Oldfashioned british racism

The GuardianUK
Mike Phillips
6 February 2009

Poor Carol Thatcher. I used to have a sneaking sympathy for her. Imagine being the daughter of the Iron Lady, a woman who was, at different times, almost universally hated or adored. Then imagine being the sister of that other Thatcher sprog, the charmless Mark. The one who is known for having got himself gormlessly lost during the Paris-Dakar motor rally. The one who escaped being indicted by the skin of his teeth for some dodgy dealings in a failed African coup. There's nothing promising here, but viewing Carol through the lens of my TV screen, it seemed to me that she brought a sort of lumpy grace to being a minor celebrity, with nothing very much to say, primarily in demand because she happened to be her mother's daughter.

That was before her now notorious quip about a black French tennis player looking like a golliwog. The resulting furore seemed, at first glance, like a storm in a teacup. This may be partly because, to a black person who grew up in Britain, the casual racism is implicit in the remark. This is still the way that a substantial minority in the population talk about black and Asian people when they believe they're among friends. My white friends are continually confronted by the dilemma of how to reply to the taxi driver or the builder or the new acquaintance who launches into a racist diatribe; and the racist jibe is by no means confined to the bottom of the class ladder. The same conversational style can be heard in common rooms and posh clubs up and down the land.

"Golliwog" is special, though. A stock character of Victorian entertainment was the "nigger", usually a blacked-up white man lampooning African-American voices and behaviour. Over the next hundred years the "nigger" became the "golliwog", adapted for use by manufacturers of various products like Robertson's jam. This was partly because of the image's supposed appeal to children in Britain, given that they had already been brought up reading books like Enid Blyton's, which featured golliwogs as comic characters or vicious and "uncivilised" children.

The point is that the racist history of the word was enough to make it offensive. Everyone knew that the golliwog was a racist caricature of blackness. In my school playgrounds, during the 50s and 60s, "golliwog" was a routine piece of racist abuse, a fighting word, and, after all this time, it's hard to believe that Carol Thatcher was using the word innocently. But that is precisely the problem. The racist language that many white people took for granted in the middle of the last century has been, more or less, exiled from public broadcasting for a couple of decades. You'd have to be downright dim not to know that such language in contemporary Britain is offensive and slightly indecent.

On the other hand, Carol Thatcher's word blindness might be to do with the fact that she simply couldn't help it, that she was so deeply indoctrinated that the mere sight of a black man screams "golliwog" in her head. That is not a totally unlikely speculation.

Racism is also about the emotions, how people feel. From this perspective it's easier to understand why Carol found it difficult to apologise, and why the usual suspects are declaring her to be a victim of political correctness. It may even be true that the fact she's a Thatcher influences the strength of the reaction. Just think about some of the more unpleasant remarks made by Ken Livingstone not too long ago. But there you have it. Carol Thatcher signed up for being a public figure whose words and ideas are part of the public realm. She can't complain about the heat. Not unless she's prepared to shut up and get out of the kitchen.
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From Bedtime Story to Ugly Insult: How Victorian Caricature Became a Racist Slur
Jon Henley traces the history of the toxic symbol at the center of the Carol Thatcher sacking row
He was born in 1895, in a children's book published in London and titled, innocently enough, The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls. It opens with Peg and Sarah Jane, the dolls, playing in a toy shop when they stumble across "a horrid sight: the blackest gnome". In red trousers and blue tailcoat, with a red bow tie on a high-collared white shirt, he was, the struggling 22-year-old artist who created him confessed, "ugly".

The character was inspired, Florence Kate Upton wrote later, by a minstrel rag doll she played with while growing up with her English parents in New York. When they moved to London, she rediscovered the toy in an attic: black face, thick lips, wide eyes, wild dark hair.

"I picked him up from the table in my studio, and without intention of naming him, without the idea of a name passing through my head, I called him Golliwogg," she said.

The book - illustrated by Florence with words by her mother, Bertha - proved an instant hit in Britain and the empire, going into a second printing almost immediately with the title The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg. Over the next 14 years the Uptons published 12 more volumes of the trio's adventures, starring the Golliwogg - who was generally a brave, lovable character.

His career took off. But they had failed to copyright their creation and dolls (without the final "g") appeared in Britain, the United States, Europe and Australia. At first they were homemade, but the German teddy bear manufacturer Steiff was mass producing them as early as 1908, followed by British rivals.

Robertson's jams began featuring the golliwog as its trademark in the early 1900s, apparently after John Robertson saw children playing with a black-face doll in the US. According to David Pilgrim, who has studied the toy's history, Robertson was always convinced "Golly" was a straightforward mispronunciation of "dolly". The company would continue using the Golly as its trademark as late as 2001.

Golliwogs soon started cropping up in other children's books; several Enid Blyton titles feature golliwogs, although only three as central character. But by contrast with the Uptons' work, Pilgrim points out, Blyton's golliwogs were often "rude, mischievous villains".

Nonetheless, after the teddy, the golliwog was by far the most popular children's soft toy in Europe for the first half of the 20th century.

Its image, for white children, was overwhelmingly positive; the art historian Sir Kenneth Clark wrote that the golliwogs of his childhood were "examples of chivalry, far more chivalrous than the unconvincing knights of the Arthurian legend".

Many continue to see golliwogs that way. "I'm not going to tell you how many golliwogs we sell because I don't want to cause offence," says Joan Bland, who runs a well-known teddy shop, Asquiths, in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. "I will say that the word 'golly' simply means 'doll', and that the golliwog's duty is to spread love and happiness. And they do spread love and happiness. Masses of people buy them and collect them, people of all races. We have no complaints, everyone likes gollies. All it is, is a toy."

Following the outcry over a souvenir store at the Queen's Sandringham estate selling golliwogs, Hamleys withdrew them from sale yesterday. But the internet retailer Amazon was still advertising them, and the Signed, Sealed, Delivered website advertised a "traditional golly gollywog" with the message: "Help bring them back into circulation and stop all the 'Non-PC' nonsense."

The owner of Tree Top Toys in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, who declined to give her name, said the "Traditional Golly Doll" she stocked was not offensive as it was not called a golliwog. Martin Oliver of Merrythought, which makes and sells golliwogs and used to supply them to Harrods and Hamleys, said he did not think "anyone who works" at the Telford-based company "sees them as a racist product".

Most black people would see it differently. From the 1940s, particularly during the war, the golliwog's reputation was irreparably damaged by its association with the racial insult "wog".

Golliwog fans today dispute the link, and cite possible alternative origins ("Wily Oriental Gentleman") for the term, but by the 1960s golliwogs were at best seen as symbols of racial insensitivity. Books were withdrawn from libraries; Robertson's was petitioned. MPs of the time including Tony Benn and Shirley Williams backed a campaign to ban them.

"The golliwog," concludes Pilgrim, "was created during a racist era. He was drawn as a caricature of a minstrel, itself a demeaning image of blacks. There is racial stereotyping of black people in Upton's original books, and certainly later golliwogs often reflected negative beliefs about black people - thieves, miscreants, incompetents. Finally, there is little doubt that the words associated with golliwog - golli, wog, and golliwog itself - are often used as racial slurs."

That is certainly the experience of many black Britons. "For as long as I can remember and I'm in my mid-40s, it has always been something people have used to poke fun at people like me," said Michael Eboda, publisher of The Power List of Britain's 100 most powerful black men and women. "There are some white people who've been trying to say that when we were all young it wasn't offensive. I just feel like saying: Maybe not to you. To me, it always has been. To use that term of a black person is an unequivocal insult. There's no other way of interpreting it, and it really makes me wonder how many other people use those terms in their private worlds."

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Buckingham Palace has issued an extraordinary apology after the Queen's shop at Sandringham was found to be selling golliwogs.

A palace spokesperson said : 'The Queen wouldn't tolerate any kind of racism. She has worked tirelessly to improve race relations in this country for many, many years.'

Maybe the Queen should also offer counseling to her own family starting with the gaffe-prone Prince Philip. He has helped to showcase royal bigotry and racism over the years with remarks that, much like Thatcher's comment, are passed off as misspeaking, jokes or simply 'moments of confusion.' Prince Harry could use some input also.

For evidence of royal tendencies in this direction link here, here and here.

Judging from the howls of outrage from people who think the Thatcher episode was blown out of proportion, you have to conclude that a lot of Brits simply don't get it.

Some of the English online commentators who think Thatcher was treated unfairly wouldn't be caught dead dropping 'golliwog' in conversation with their professional associates - but nonetheless refuse to candidly acknowledge that the word is problematic.

It's a case of denial... denial about a history of colonialism, racism and snotty attitudes toward foreigners... aka "wogs" in some circles.
-Aidan
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How 'Gandhara' became 'Kandahar'

by Rajiv Malhotra


Afghanistan's epic history starts when it was an important region of ancient India called 'Gandhara'. One of its most frequently mentioned cities in the world today is 'Kandahar', made infamous by the Taliban. The earlier name of the city was 'Quandhar', derived from the name of the region of Gandhara. Erstwhile home to Al-Qaeda today, it was always a strategic site, being on main Persian routes to Central Asia and India. Hence, it has a long history of conquests. Kandahar was taken by Alexander in 329 B.C.E., was surrendered by the Greek to Chandragupta in 305 B.C.E., and is dignified by a rock inscription of Asoka. It fell under Arab rule in the 7th century C.E., and under the Ghaznavids in the 10th. Kandahar was destroyed by Genghis Khan and again by the Turkic conqueror Timur, after which it was held by the Mughals. Mughal Emperor Babur built 40 giant steps up a hill, cut out of the solid limestone, leading to inscriptions recording details of his proud conquests. In 1747 it became the first capital of a unified Afghanistan.

