will file a representative law-suit against Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) in the British High Court on behalf of the survivors of the Mau Mau war for independence.
The KHRC is suing HMG for “personal injuries sustained [by the survivors] while in detention camps of the Kenya Colonial Government which operated” under the direct authority of HMG during the State of Emergency (1952-60).
But to understand the law-suit in all its implications, we have to look at Africa’s historical relationship to the West and separate the image from the reality. The Enlightenment of the 1600’s sought to civilize Africans, introduce reason and logic to them, and equip them with the key to heaven through Christianization. The reality masked underneath this image was one of torture, murder and slavery.
Later, colonialism used the image of a gentle stewardship to guide Africans along until they were civilized. The reality, as the KHRC suit shows, was landlessness, torture and dehumanization, whole population internment, outright murder and mass killings.
For the Westerners and Africans alike who have sought comfort in the images, the reality difficult to take. But the reality has been well documented. Adam Hochschild, writing in King Leopold’s Ghost, estimates that 5 to 10 million Africans died as a direct result of Belgian colonization in the Congo in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. And chopping off hands, quite literally, was a form of public control.
And between 1904 and 1907, 65,000 Herero (80 percent of the total Herero population) were systematically eliminated by the Germans in Namibia. In Algeria, during the war of independence (1954 to 1962), the French routinely tortured and ‘disappeared’ FLN freedom fighters.
These random examples illustrate an alarmingly simple principle: One nation cannot occupy another and seek to control its resources without detaining, torturing, assassinating and terrorizing the occupied. A modern day example of this principle at work is Iraq today where torture and killings under the occupation of the United States are rampant, even though the U.S. wants to sell an image of spreading democracy.
Colonialism, Legacy and the Mau Mau
In Kenya, British colonialism followed this same principle. Caroline Elkins’ Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag and David Anderson’s Histories Of The Hanged: The Dirty War In Kenya document tortures, hangings rushed through kangaroo courts, detention camps, internments, and assassinations, not to mention psychological warfare through fear and intimidation.
Independence however did not bring justice for Kenyans - certainly not for the Mau Mau veterans. Kenyatta, even before being sworn as president in1963, had denounced the Mau Mau as terrorists. Contrary to British propaganda, Kenyatta was never a member of the Mau Mau. In an interview, Muthoni Wanyeki, Executive Director of the KHRC, said that:
“On coming to power, [Kenyatta] proceeded, through the land ownership policies(and practices) of his government (and himself), to betray everything that the Mau Mau had stood for and to entrench the landholding patterns established under the colony”[1]
It is not a surprise that Kenyatta by the early 1970’s had a few detentions and assassinations under his belt. In the words of politician J.M. Kariuki (assassinated in 1975), Kenyatta created a nation of ten millionaires and ten million beggars. He wanted the Mau Mau platform of Land and Freedom erased from Kenyan memory.
In 1978 President Moi took over when Kenyatta died and continued with the same dictatorial policies. Irony is such that in 1982, Mau Mau historian Maina Wa Kinyatti was imprisoned by the Moi government in the same Kamiti Prison where the British in 1957 hanged and buried the leader of the Mau Mau, Dedan Kimathi, in an unmarked grave.
It was not until the Kibaki government took over in 2002 that the colonial ban on the Mau Mau was removed. Finally in 2007 a statue of Kimathi stands on Kimathi Street, something unimaginable under the Kenyatta and Moi regimes.
But more important than a hero’s acre or a monument is a reckoning with the colonial legacy of torture, dehumanization and pauperization. Mau Mau veterans that are still alive, along with their children and grandchildren, live in abject poverty, landless and without formal education.
The past and current Kenyan governments have as yet to ask the British government to at the very least issue an apology for the atrocities committed against the Kenyan people. The Moi and Kenyatta governments, dependent on Western aid and while maintaining a vicious elite system, were not in a position to pressure Britain for an apology. Or even to pressure HMG to reveal the exact location of Kimathi’s grave so that his widow, Mukami Kimathi, can bury him.
This dependent relationship has allowed the British to commit crimes against Kenyans with near impunity. Forty plus years since Kenya’s independence, the British Army still uses Northern Kenya for military exercises. As a result of leaving unexploded munitions behind, “hundreds of Maasai and Samburu tribes people - many of them children - are said to have been killed or maimed by unexploded bombs left by the British army at practice ranges in central Kenya over the past 50 years” the BBC reported [2] With the legal aid of Leigh Day and Co Advocates, 228 survivors took the UK government to the British High Court. In 2002, a settlement was reached in which the UK government agreed to pay 7 million dollars plus legal fees.
Economic Justice and Forgiveness
Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery[3] shows how Western economies grew at the expense of African slave labor. Walter Rodney in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa [4] updates the argument to include colonialism –Europe developed at the direct expense of Africa. Today we find that economic giants, Barclays Bank [5], J.P. Morgan and Chase Manhattan Bank [6] are direct beneficiaries of the slave trade.