Besides early reference in the Vedas, Ramayana and Mahabharata, Gandhara was the locus of ancient Indian-Persian interaction, a center of world trade and culture. It was a major Buddhist intellectual hub for centuries. The giant Buddhist statues recently destroyed by the Taliban were in Bamiyan, one of the important Buddhist cities of ancient times. Thousands of statues and stupas once dominated its landscape.

Ancient Gandhara

Gandharvas are first described in the Vedas as cosmic beings. Later literature describes them as a jati (community), and the later Natyasastra refers to their system of music as gandharva. Gupt explains1:

“Gandharvas, as spoken of in Samhitas and later literature, had derived their name from a geographical people, the Gandharas… Most likely they belonged to Afghanistan (which still has a township called Kandhara)... It was perhaps at this time that the Gandharas raised the art of music to a great height. This region of the subcontinent at the time had become the locus of a great confluence of the musical traditions of the East and the Mediterranean. The very art, thus, came to be known by the name of the region and was so called by it even in the heartland of India. This name, gandharva, continued to be used for music for centuries to come. In the Vayu Purana one of the nine divisions of Bharatavarsa is called Gandharva.”

During the Mahabharata period, the Gandhara region was very much culturally and politically a part of India. King Œakuni, brother of Gandhârî, fought with Pandavas in the famous epic Mahabharata. The battle was fought in Kurukshetra, in the heartland of India. Gandhârî was married to King Dhrtrastra. Exchanges between Gandhara and Hastinapur (Delhi) were well established and intense.

Mehrgarh, located in this region and part of the Indus Valley civilization, is the oldest town excavated by archeologists (8000B.C.E) in the world.

Gandhara was the trade crossroad and cultural meeting place between India, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Buddhist writings mention Gandhara (which included Peshawar, Swat and Kabul Valleys) as one of the 16 major states of northern India at the time. It was a province of the Persian king Darius I in the fifth century B.C.E. After conquering it in the 4th century B.C.E., Alexander encountered the vast army of the Nandas in the Punjab, and his soldiers mutinied causing him to leave India.

Thereafter, Gandhara was ruled by the Maurya dynasty of India, and during the reign of the Indian emperor Ashoka (3rd century B.C.E.), Buddhism spread and became the world's first religion across Eurasia, influencing early Christianity and East Asian civilizations. Padmasambhava, the spiritual and intellectual founder of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, was from Gandhara. Greek historian Pliny wrote that the Mauryans had a massive army; and yet, like all other Indian kingdoms, they made no attempt at overseas conquest.

Gandhara and Sind were considered parts of India since ancient times, as historian Andre Wink explains:

“From ancient times both Makran and Sind had been regarded as belonging to India… It definitely did extend beyond the present province of Sind and Makran; the whole of Baluchistan was included, a part of the Panjab, and the North-West Frontier Province.”2

“The Arab geographers, in effect, commonly speak of 'that king of al-Hind...'”3

“…Sind was predominantly Indian rather than Persian, and in duration the periods that it had been politically attached to, or incorporated in, an Indian polity far outweigh Persian domination. The Maurya empire was extended to the Indus valley by Candragupta, laying the foundation of a great Buddhist urban-based civilization. Numerous Buddhist monasteries were founded in the area, and Takshashila became an important centre of Buddhist learning, especially in Ashoka's time. Under the Kushanas, in the late first century A.D… international trade and urbanization reached unprecedented levels in the Indus valley and Purushapara (Peshawar) became the capital of a far-flung empire and Gandhara the second home of Buddhism, producing the well-known Gandhara-Buddhist art. In Purushapara, Kanishka is supposed to have convened the fourth Buddhist council and to have built the Kanishka Vihara, which remained a Buddhist pilgrimage center for centuries to come as well as a center for the dissemination of the religion to Central Asia and China… in conjunction with Hinduism, Buddhism survived in Sind until well into the tenth century.”4

“Hiuen Tsang… was especially impressed by the thousand Buddhist monks who lived in the caves of Bamiyan, and the colossal stone Buddha, with a height of 53.5 m, then still decorated with gold. There is also evidence of devi cults in the same areas.”5

Shaivism was also an important ancient religion in this region, with wide influence. Wink writes:

“…Qandahar [modern Kandahar]…. was the religious center of the kingdom where the cult of the Shaivite god Zun was performed on a hilltop…”.6

“…the god Zun or Zhun ... shrine lay in Zamindawar before the arrival of Islam, set on a sacred mountain, and still existing in the later ninth century …. [The region was]… famous as a pilgrimage center devoted to Zun. In China the god's temple became known as the temple of Su-na. …[T]he worship of Zun might be related to that of the old shrine of the sun-god Aditya at Multan. In any case, the cult of Zun was primarily Hindu, not Buddhist or Zoroastrian.”7

“[A] connection of Gandhara with the polymorphic male god Shiva and the Durga Devi is now well-established. The pre-eminent character of Zun or Sun was that of a mountain god. And a connection with mountains also predominates in the composite religious configuration of Shiva, the lord of the mountain, the cosmic pivot and the ruler of time… Gandhara and the neighboring countries in fact represent a prominent background to classical Shaivism.”8

From 1st century C.E., emperor Kaniska I and his Kushan successors were acknowledged as one of the four great Eurasian powers of their time (the others being China, Rome, and Parthia). The Kushans further spread Buddhism to Central Asia and China, and developed Mahayana Buddhism and the Gandhara and Mathura schools of art. The Kushans became affluent through trade, particularly with exports to Rome. Their coins and art are witness to the tolerance and syncretism in religion and art that prevailed in the region. The Gandhara school incorporated many motifs from classical Roman art, but the basic iconography remained Indian.9

Ancient Taxila and Peshawar

Gandhara's capital was the famous city of Takshashila. According to the Ramayana, the city was founded by Bharata, and named after his son, Taksha, its first ruler. Greek writers later shortened it to Taxila. The Mahabharata is said to have been first recited at this place. Buddhist literature, especially the jataka stories, mentions it as the capital of the Gandhara kingdom and as a great center of learning. Its ruins may be visited today in an hour's taxi ride from Rawalpindi (Pakistan).

Taxila was strategically located at the 3-way junction of the great trade routes from eastern India (described by Megasthenes, as the “Royal Highway”), from western Asia, Kashmir and Central Asia. Greek historians accompanying Alexander described Taxila as “wealthy, prosperous, and well governed”. Soon after Alexander, Taxila was absorbed into the Maurya Empire as a provincial capital, lasting for three generations.

The sage Apollonius of Tyana visited Taxila in the 1st century C.E., and his biographer described it as a fortified city with a symmetrical architecture, comparable in size to the most populous city of the ancient Assyrian Empire. Even a thousand years after Buddha, Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Fa-hsien described it as a thriving center of Buddhism. But by the time Hsuan-tsang visited from China in the 7th century C.E., Taxila had been destroyed by the Huns. Taxila was renowned as a center of learning.

During other times, the capital of Gandhara was Purusapura (abode of Purusha, the Hindu name for the Supreme Being), whose name was changed by Akbar to Peshawar. Near Peshawar are ruins of the largest Buddhist stupa in the subcontinent (2nd century C.E.), attesting to the enduring presence of Buddhism in the region. Purusapura is mentioned in early Sanskrit literature, in the writings of the classical historians Strabo and Arrian, and the geographer Ptolemy. Kaniska made Purusapura the capital of his Kushan empire (1st century C.E.). It was captured by the Muslims in C.E. 988.

Genocide Part 1: The Conquest of Sind

All this glorious past, and Asia's civilization, changed forever with the bloody plunder of Sind by the Arabs starting in the 7th century:

“In 653-4, …a force of 6000 Arabs penetrated… To the shrine of Zun. The general broke off a hand from the idol and plucked out the rubies which were its eyes… The Arabs were now able to mount frequent plunder and slave expeditions as far as Ghazna, Kabul and Bamiyan… Arab raiding continued and was aimed at exacting tribute, plunder and slaves …Slaves and beasts remained the principal booty of the raids, and these were sent to the caliphate court in a steady stream.”10

Andre Wink describes that this aspiration to conquer India had existed since the time of the Prophet, as is evidenced by the sacred texts:

“… in the hadith collections the prophet Muhammad himself is credited with the aspiration of conquering India. Participants in the holy war against al-Hind [the Hindus] are promised to be saved from hell-fire… Thus also an eschatological work which is called the Kitab al-Fitan ('Book of Trials') credits Muhammad with saying that God will forgive the sins of the members of the Muslim army which will attack al-Hind, and give them victory.”11

The plunder was also achieved by an ingenious system of leaving the prosperous population alone, so that they would continue to bring donations to the temples, and then the Muslims would loot these temples. In order to save their temple from destruction, many Hindu warriors refused to fight:

“An even greater part of the revenue of these rulers was derived from the gifts donated by pilgrims who came from all over Sind and Hind to the great idol (sanam) of the sun-temple at Multan… When Muhammad al-Qasim conquered Multan, he quickly discovered that it was this temple which was one of the main reasons for the great wealth of the town. He 'made captives of the custodians of the budd, numbering 6000' and confiscated its wealth, but not the idol itself – which was made of wood, covered with red leather and two red rubies for its eyes and wearing a crown of gold inlaid with gems --, 'thinking it best to leave the idol where it was, but hanging a piece of cow's flesh on its neck by way of mockery'. AI-Qasim built his mosque in the same place, in the most crowded bazaar in the center of the town. The possession of the sun-temple -- rather than the mosque -- is what in later times the geographers see as the reason why the local governors or rulers could hold out against the neighboring Hindu powers. Whenever an 'infidel king' marched against Multan and the Muslims found it difficult to offer adequate resistance, they threatened to break the idol or mutilate it, and this, allegedly, made the enemy withdraw. In the late tenth century however the Isma'ilis who occupied Multan broke the idol into pieces and killed its priests. A new mosque was then erected on its site…”12

Genocide Part 2: Mahmud of Ghazni

The founder of the Ghaznavid dynasty was a former Turkish slave, recognized by the Iranian Muslims as governor of Ghazni (a town near Kandahar). His son Mahmud (ruled in 998-1030) expanded the empire further into India. A devout Muslim, Mahmud converted the Ghaznavids into Islam, thus bringing Islam into the sub-continent's local population. In the 11th century, he made Ghazni the capital of the vast empire of the Ghaznavids, Afghanistan's first Muslim dynasty. The atrocities by Mahmud of Ghazni makes the Taliban look benign by comparison. Will Durant explains:13

“The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within… For four hundred years (600-1000 A.D.) India invited conquest; and at last it came.”

“In the year 997 a Turkish chieftain by the name of Mahmud became sultan of the little state of Ghazni, in eastern Afghanistan. Mahmud knew that his throne was young and poor, and saw that India, across the border, was old and rich; the conclusion was obvious. Pretending a holy zeal for destroying Hindu idolatry across the frontier with a force inspired by a pious aspiration for booty. He met the unprepared Hindus at Bhimnagar, slaughtered them, pillaged their cities, destroyed their temples, and carried away the accumulated treasures of centuries. Returning to Ghazni he astonished the ambassadors of foreign powers by displaying “jewels and un-bored pearls and rubies shinning like sparks, or like wine congealed with ice, and emeralds like fresh sprigs of myrtle, and diamonds in size and weight like pomegranates.””

“Each winter Mahmud descended into India, filled his treasure chest with spoils, and amused his men with full freedom to pillage and kill; each spring he returned to his capital richer than before. At Mathura (on the Jumna) he took from the temple its statues of gold encrusted with precious stones, and emptied it coffers of a vast quantity of gold, silver and jewelry; he expressed his admiration for the architecture of the great shrine, judged that its duplication would cost one hundred million dinars and the labor of two hundred years, and then ordered it to be soaked with naptha and burnt to the ground. Six years later he sacked another opulent city of northern India, Somnath, killed all its fifty thousand inhabitants, and dragged its wealth to Ghazni. In the end he became, perhaps, the richest king that history has ever known.”

“Sometimes he spared the population of the ravaged cities, and took them home to be sold as slaves; but so great was the number of such captives that after some years no one could be found to offer more than a few schillings for a slave. Before every important engagement Mahmud knelt in prayer, and asked the blessing of God upon his arms. He reigned for a third of a century; and when he died, full of years and honors, Moslem historians ranked him greatest monarch of his time, and one of the greatest sovereigns of any age.”

Genocide Part 3: Post-Ghazni Invaders.

Mahmud of Ghazni set the stage for other Muslim invaders in their orgy of plunder and brutality, as Will Durant explains: 14

“In 1186 the Ghuri, a Turkish tribe of Afghanistan invaded India, captured the city of Delhi destroyed its temples, confiscated its wealth, and settled down in its palaces to establish the Sultanate of Delhi -- an alien despotism fastened upon northern India for three centuries, and checked only by assassination and revolt. The first of these bloody sultans, Kutb-d Din Aibak, was a normal specimen of his kind -- fanatical, ferocious and merciless. His gifts as the Mohammedan historian tells us, “were bestowed by hundreds of thousands and his slaughters likewise were by hundreds of thousands.” In one victory of this warrior (who had been purchased as a slave), “fifty thousand men came under the collar of slavery, and the plain became black as pitch with Hindus.””

“Another sultan, Balban, punished rebels and brigands by casting them under the feet of elephants, or removing their skins, stuffing these with straw, and hanging them from the gates of Delhi.”

“When some Mongol inhabitants who had settled in Delhi, and had been converted to Islam, attempted a rising, Sultan Alau-d-din (the conquerer of Chitor) had all the males -- from fifteen to thirty thousand of them -- slaughtered in one day.”

“Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlak acquired the throne by murdering his father, became a great scholar and an elegant writer, dabbled in mathematics, physics and Greek philosophy, surpassed his predecessors in bloodshed and brutality, fed the flesh of a rebel nephew to the rebel's wife and children, ruined the country with reckless inflation, and laid it waste with pillage and murder till the inhabitants fled to the jungle. He killed so many Hindus that, in the words of a Moslem historian, “there was constantly in front of his royal pavilion and his Civil Court a mound of dead bodies and a heap of corpses, while the sweepers and executioners were weaned out by their work of dragging” the victims “and putting them to death in crowds.” In order to found a new capital at Daulatabad he drove every inhabitant from Delhi and left it a desert…."”

“Firoz Shah invaded Bengal, offered a reward for every Hindu head, paid for 180,000 of them, raided Hindu villages for slaves, and died at the ripe age or eighty. Sultan Ahmad Shah feasted for three days whenever the number of defenseless Hindus slain in his territories in one day reached twenty thousand.”

“These rulers… were armed with a religion militaristic in operation… [and made] the public exercise of the Hindu religions illegal, and thereby driving them more deeply into the Hindu soul. Some of these thirsty despots had culture as well as ability; they patronized the arts, and engaged artists and artisans -- usually of Hindu origin -- to build for them magnificent mosques and tombs: some of them were scholars, and delighted in converse historians, poets and scientists.”

“The Sultans drew from the people every rupee of tribute that could be exacted by the ancient art of taxation, as well as by straight-forward robbery…”

“The usual policy of the Sultans was clearly sketched by Alau-d-din, who required his advisers to draw up "rules and regulations for grinding down the Hindus, and for depriving them of that wealth and property which fosters disaffection and rebellion." Half of the gross produce of the soil was collected by the government; native rulers had taken one-sixth. “No Hindu,” says a Moslem historian, “could hold up his head, and in their houses no sign of gold or silver… or of any superfluity was to be seen… Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains, were all employed to enforce payment.”"

“…Timur-i-lang -- a Turk who had accepted Islam as an admirable weapon… feeling the need of more gold, it dawned upon him that India was still full of infidels… Mullahs learned in the Koran decided the matter by quoting an inspiring verse: “Oh Prophet, make war upon infidels and unbelievers, and treat them with severity.” Thereupon, Timur crossed the Indus in 1398, massacred or enslaved such of the inhabitants as could not flee from him, defeated the forces of Sultan Mahmud Tughlak, occupied Delhi, slew a hundred thousand prisoners in cold blood, plundered the city of all the wealth that the Afghan dynasty had gathered there, and carried it off to Samarkand with multitude of women and slaves, leaving anarchy, famine and pestilence in his wake,”

“This is the secret of the political history of modern India. Weakened by division, it succumbed to invaders; impoverished by invaders, it lost all power of resistance, and took refuge in supernatural consolations… The bitter lesson that may be drawn from this tragedy is that eternal vigilance is the price of civilization. A nation must love peace, but keep its powder dry.”

During these genocides for centuries, a certain portion of the fleeing Hindus reached Europe. Today's Roma people of Europe (popularly called the 'gypsies', a term that they regard as a pejorative) are of Indian origin and have lived as wanderers in Europe for nearly a thousand years. It is believed that they originated in Northwest India, in a region including Gandhara, Punjab, and Rajasthan. In Europe, they survived by being musicians and performers, because European society did not assimilate them even after a thousand years. They have accepted their plight as street people without a 'home' as such. Their history in Europe is filled with attempts to eradicate them in various ways.15 (There is much justified criticism of India's caste system as a way by which diverse ethnicities dealt with each other. However, I have yet to see a comparison with the fact that Europeans dealt with non-European ethnicities using genocide (as in America), or by attempted genocide as in the case of the Roma.)

Islamic Scholarship on India

The Arabic, Turkish, and Persian invaders brought their historians to document their conquests of India as great achievements. Many of these historians ended up loving India and wrote excellent accounts of life in India, including about the Gandhara and Sindh regions. Their translations of Indian texts were later retranslated into European languages and hence many of the European Renaissance inputs from Islam were actually Indian contributions traveling via Islam.