Muthoni Wanyeki argues that “it has to be recognized that the UK (and all ex-colonisers) grew at great human expense and political-economic disruption and exploitation within the ex-colonies. It is on that recognition alone that current debates on ‘aid’/'development financing’, trade and investment can shift as they need to.” The call for forgiveness and reconciliation then has to rest on the realization that colonialism was first and foremost an exploitative economic relationship.
Because the former colonizers continue to benefit from colonialism, while the victims of colonization continue to live in poverty, the governments of former colonizers have a moral duty to rectify the historical wrong in the present time. On the basis that colonialism as an investment is still paying off, the British cannot argue that they are not personally responsible for atrocities committed by their parents – they have inherited the economic well-being of a colonial system. They need to do right by this history because it is living.
The British government has as yet to issue a formal apology for the atrocities it committed. In the same way that Clinton expressed shame and sorrow for slavery without offering a formal apology, so did Blair for colonialism. One can express sorrow, regret and shame for causing an accidental death, but surely this is not enough for a systematic exploitation that causes millions to suffer and die.
It should be stated clearly that the authoritarian governments of Kenyatta and Moi are guilty of suppressing Mau Mau memory. And that there were thousands of Kenyans who collaborated with the British. But it should also be said that collaborators did not create colonialism, it is colonialism that created its functionaries. The real crime is colonialism.
And because colonialism if we are to be honest with history is a crime against humanity, the British parliament should at the very least pass a bill offering a formal apology to its victims in Africa. And the apology should also make provision for restitution.
Truth, Restitution, Reconciliation and Justice
While revolutionary in attempting to heal a wounded nation, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission undermined the very concept of forgiveness and justice it espoused because it did not demand that the perpetrators address in word and deed the question of restitution. Muthoni Wanyeki on the TRC says that:
Within the human rights movement in Kenya (and in Africa more broadly), the TRC process in SA while hailed for its reconciliation potential has always been critiqued for its enabling of impunity and its lack of direct recognition of, compensation for survivors.
Even though a desired by-product, the struggle against apartheid was not waged solely for blacks to forgive whites, or for whites to ask forgiveness, but to bring economic, social and political equality for all South Africans. So then here is the irony of the TRC – the perpetrators go home to their mansions, the victims back to the township.
To put it differently, after the TRC hearings the victims go back to a life of poverty, they remain without the means to feed, cloth or educate their children. Freedom comes without the content – it’s just a name – it has no meaning. Under these circumstances, forgiveness, healing and justice cannot exist without restitution.
The British government, which had the largest empire in the world, has cause to fear losing the Mau Mau law-suit. Once it begins where it will end? In neighboring Uganda? India? Malaysia? Or Jamaica? And if the British lose, will this set precedence for the victims of French, Belgian or Portuguese colonialism? The British government knows that losing one law-suit will open closed colonial closets all over the world.
It is precisely because this lawsuit has huge implications for the victims of colonialism all over the world that it deserves the support of all those who understand that history is still acting on us and that justice cannot exist without some form of restitution even if it comes in the form of the whole truth.
Identifying the graves of the disappeared, so that their relatives can rest; the numbers of how many killed, so that nations account for their dead; the names of the guilty, so that they may be brought to justice or forgiven; initiating the return of what was stolen: all these issues resonate with formerly colonized peoples.
For Muthoni Wanyeki says that “We see this case as being part of the process of understanding and coming to terms with our past…particularly given that our past impacts so clearly and evidently on our present.” African people in the continent and Diaspora should support the Kenya Human Rights Committee by calling on the British government to account for its torture of Mau Mau detainees.
We have to become each other’s keeper of memory and see each atrocity perpetrated on the other as part our collective memory – whether we identify as Afro-Latino, African American, or African.
We have to make common cause because ultimately the struggle for the truth will not be won because the British High Court finds it just, or because the British Government decides to come to terms with its past, it will be won because victims across Africa, the Diaspora and other survivors of colonial atrocities will make common cause with the Mau Mau struggle and vice versa. Truth will come to light because we will have demanded justice and restitution before offering forgiveness.
It is only when an apology and restitution are offered, and the victim in turn forgives that for both the perpetrator and victim true healing can take place. For me, that is the truth of justice.
Notes
1. Wanyeki, Muthoni (Kenya Human Rights Commission Executive Director). Interview by Author via e-mail. October 15th, 2007.
2. UK pay-out for Kenya bomb victims. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2139366.stm July 19th, 2002
3. Williams, Eric. Slavery and Capitalism. New York, Russell & Russell, 1961
4. Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, D.C. Howard University Press, 1981
5. Barclays admits possible link to slavery after reparation call. observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2047237,00.html April 1, 2007
6. Corporations challenged by reparations activists www.usatoday.com/money/general/2002/02/21/slave-reparations.htm February 21, 2002
* Kenyan writer Mukoma Wa Ngugi is the author of Hurling Words at Consciousness (Africa World Press, 2006) and the forthcoming New Kenyan Fiction (Ishmael Reed Publications, 2008). He is a political columnist for the BBC Focus on Africa Magazine.