Many Muslim scholars showed great respect for Indian society. For instance:

“The Arabic literature identifies numerous ministers, revenue officers, accountants, et cetera, in seventh- and eighth-century Sind as 'brahmans' and these were generally confirmed in their posts by the conquerors. Where these brahmans came from we do not know, but their presence was regarded as beneficial. Many cities had been founded by them and Sind had become 'prosperous and populous' under their guidance.”16

“Of caste divisions very little mention is made. The stereotype social division is in professional classes rather than a ritualized caste-hierarchy: 'priests, warriors, agriculturists, artisans, merchants'.”17

Of all these Muslim scholars, Alberuni left the most detailed accounts of India's civilization. In the introduction to his translation of Alberuni's famous book, Indica, the Arabic scholar Edward Sachau summarizes how India was the source of considerable Arabic culture:18

“The foundations of Arabic literature was laid between AD 750 and 850. It is only the tradition relating to their religion and prophet and poetry that is peculiar to the Arabs; everything else is of foreign descent… Greece, Persia, and India were taxed to help the sterility of the Arab mind… What India has contributed reached Baghdad by two different roads. Part has come directly in translations from the Sanskrit, part has traveled through Eran, having originally been translated from Sanskrit (Pali? Prakrit?) into Persian, and farther from Persian into Arabic. In this way, e.g. the fables of Kalila and Dimna have been communicated to the Arabs, and book on medicine, probably the famous Caraka.”

“As Sindh was under the actual rule of Khalif Mansur (AD 753 - 774), there came embassies from that part of India to Baghdad, and among them scholars, who brought along with them two books, the Brahamsiddhanta to Brahamgupta (Sirhind), and his Khandkhdyaka (Arkanda). With the help of these pandits, Alfazari, perhaps also Yakub ibn Tarik, translated them. Both works have been largely used, and have exercised a great influence. It was on this occasion that the Arabs first became acquainted with a scientific system of astronomy. They learned from Brahamgupta earlier than from Ptolemy."

“Another influx of Hindu learning took place under Harun, AD 786 - 808. The ministerial family Barmak, then at the zenith of their power, had come with the ruling dynasty from Balkh, where an ancestor of theirs had been an official in the Buddhistic temple Naubehar, i.e. nava vihara = the new temple (or monastery). The name Barmak is said to be of Indian descent, meaning paramaka i.e. the superior (abbot of the vihara).”

“Induced by family traditions, they sent scholars to India, there to study medicine and pharmacology. Besides, they engaged Hindu scholars to come to Baghdad, made them the chief physicians of their hospitals, and ordered them to translate from Sanskrit into Arabic books on medicine, pharmacology, toxicology, philosophy, astrology, and other subjects. Still in later centuries Muslim scholars sometimes traveled for the same purposes as the emissaries of the Barmak, e.g. Almuwakkuf not long before Alberuni's time…”

“Many Arab authors took up the subjects communicated to them by the Hindus and worked them out in original compositions, commentaries and extracts. A favorite subject of theirs was Indian mathematics, the knowledge of which became far spread by the publications of Alkindi and many others."

Alberuni leaves no doubt as to the origin of the so-called Arabic system of numbers:

“The numerical signs which we use are derived from the finest forms of the Hindu signs… The Arabs, too, stop with the thousand, which is certainly the most correct and the most natural thing to do... Those, however, who go beyond the thousand in their numeral system are the Hindus, at least in their arithmetical technical terms, which have been either freely invented or derived according to certain etymologies, whilst in others both methods are blended together. They extend the names of the orders of numbers until the 18th order for religious reasons, the mathematicians being assisted by the grammarians with all kinds of etymologies.”

In Islamic Spain, European scholars acknowledged India very positively, as evidenced by an important and rare 11th century book on world science commissioned by the ruler of Spain19. Its author, Said al-Andalusi focused on India as a major center for science, mathematics and culture. Some excerpts:

“The first nation (to have cultivated science) is India. This is a powerful nation having a large population, and a rich kingdom. India is known for the wisdom of its people. Over many centuries, all the kings of the past have recognized the ability of the Indians in all the branches of knowledge.”

“The Indians, as known to all nations for many centuries, are the metal (essence) of wisdom, the source of fairness and objectivity. They are peoples of sublime pensiveness, universal apologues, and useful and rare inventions.”

“To their credit, the Indians have made great strides in the study of numbers and of geometry. They have acquired immense information and reached the zenith in their knowledge of the movements of the stars (astronomy) and the secrets of the skies (astrology) as well as other mathematical studies. After all that, they have surpassed all the other peoples in their knowledge of medical science and the strengths of various drugs, the characteristics of compounds and the peculiarities of substances [chemistry].”

“Their kings are known for their good moral principles, their wise decisions, and their perfect methods of exercising authority.”

“What has reached us from the work of the Indians in music is the book… [that] contains the fundamentals of modes and the basics in the construction of melodies.”

“That which has reached us from the discoveries of their clear thinking and the marvels of their inventions is the (game) of chess. The Indians have, in the construction of its cells, its double numbers, its symbols and secrets, reached the forefront of knowledge. They have extracted its mysteries from supernatural forces. While the game is being played and its pieces are being maneuvered, there appear the beauty of structure and the greatness of harmony. It demonstrates the manifestation of high intentions and noble deeds, as it provides various forms of warnings from enemies and points out ruses as well as ways to avoid dangers. And in this, there is considerable gain and useful profit.”

Even as late as the 12th century C.E., al-Idrîsî (1100-1166), a geographer and scholar from Spain and Sicily, included the Gandhara region, including Kabul, with India20. The region was famous for the export of its three local products: indigo, cotton, and iron.21

The Lessons of History

Is the history of Islam in Afghanistan repeating itself a thousand years later? The Arab and Turk atrocities in India, done in the name of Islam a thousand years ago, may be compared to the past ten years in Afghanistan: In the times of Mahmud of Ghazni, India was, relative to other countries, as rich as the United States is today, and hence a comparable target. The Taliban dress code is what earlier Muslim plunderers also enforced in India. The same interpretation of the Koranic verses was used then as is now taught in thousands of madrassas in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. The main plunderers then were not indigenous to Afghanistan, but were largely Arabs/Turks; today, again, they are not mainly Afghanis, but tens of thousands of Pakistanis and Arabs with their own agendas.

Where does all this history lead us today? First of all, I emphatically believe that history should not be the burden of contemporary society, and this means that South Asian Muslims are not to be blamed for the past, in which they, too, were victims. Germans are taught about Nazism without being made to feel guilty. U.S. schools teach slavery with black and white kids together in class. Suppressing the past evils from history would be irresponsible, and an invitation to unscrupulous political forces to exploit ignorant people.

More importantly, Indianized Islam is probably the most sophisticated and liberal Islam in the world, because of its prolonged nurturing in the Indian soil. Islam needs the same kind of Reformation as Christianity underwent in the past few centuries. India, with its long experience of Islam co-existing with other religions, its large Muslim population, and its Hindu-Buddhist experience, is the ideal environment for Islamic liberalization. Islamic majority nations lack the experience of pluralism, democracy, and the Hinduism-Buddhism environment. Western countries have too small a Muslim population, and too recent an encounter, to be incubators. India is the ideal climate for a breakthrough.

In the big picture, the struggle is not against Islam, but is about the kind of Islam that emerges. It is also about conflicting identities within Pakistan: Arabization versus Indianization. For lasting peace in the region, Afghanistan should once again become a buffer between Arabic-Persian and Indic civilizations. Pakistan has always been unstable, sandwiched between the two very ancient civilizations of India and Arabia-Persia, and obsessed by the need to differentiate itself from both. What Macaulayism is to elitist Indians, Arabization of identity is to Pakistanis, the difference being that in the latter case it pervades all tiers of society. Pakistan's complexes, due to its lack of heritage and sense of identity, drive much of its insecure behavior.

One would like that the hundreds of media personnel covering the war would be better equipped to explain the history of the region. That they do not know even the fundamentals is not surprising. But what is disturbing is the way SAJA (South Asian Journalists Association), a 500-member association of Indian journalists in North America, has failed to play any role in educating the American public about this region. Is it ignorance, or is it the complex of being seen as too 'Indian'?

Over the past fifteen years, governmental, academic, and private funding agencies sponsored research on South Asia that focused on caste, cows, exotica, sati, and Hindu revolts against Proselytizers, thereby propagating the stereotype of the “Evil/Primitive Hindus”. In the process, they completely ignored vital topics such as Wahhabi Islam and other movements spawned by the ISI. Consequently, few South Asian experts seem to have even rudimentary knowledge of the 39,000 madrassas of Pakistan, some of which were the breeding grounds of the Taliban, or the related religious movements that are the genesis of today's crisis. These events are about religion, when seen from the perspective of those engaged in terrorism and their vast network of sympathizers worldwide. Yet the academy is ill-equipped to perform its mission to interpret these events and to educate the world about them. After September 11, I wrote privately to the professional association of scholars called RISA (Religions In South Asia), since Afghanistan and Pakistan fall under their definition of South Asia, to suggest that at their November annual conference, they should have a major discussion on Wahhabism-Talibanism in South Asia. Despite being the world's premier association of scholars who objectively study South Asian religions, they failed to include this topic. Instead, they had a whole panel on how Hinduism textbooks and web sites ignore Islam!

Scholars and the media seem afraid to explain that the soil of Afghanistan is historically sacred to Buddhists and Hindus, in the same manner as Jerusalem is to Jews and the Kaaba is to Muslims. Today's infamous caves were once home to thousands of Buddhist monks and Hindu rishis, who did their meditation and attained enlightenment there. How such sacred geography ended up in evil hands is something I am still trying to come to terms with.

References:

1 “Dramatic Concepts: Greek and Indian - A Study of Poetics & Natyasastra”, By Bharat Gupt. D.K. Printworld (P) Ltd., New Delhi, India, 1994. Pages 21-23.
2 “The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Volume I – Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam 7th-11th Centuries”, by Andre Wink. Oxford University Press, New Delhi 1999. p.144-146.
3 Wink pp. 112-114.
4 Wink pp.148-149.
5 Wink. pp. 117-118.
6 Wink pp. 112-114.
7 Wink p.118.
8 Wink p.119.
9 References on Gandhara are: John Marshall, Taxila, 3 vol. (1951, reprinted 1975), provides the most exhaustive material for the history and archaeological excavations of Taxila. Radha Kumud Mookerji, Ancient Indian Education. 4th ed. (1969), includes a comprehensive account of Taxila as a centre of learning. For a general study of Taxila as an ancient city, see Stuart Piggot, Some Cities of Ancient India (1945); B.N. Puri, Cities of Ancient India (1966); Ahmad Hasan Dani, The Historic City of Taxila (1986); and Saifur Rahman Dar, Taxila and the Western World (1984). Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1993. Vol. 11, pp. 585-586; Vol. 9, p. 321; Vol. 6, pp. 710-711; Vol. 21, p.41. “Students' Britannica India”. Vol. 2, pp. 137-138. Vol. 5, p. 121-123.
10 Wink p.120.
11 Wink p.192-193.
12 Wink pp.187-188
13 "The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage", by Will Durant. MJF Books, NY. 1935. pp. 459-463
14 Durant.
15 See the following Roma web site for details on their genocides in Europe, including many genocides officially sanctioned by governmental authorities: http://www.geocities.com/~patrin/
16 Wink p.150
17 Wink p.151
18 Alberuni (AD 973 - 1048), a Muslim scholar, mathematician and master of Greek and Hindu system astrology, wrote twenty books. In his seminal work, "Indica" (c. 1030 AD) he wrote (“Alberuni's India”, by Edward Sachau. Low Price Publications, New Delhi, 1993. (Reprint). First published 1910 -- translated in 1880s.)
19 In the eleventh-century, an important manuscript titled “The Categories of Nations” was authored in Arabic by Said al-Andalusi, who was a prolific author and in the powerful position of a judge for the king in Muslim Spain. A translation and annotation of this was done S.I. Salem and Alok Kumar and published by University of Texas Press: “Science in the Medieval World”. This is the first English translation of this eleventh-century manuscript. Quotes are from Chapter V: “Science in India”.
20 Ahmad, S. Maqbul, Indian and the Neighbouring Territories in the Kitâb Nuzhat al-Mushtâq Fi` Khtirâq al-`Âfâq of Al-Sharîf al-Idrîsî, E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1960. p. 58.
21 Ahmad. p. 67.

Christian Missionaries in India

"These humble, obscure pioneers of the Gospel are taking up the banner of the cross where colonial-era missions left off."
-K.P. Yohannan


http://video.gfamedia.org/videoplayer.swf?video=rajastan_pastor
http://www.gfa.org/the-call-to-harvest

GODHRA: THE TRUE STORY

Shame on Indian English Medium "Journalists"
____________________________________________
GODHRA: THE TRUE STORY
Nicole Elfi
Posted on JayaBharati


Godhra, a city of the Indian State of Gujarat, was the lead story in all Indian newspapers on February 27th-28th, 2002. A shattering piece of news: 58 Hindu pilgrims had been burned alive in a train. “57 die in ghastly attack on train” ran the Times of India’s headline; “Mob targets Ramsevaks [Devotees of Rama] returning from Ayodhya”; “58 killed in attack on train with Karsevaks [volunteers]” (The Indian Express); “1500-strong mob butcher 57 Ramsevaks on Sabarmati Express” (The Asian Age). But the BBC’s announcement had a very different tone: “58 Hindu ‘extremists’ burned to death” … or Agence France Press on March 2nd: “A train full of Hindu ‘extremists’ was burnt.”

A deluge of anguished news followed about a “Muslim genocide”: “Mass killings of Muslims in reprisal riots” (NYT, March 5th), “The authorities … share the prejudices of the Hindu gangs who have been busy pulping their Muslim neighbours” (The Observer, March 4th). We were told that Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, intended to eradicate Muslims from the State — more than 9% of Gujarat’s population, in other words five million people. We read that the police was conniving in the mass slaughter and did nothing to prevent it. Narendra Modi was compared to Hitler, or Nero. We shuddered reading the reports describing rapes and various horrors, supposedly inflicted on Muslims by Hindus.

Today, six years later, with the noises and cries of the wounds having fallen silent, what emerges from those events? What are the facts?

At 7:43 A.M. on February 27th, 2002, the Sabarmati Express rolled into the Godhra station, fortunately with a four-hour delay, in broad daylight. This train transported more than 2,000 people, mainly karsewaks on their way back to Ahmedabad after participating in the Poorna Ahuti Yagya at Ayodhya, a ritual at the traditional birthplace of Rama.

As it pulled out of the station, the train was pelted with stones and bricks, and passengers from several bogeys were forced to bring down their windows to protect themselves. Someone pulled the emergency chain: the train came to a halt about 100 metres away from the platform, surrounded by a large crowd of Muslims. The railway police managed to disperse the crowd, and the train resumed its journey.

Within minutes, the emergency chain was simultaneously pulled again, from several coaches. It halted at about 700 metres from the station. A crowd of over 1,000 surrounded the train, pelting it with bricks, stones, then burning missiles and acid bulbs, especially on the S-5, S-6 and S-7 coaches.

The vacuum pipe between coaches S-6 and S-7 was cut, thereby preventing any further movement of the train. The doors were locked from outside. A fire started in coach S-7, which the passengers were able to extinguish. But the attack intensified and coach S-6 caught fire and minutes later, was in flames. Passengers who managed to get out of the burning compartment were attacked with sharp weapons, and stoned. They received serious injuries, some were killed. Others got out through the windows and took shelter below the coach.

Fifty eight pilgrims were burned alive, including twenty-seven women and ten children. The whole attack lasted 20-25 minutes.[1]

What transpired then, in the Indian press? Let’s imagine a coach of French pilgrims coming back from Lourdes, burned alive.

Strangely, instead of clearly, straightforwardly condemning the act, the Indian English-language press tried to justify it: “Pilgrims provoked by chanting pro-Hindu slogans” (they were not slogans but bhajans, or devotional songs, ending with “Jai Sri Ram” (Victory to Sri Rama). “It’s because they were returning from Ayodhya, where they asked for the reconstruction of a temple at the traditional birth place of Rama; this offends the feelings of the Muslims.” In sum, the victims, roasted alive, were guilty.


The Anger

Numb with shock, the people of Gujarat did not react straightaway. They remained calm at first. Till that afternoon, when the charred bodies started arriving at their respective families — with no comforting voice sounded, either from the government, or from the media, no condemnation for this barbaric act, but an indifferent, deafening silence — then these people known for their non-violent nature and exceptional patience, burst into a frenzy.

There was a revolt in the whole of Gujarat. For three days, tens of thousands of enraged Hindus set fire to Muslim shops, houses, vehicles: They came out from all sides, all parties, all classes, uncontrollable — one cannot control a revolution (except in China maybe). The fatalities: 720 Muslims, 250 Hindus, according to official figures.

We read all over about a “genocide of Muslims.” Do we remember a single report on the Hindus who heroically helped save Muslims in their neighbourhood? Was even one family of Hindu victims interviewed following the criminal burning of the Sabarmati Express? One fourth of the dead in the ensuing riots were Hindus. How to classify those 250 victims? Who evoked the dead on the Hindu side? According to reports, Congress Party councillor Taufeeq Khan Pathan and his son Zulfi, notorious gangsters, were allegedly seen leading Muslim rioters. Another such character, Congress member of the Godhra Nagarpalika [municipality], Haji Balal, was said to have had the fire-fighting vehicle sabotaged beforehand.[2] Then,
he stopped the vehicle on its way to the Godhra Station and did not allow it to proceed any further. A man stood in front of the vehicle, the mob started pelting stones, … The headlights and the windowpanes of the vehicle got damaged … Fearing for his own and his crew's life, the driver drove the vehicle through the mob, as it was not possible to move backwards. The mob gave in but 15-20 precious minutes had been lost.[3]

Lost for a coach full of innocent people in flames.


Which newspaper article stated that the most violent events took place following provocations by leaders of this sort? The Union Home Ministry's Annual Report of 2002-03 stated that 40,000 Hindus were in riot relief camps. What made those 40,000 Hindus rush to relief camps? To seek protection from whom? Why was it necessary if they were the main aggressors?

More than the barbaric event itself, it is the insensitivity of the Indian “elite” and of the media that infuriated the Gujaratis.