Mau Mau D-Day as veterans file case against UK
Mau Mau war veterans display placards during a media briefing in Nairobi last week before they left for London to file a suit against the British Government for human rights abuses and torture. Photo/FILE
By ZARINA PATELPosted Monday,
June 22 2009 at 21:47
Nation (Kenya)
An old man with a walking stick trudges while being guided by an aide. ‘Mzee, have you been blind since childhood?,’ I curiously ask. “No,” says M’njau Ndei. “My eyes were gouged out for being a Mau Mau supporter.’
And Patrick wa Njogu, a Mau Mau general who already had one leg shot off by British troops, says after his arrest, “they would drag me around the camp by my remaining leg”.
Jane Muthoni Mara, while aged 15 at the time, used to supply food to the freedom fighters. Her brother had joined the Mau Mau and when she refused to divulge information on his whereabouts, she was tortured.
“He (a white man) filled a bottle with hot water and then pushed it into my private parts with his foot. I screamed and screamed,” she said.
Torture style
And that was not all. She and other women were made to sit with their legs stretched apart in front of white men as African guards marched over them in their army boots. After release, Jane never found her brother and had visions of torture whenever her husband approached her.
Beatings and floggings were both common and constant features of camp routine, as were forced and hard labour. Hewing rocks under the burning sun, carrying buckets on the head filled with stones or overflowing with urine and faeces; or being forcibly pushed into a cattle dip full of pesticides — all were enforced with kicks and blows from truncheons and rifle butts.
The beatings made M’Mucheke Kioru impotent. Others died. But this was not enough to break the back of the Mau Mau movement.
In face of increased defiance, British colonial officer Terence Gavaghan devised the “Dilution Technique” in which hard core detainees were exposed to violent shock. This was officially endorsed by the Colonial Government in London and first implemented in the Mwea camps in 1957.
It was later expanded to camps at Athi River, Aguthi, Mweru and Hola in order to “enforce discipline and preserve good order”. Hard core did not mean the worst killers, merely the most defiant.
Cold water
Wambugu wa Nyingi relates how Gavaghan ordered inmates to walk on gravel on their knees with their hands up for long distances. New detainees were tied upside down from their feet and beaten whilst cold water was poured on them.
Some of the detainees would start the “Mau Mau moan”, a cry of symbolic defiance which would be taken up by the rest of the camp. The leader who started it would be put on the ground, a foot placed on his throat and mud stuffed in his mouth and finally knocked unconscious. Many who survived the beatings died from diarrhoea and typhoid. Others went mad.
Kariuki Mungai says the screams of the detainees being beaten made it resemble a lunatic asylum. Outside the camps, large numbers of Africans were herded into “protected villages” where rape, sexual abuse, hanging and killing were rampant.
Names such as Gavaghan and Whitehouse, and the nicknames Jua Kali (burning sun), Goliath, Gatomato, Kihuga (big man) and Mapiga (one who beats) were both feared and abhorred. The state emergency for the freedom fighters was surely a hell on earth.
The concerned British voices largely went unheard. Labour MP Barbara Castle complained about the cover-ups and was kept informed by Kenya’s assistant police commissioner Duncan McPherson. The latter said conditions in the camps were far worse than anything he had experienced as a prisoner of war for four-and-a-half years under the Japanese.
A Kenyan judge, Arthur Cram, compared them to the “infamous Nazi labour camps”.
Bertrand Russell, Michel Foot and Tony Benn were some of the protesting voices. John Nottingham, who still lives in Nairobi, was posted as a young district officer to take over from Gavaghan.
“What you are doing is wrong,” he wrote to his boss adding “I can’t accept this job”.
When in March, 1959, 11 inmates died in the Hola camp, the investigating magistrate, W. H. Goudie, blamed officially-sanctioned brutality for the deaths.
So what now? Today, the Kenya Human Rights Commission and the Mau Mau War Veterans Association will file a suit in London against the British Government for human rights abuses and torture. It is expected that the British Government will present a range of legal arguments to stall the case, deny responsibility or refute the allegations. The case could drag on for years.
One of the best legal teams, Leigh Day & Co Solicitors, have been hired. The firm has previously litigated on behalf of the Maasai bomb victims and the Kenyan women who claim to have been raped by British soldiers.
The wazee are in London to make their plight known to the British public. And what will they be asking for? An apology at the very least and some form of reparation to enable them to live their sunset years with some degree of dignity, comfort and security.
Highly immoral
There can be no argument that the treatment meted out to these men and women, who were demanding their God-given right to be free, was highly immoral. But would it not be an even greater immorality to deny these veterans their right to recognition and a better life?
The Mau Mau freedom fighters are now in their eighties and nineties, many of them ailing. Kenya owes its independence to these valiant patriots who should be accorded justice.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
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