Those accused of terrorism often receive political support, are benevolently portrayed by the media, and a host of “human rights” organisations are always on hand to fight for them. But those victims whose life is cut down for no reason, are they not “human” enough to get some rights too? The great majority of those who took to revolt in Gujarat were neither rich nor particularly intellectual — neither right nor left: they were middle- and lower-class Gujaratis, simple people, workers, also tribals. But some from the upper middle class, among them a lot of women, took part in the upheaval.


The media sources

Apart from local journalists usually more objective in their reports, no English media reporter, thought it worthwhile to look deeper into the events at the Godhra railway station. Nobody came to question possible survivors of the tragedy. Is a coach of Hindu pilgrims even worth the trip? They had to wait for the “elite” to react; they had to receive directives from the politically correct, before taking their pens. Worse, they reported deliberate rumours and made up versions as actual news.

We were told, for instance, that when some pilgrims got off the ill-fated coaches to have tea, “some altercation took place” between them, and a Muslim tea vendor: “They argued with the old man on purpose,” wrote some newspapers; “they refused to pay for their tea” (though Gujarati honesty is well known); “they pulled his beard and beat him up ... They kept shouting ‘Mandir ka nirmaan karo, Babar ki aulad ko bahar karo’ (start building the temple and throw out the sons of Babar). Hearing the chaos, the tea vendor’s 16-year-old daughter came forward and tried to save her father from the karsevaks. She kept pleading and begging them to leave him alone. The karsevaks, according to this version, then seized the girl, took her inside their compartment and closed the door. The old man kept banging on the door and pleaded for his daughter. Then two stall vendors jumped into the last bogey, pulled the chain, and put the bogey on fire.”

But would they have been stupid enough to set fire to the coach where their colleague’s young daughter was being held? And why were 2,000 Muslims assembled there at 7 A.M. with jerry-cans of petrol bought the previous evening?

Rajeev Srinivasan, an American journalist of Indian origin, was e-mailed this anonymous report a dozen times, supposedly written by Anil Soni, Press Trust of India reporter. He contacted Anil Soni to check on the veracity of this account. Soni answered:

Some enemy of mine has done this to make life difficult for me, do you understand, sir? I did not write this at all. I am a PTI correspondent. Yes, that is my phone number, but it is not my writing.

Anil Soni apparently had heard about it from hundreds of people, and was upset to see a false report circulated in his name.

Inquiries with the Railway Staff and passengers travelling in the Sabarmati Express showed that: no quarrel whatsoever took place on the platform between a tea vendor and pilgrims, and no girl was manhandled nor kidnapped.

As the Nanavati Report established later, this fictitious report was in fact circulated by the Jamiat-Ulma-E-Hind, the very hand responsible for the carnage.[4] It nevertheless went around the world, exhibited as “the true story.” Aren’t we compelled to conclude that the assailants, in India, are those who dictate what’s “politically correct,” and instruct the media?


Arson and Canards

On the afternoon of February 28th, Gujarati Hindus’ revolt broke out. A few journalists then booked their tickets for Gujarat. As far as we can see, they had a framework in place: the outbreak would be dealt with independently of the Godhra carnage, as a different, unrelated subject; it was a planned violence perpetrated by “fundamentalist” Hindus against Gujarat’s Muslims, fully backed by the State of Gujarat. From this day on, the burning of coach S-6 was to be left behind, forgotten.

On February 28th evening, Chief Minister Narendra Modi announced his decision to deploy the Army, and the next day, March 1st, by 11 A.M. the actual deployment of troops at sensitive points had begun. Violence abated in most major cities, after their arrival with orders to shoot on sight. But security forces were largely outnumbered by the angry flood of people, spreading for the first time like rivers in spate, to rural areas and villages. Apprehending the seriousness of the situation, Narendra Modi had made a request for security personnel from neighbouring States of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab. This request was turned down by each State. Why did no one report this fateful refusal?

That same day (1st March), at the peak of the turmoil, the National Human Rights Commission faxed a notice to the Gujarat Government, calling for a report within three days on the measures being taken … “to prevent any further escalation of the situation in the State of Gujarat which is resulting in continued violation of human rights of the people.”[5] But it was silent on what had led to such a situation in the first place.

One major event which received a great deal of attention from the media was the conflagration at the Gulbarg Society in Ahmedabad, home of a former Member of Parliament, Ehsan Jaffri. This man, rather refined and usually respected, did not feel threatened. But on February 28th morning, a crowd surrounded his house, in which a number of Muslims had taken refuge. Jaffri made a number of panic-stricken phone calls for help to authorities and to his colleagues, journalists and friends. The crowd was growing … (from 200 to 20,000, figures vary in the reports). The Indian Express (March 1st, 2002), as well as police records, reported that “eventually, in panic, he fired at the 5,000-strong mob … 2 were killed and 13 injured ... That incensed the mob …” which at 1:30 P.M. set the bungalow ablaze by exploding a gas cylinder. Final toll: 42 (March 11th edition).

Human Rights Watch, an NGO based in New York, published a dossier (on April 30th, 2002) about the Gujarat events which caused a sensation and fed a large number of articles in the international press.

In this report, Smita Narula had an unnamed “witness” at hand, to relate the attack on Jaffri’s house. First “a 200 to 500-strong mob threw stones; refugees in the house (also 200-250 people — sic!) also threw stones in self-defence.” Then the crowd set the place on fire at about 1:30 P.M. Our witness then jumped from the third floor where he was hiding — and from where he had been observing in minute detail all that was going on in the ground floor, even the theft of jewels (it would seem the floors between the third and the ground floor were transparent). At that point we jump into the sensational. Narula’s witness sees that “four or five girls were raped, cut, and burned …; two married women were also raped and cut. Some on the hand, some on the neck” …; “Sixty-five to seventy people were killed.” Those rapes and hackings are said to have started at 3:30 P.M. ... when the house was already on fire. Was the mob waiting for everything to be reduced to cinders to commit its crimes?

Among the most morbid canards, the novelist Arundhati Roy’s vitriolic article (Outlook magazine, May 6th, 2002). She describes the event which precedes Ehsan Jaffri’s death (extract):

… A mob surrounded the house of former Congress MP Iqbal Ehsan Jaffri. His phone calls to the Director-General of Police, the Police Commissioner, the Chief Secretary, the Additional Chief Secretary (Home) were ignored. The mobile police vans around his house did not intervene. The mob broke into the house. They stripped his daughters and burned them alive. Then they beheaded Ehsan Jaffri and dismembered him …

Wait a minute. Jaffri was burned alive in the house, true — is it not awful enough? Along with some other 41 people. Not enough? But his daughters were neither “stripped” nor “burnt alive.” T. A. Jafri, his son, in a front-page interview titled “Nobody knew my father’s house was the target” (Asian Age, May 2nd, Delhi ed.), felt obliged to rectify:

Among my brothers and sisters, I am the only one living in India. And I am the eldest in the family. My sister and brother live in the US. I am 40 years old and I have been born and brought up in Ahmedabad.

There we are, reassured as regards Ehsan Jaffri’s children. He had only one daughter, who was living abroad. No one was raped in the course of this tragedy, and no evidence was given to the police to that effect.

The Gujarat Government sued Outlook magazine. In its May 27th issue, Outlook published an apology to save its face. But in the course of its apology, the magazine’s editors quoted a “clarification” from Roy, who withdrew her lie by planting an even bigger one: the MP’s daughters “were not among the 10 women who were raped and killed in Chamanpura that day”! From Smita Narula to Arundhati Roy, “four or five girls” had swollen to “ten women,” equally anonymous and elusive.

Roy begins theatrically:

Last night a friend from Baroda called. Weeping. It took her fifteen minutes to tell me what the matter was. It wasn’t very complicated. Only that Sayeeda, a friend of hers, had been caught by a mob. Only that her stomach had been ripped open and stuffed with burning rags. Only that after she died, someone carved ‘OM’ on her forehead.

Balbir Punj, Rajya Sabha MP and journalist, shocked by this “despicable incident” which allegedly occurred in Baroda, decided to investigate it. He got in touch with the Gujarat government.

The police investigations revealed that no such case, involving someone called Sayeeda, had been reported either in urban or rural Baroda. Subsequently, the police sought Roy’s help to identify the victim and seek access to witnesses who could lead them to those guilty of this crime. But the police got no cooperation. Instead, Roy, through her lawyer, replied that the police had no power to issue summons.[6]

This redefines the term “fiction writer.”

Another story about a “pregnant Muslim woman” whose stomach was allegedly “ripped open,” her “foetus taken out” and both being burnt, horrified people all over the world. The first mention of it seems to be in a BBC report around March 6th, which, though “uncorroborated,” spread like wildfire, with fresh details (divergent and varied, but who cares?), so much so that you end up feeling there is no smoke without fire. The rumour was never confirmed — which twisted tongue first whispered it?

Press articles kept quoting one another, creating “dossiers” out of floating rumours. None of the authors even deigned to visit the scene of the alleged events; none except the official inquiry commissions, had the honesty to question fairly, in parallel, the involved Hindu families regarding the tragedy unfolding in the two Gujarati communities.


Onlookers get caught

On March 1st, 2002, in a village on the outskirt of Vadodara (Baroda), the “Best Bakery” was set on fire: fourteen persons were burnt alive (nine Muslims and three Hindus). This particular incident made much ink flow, since the prime witness, young Zaheera Habibullah Sheikh, aged 19, turned against the prosecution in favour of the accused in the trial court.


Though Zaheera lost several family members in the tragedy, on May 17th, 2003, in the Vadodara High Court, she testified that the accused persons in the dock were innocent and had nothing to do with the arson. She, as well as the other witnesses, did not recognize their own alleged statements before the police.

Justice Mahida of the High Court observed that:

1) There has been an inexcusable delay in the First Information Report (FIR). The so-called FIR of Zahiribibi (Zaheera) was sent to the Magistrate after four to five days. So there is every reason to believe that factually this FIR was cropped up afterwards in the manner suitable to the police.

2) The arrested persons had nothing to do with the incident.

“We all knew these accused persons and because of them, our lives are saved,” reported Lal Mohammed Shaikh, a witness before the court. … “There were cordial relations between my family members, the persons residing in the compound of Best Bakery and all the accused persons before the court … The 65 persons who are saved in this incident are all before the Court and all these were saved by and due to the accused and their family members … These persons had called us, in darkness we silently came out of our house, and they saved our lives.”

3) The police is trying to put as accused passers-by at the place of incident, innocent persons gathering there or persons residing in the neighbourhood (in confidence that the police wouldn’t do anything to them).

4) No legal or acceptable evidence at all is produced by the prosecution against the accused involving them in this incident. In this case, … it has come out during the trial … that false evidences were cropped up against the present accused to involve them in this case. The case … is not proved and hence the accused are acquitted [7].

On June 27th, 2003, the twenty-one defendants were freed, and Zaheera Sheikh felt the court has given her “all the justice she wanted.”


In the interests of a community

But all were not satisfied. A former Chief Justice of India, A.S. Anand, Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission decided that the Vadodara judgement was a “miscarriage of justice” and the twenty-one “not-guilty” people were actually guilty and therefore should be punished. Now this honourable person should have been aware that seated in Delhi at the helm of this “human rights” affair, he would have been the first target of a number of dubious NGOs with vested political interests. Strangely, Justice Anand did not even consider it important to send his own team of independent inquiry before questioning the judgment of another court of law.[8]

Consequently, just after the fast-track court acquittals, three members of Zaheera’s community “barged into her home” around midnight, and told her she would have to change her statement “in the interests of the community.”

This meant that Zaheera had to declare that she had lied to the court (which is a criminal offence [9]). Did she have a choice?

Along with her mother and brother, she was taken to Mumbai “without their consent,” and brought to Teesta Setalvad,[10] an activist of the much-vaunted “human rights.” The activist took them under her wing for several months, accommodated them in a rented apartment while providing assistance for a living. In the meantime she prepared affidavits (in English which Zaheera does not read) for the girl to sign before the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), in which she “confessed” to having lied to the Vadodara trial court, “trembling with fear and threatened” by BJP MLA Madhu Shrivastav (who had nothing to do with her area and whom she did not even know). And Zaheera now designated as guilty, the twenty-one people she had considered innocent. All media were ready with their cameras, mikes and pens to splash the news.

The Gujarat High Court dismissed the appeal, rightly suspecting that the witness had been pressured to turn hostile, and upheld the acquittals.
But the Supreme Court accepted the retraction and, as demanded by NHRC and Setalvad, ordered the retrial of the case outside Gujarat. The acquittal of the twenty-one people was quashed.

In 2004, Zaheera “managed to flee” from her confinement by the activist, and in November, seized by remorse for having allowed innocent people to be accused, stated that whatever she had told the Supreme Court, was done under duress from Teesta Setalvad and her associate Rais Khan; and whatever she told the NHRC was a lie. “Ramzan is on and I want to state the truth,” she said. “What I had said in Vadodara Court during the trial was my true statement. The judgement was correct and had given me all the justice I wanted.” She sought police protection from Teesta Setalvad.[11]

The Supreme Court judge called the girl “flip-flop Zaheera,” accepted a “high-powered committee” report which indicted Zaheera Sheikh as a “self-condemned liar,” and awarded the girl with a simple one-year imprisonment for contempt of court, as well as a fine of Rs. 50,000. Activist Teesta Setalvad was cleared.

Now, who took the court for a ride? Especially in light of the new revelation that “a host of Gujarat riot case victims were misled into signing affidavits giving false information,” for which as many as ten of them had received 100,000 rupees from Teesta Setalvad NGO.[12]

As it stands today, nine persons among the twenty-one passer-bys picked up, have been condemned to life imprisonment and are languishing in jail.

In December 2004, a fatwa was issued against Zaheera by the Muslim Tayohar Committee, excommunicating her with the approval of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, “for having constantly lied.” In other words, for having stood by the twenty-one wrongly accused Hindus neighbours.

Let us pursue our investigation.


Premeditated files

Human Rights Watch Smita Narula’s report (April 30th, 2002) was titled “ ‘We have no order to save you’ — State participation and complicity in anti-Muslim violence.” From US shores, its words were lapped up by the Indian elite and politicians:

What happened in Gujarat was not a spontaneous uprising, it was a carefully orchestrated attack against Muslims … planned in advance and organized with extensive participation of the police and state government officials.[13]

But where are the facts to corroborate such an allegation, which of course was instantly peddled the world over? Can a “carefully orchestrated attack” happen overnight? And how can someone sitting in the U.S., gauge the “spontaneity” of such an outbreak?[14]


Authentic inquiry

By contrast, a genuine, on-the-spot investigation was conducted under the aegis of the New Delhi-based Council for International Affairs and Human Rights.[15] Its findings were made public as early as April 26th, 2002, through a press conference held in Delhi. Running counter to the politically correct line of an “orchestrated attack,” they were largely ignored by the media.

On March 3rd, 2002 the five-member fact-finding team under Justice Tewatia’s direction went to Godhra and spent six days visiting three affected areas in Ahmedabad and some of the relief camps. At all places, team members interacted with the two communities freely, without intervention of any officials. Five delegations from both communities presented their facts and views. The team then went to the Godhra railway station and interviewed officials, survivors and witnesses of the burning of the S-6 coach, as well as the fire brigade staff. They met the Godhra District Collector, along with other officials.

On April 4th, the team was in Vadodara (Baroda) visiting five relief camps of both communities, and seven areas which were the scenes of violence in the preceding month, as well as a number of sensitive areas. To have exposure to the ground realities they visited some areas still under curfew and also met the Commissioner of Police and District Collector along with other officials. Thirteen delegations consisting of 121 citizens met the team and presented their testimonies; they included not only members of both communities, but ranged from the Association of Hoteliers to a group of Gujarati tribals (Vanavasis).


“Indisputable” facts

Let us quote some findings of Justice Tewatia’s Inquiry Commission, which its report described as “indisputable”:

• The attack on Sabarmati Express on 27.02.02 was pre-planned and pre-meditated. It was the result of a criminal conspiracy hatched by a hostile foreign power with the help of local jehadis … carried out with the evil objective of pushing the country into a communal cauldron.

• The plan was to burn the entire train with more than two thousand passengers in the wee hours of February 27th, 2002.

• There were no quarrels or fights between the vendors and the Hindu pilgrims on the platform of Godhra Railway Station.

• Firebombs, acid bulbs and highly inflammable liquid(s) were used to set the coaches on fire that must have been stored [the day before] already for the purpose.

• The fire fighting system available in Godhra was weakened and its arrival at the place of incident wilfully delayed by the mob with the open participation of a Congress Councillor, Haji Balal.

• Fifty-eight passengers of coach S-6 were burnt to death by a Muslim mob and one of the conspirators was a Congress Councillor, Haji Balal.

• Someone used the public address system exhorting the mob “to kill kafirs and enemies of Bin Laden.”

About the police:

• Police was on many occasions overwhelmed by the rioting mobs that were massive and carried more lethal weapons than the police did.

• [They] did not have the training and know-how to manage situations of communal strife witnessed in the state in recent weeks.

• In many places, … [they] made a commendable work in protecting life and property. Barring a few exceptions, it was not found to be communally motivated.

Army deployment:

• Available information shows that the Army was requisitioned and deployed in time.


After Godhra

The involvement of the “tribal” communities or Vanavasis, in the post-Godhra riots added a new dimension to the communal violence, as Justice Tewatia’s report reveals:

• In rural areas the Vanvasis attacked the Muslim moneylenders, shopkeepers and the forest contractors. They used their traditional bows and arrows as also their implements used to cut trees and grass while attacking Muslims. They moved in groups and used coded signals for communication. Apparently, the accumulated anger of years of exploitation … had become explosive.

About the media:

• Gujarati language media was factual and objective. Yet its propensity to highlight the gory incidents in great detail heightened communal tension.


• English language newspapers … appeared to have assumed the role of crusaders against the State [Gujarat] Government from day one. It coloured the entire operation of news gathering, feature writing and editorials. They distorted and added fiction to prove their respective points of view. The code of ethics prescribed by the Press Council of India was violated … with impunity. It so enraged the citizens that several concerned citizens in the disturbed areas suggested that peace could return to the state only if some of the TV channels were closed for some weeks.[16]



A few healing voices

It would be unfair not to mention a few voices that rose from among the journalists themselves, against this enormity. The most eloquent one was Vir Sanghvi’s, usually part of the “secular” establishment, ever ready to portray Muslims as victims, Hindus as aggressors. Vir Sanghvi’s crisis of conscience suddenly gave him intellectual clarity. Some extracts from his article “One-way ticket” in The Hindustan Times of Feb. 28th, 2002:

There is something profoundly worrying in the response of what might be called the secular establishment to the massacre in Godhra. …

There is no suggestion that the karsewaks started the violence … there has been no real provocation at all … And yet, the sub-text to all secular commentary is the same: the karsewaks had it coming to them.

Basically, they condemn the crime; but blame the victims …

Try and take the incident out of the secular construct that we, in India, have perfected and see how bizarre such an attitude sounds in other contexts. Did we say that New York had it coming when the Twin Towers were attacked last year? Then too, there was enormous resentment among fundamentalist Muslims about America's policies, but we didn't even consider whether this resentment was justified or not.

Instead we took the line that all sensible people must take: any massacre is bad and deserves to be condemned.

When Graham Staines and his children were burnt alive, did we say that Christian missionaries had made themselves unpopular by engaging in conversion and so, they had it coming? No, of course, we didn't.

Why then are these poor karsewaks an exception? Why have we de-humanised them to the extent that we don't even see the incident as the human tragedy that it undoubtedly was …

I know the arguments well because — like most journalists — I have used them myself. And I still argue that they are often valid and necessary.

But there comes a time when this kind of rigidly 'secularist' construct not only goes too far; it also becomes counter-productive. When everybody can see that a trainload of Hindus was massacred by a Muslim mob, you gain nothing by blaming the murders on the VHP[17] or arguing that the dead men and women had it coming to them.

Not only does this insult the dead (What about the children? Did they also have it coming?), but it also insults the intelligence of the reader.

There is one question we need to ask ourselves: have we become such prisoners of our own rhetoric that even a horrific massacre becomes nothing more than occasion for Sangh Parivar-bashing?[18]

S. Gurumurthy in The New Indian Express (March 2nd), Jaya Jaitley, in The Indian Express (March 7th), Rajeev Srinivasan in Rediff on Net (March 25th), Arvind Lavakare in Rediff on Net (April 23rd), T. Tomas in Business Standard (April 26th), François Gautier in The Pioneer (April 30th), M.V. Kamath in The Times of India (May 8th), Balbir Punj in Outlook (May 27th), each one expounded the absurdity of a situation where the majority of Indians — the Hindu community — are looked down upon as second class citizens. A negligible lot taken for granted because it is harmless, non-aggressive, and unable to speak and act as one coherent, organized group.


A farcical interlude

Two and a half years after the events, on Sept. 3rd, 2004, the cabinet of the Central Government (ruled by the UPA coalition[19]) approved the setting up of a committee constituted by the Railways Minister Lallu Prasad Yadav, and headed by Justice U. C. Banerjee, former judge of the Supreme Court, to probe the causes of the conflagration in the Sabarmati Express.

“The blaze is an accident,” Justice Banerjee coolly concluded in January 2005. There was “no possibility of inflammable liquid being used,” said he, and the fire originated “in the coach itself, without external input.” The Cabinet ministers were fully satisfied.

Now among the few survivors, Neelkanth Bhatia, was not one. He gathered enough strength to challenge the formation of this committee, and in October 2006, the Gujarat High Court quashed the conclusions of the Banerjee Committee. It declared its formation as a “colourful exercise,” “illegal, unconstitutional, null and void,” and its argument of accidental fire “opposed to the prima facie accepted facts on record.” Moreover, one high-level commission conducted by Justice Nanavati-Shah had been appointed by the Gujarat Government to probe the incident, two months earlier. The Court also did not miss the point that the interim report was released just two days before the elections in Bihar — the State of the Railways minister, well-known for his political ambitions and notorious for his histrionics.

Politicians know no common sense or shame. But what about the judiciary?


The Nanavati Report

The first part of Justice Nanavati-Shah Inquiry Commission report was released in September 2008, after four years of thorough investigations.[20] It lifted the cloak of blame that had been wrapped around the Gujarati people all those years. It also cleared the most blackened Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi.

There is absolutely no evidence to show that either the Chief Minister and/or any other Minister(s) in his Council of Ministers or Police officers had played any role in the Godhra incident or that there was any lapse on their part in the matter of providing protection, relief and rehabilitation to the victims of communal riots or in the matter of not complying with the recommendations and directions given by National Human Rights Commission. There is no evidence regarding involvement of any definite religious or political organization in the conspiracy. Some individuals who had participated in the conspiracy appear to be involved in the heinous act of setting coach S/6 on fire.

The policemen who were assigned the duty of travelling in the Sabarmati Express train from Dahod to Ahmedabad had not done so and for this negligent act of theirs an inquiry was held by the Government and they have been dismissed from service.

On the basis of the facts and circumstances proved by the evidence the Commission comes to the conclusion that burning of coach S/6 was a pre-planned act. In other words there was a conspiracy to burn coach S/6 of the Sabarmati Express train coming from Ayodhya and to cause harm to the Karsevaks travelling in that coach. All the acts like procuring petrol, circulating false rumour, stopping the train and entering in coach S/6 were in pursuance of the object of the conspiracy. The conspiracy hatched by these persons further appears to be a part of a larger conspiracy to create terror and destabilise the Administration.[21]

According to Justice Nanavati, Maulvi Hussain Umarji from Godhra was the brain behind the events. Two of the main accused, Salim Panwala et Farukh Bhana, are absconding, very likely having fled to Pakistan. The report named a few others, with various degrees of involvement in the events, but they are unlikely to be troubled in view of their political connections.


Heartstrings for whom?

It is easy to see why the Nanavati Report was frowned upon by Citizens for Justice and Peace, namely Activist Teesta Setalvad who asked the Supreme Court “to restrain the Gujarat Government from acting upon, circulating and publishing this report.” Fortunately on October 13th, 2008, the highest court sharply turned down the petition, thus making the testimonies and inquiries available to all (the Nanavati Report is available on the Internet).

However, under pressure from the UPA Government and pestered by the National Human Rights Commission and Citizens for Justice and Peace NGO, on October 21st, 2008, the Supreme Court directed that the Prevention of Terrorist Act (POTA) could not be used against the 134 accused in the Godhra train burning incident, whose trial was to be held under the provisions of the Indian Penal Code. This amounted to accepting prima facie that the guilty were not terrorists: we are allowed to call them “militants,” “gunmen” — but not terrorists. This ruling will have nationwide impact, as other State governments may have to drop charges under POTA against those accused of indulging in terrorist activities. The recent terrorist attacks on Mumbai (on November 26th) demonstrate the danger of such a withdrawal.


Pattern for Harmony

This appears to be a pattern: whenever Muslim riots or bomb attacks target Hindus, it is thought acceptable to accuse the victims, in order to avoid possible revolts. Thus in 1993 in Mumbai, after eleven coordinated bomb blasts in Hindu majority areas, which killed 257 people and injured 713, the then Maharashtra Chief Minister Sharad Pawar quickly cooked up a twelfth explosion … in a Muslim area! “I have deliberately misled people,” he explained later, to show that both communities had been affected.”[22] And to portray both communities’ potential to behave as “terrorists”! Truth and clarity of mind are the casualties.

We remember the great art historian A.K. Coomaraswamy’s words in 1909:

It is unfortunate that libels upon nations and religions cannot be punished as can libels upon individuals.[23]

Gujarat had greatly suffered throughout all those years. Through a devastating Bhuj region earthquake in January 2001, in which more than 20,000 people died; the pilgrims burned alive at Godhra in Feb. 2002 and just six months later another terrorist attack in the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar, where thirty-three peaceful worshippers were brutally gunned down (with seventy injured). Amidst those tragedies the people of Gujarat seemed to have no doubt whatsoever regarding the sincerity of their Chief Minister, whose administration happens to be among the least corrupt in the whole of India. State elections were held twice since those events: in December 2002 and December 2007. How is it that Narendra Modi won landslide victories on both occasions despite extremely hostile and sustained media campaigns, seeking to demonise him as a blood-thirsty ruler?

Official India has chosen to forget a millennium of Islamic intolerance and brutality. Millions of butchered Indians have no right to be remembered, not even in history textbooks, where invaders are sometimes turned into heroes. Sadly, this ostrich-like attitude leaves the wounds open and condemns us to relive the past rather than heal it.

January 2009

© Nicole Elfi

Nicole Elfi left France thirty-four years ago for India, drawn to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. She participated in publication of works related to them and in research on Indian culture, authoring two books in French; the second one, Aux Sources de l’Inde was published June 2008. Contact email:


Notes & references

[1] See Commission of Inquiry Report of Justice G.T. Nanavati & Justice Akshay H. Mehta (“Justice Nanavati Report” for short further below): p. 71-84: 97-125; p.86: 128; p.89-90: 130; p.170: 223; p.172: 226-27; p.174-175: 229; the integral text is available on the website of the Gujarat Government: http://home.gujarat.gov.in/homedepartment/downloads/godharaincident.pdf
See also Godhra the Missing Rage, by S.K. Modi (New Delhi: Ocean Books, 2004).

[2] One of the main vehicles was out of order, as its clutch-plates had been taken out a few days earlier. On their arrival on 27.02.02 in their office, firemen found that the other fire engine had been tampered with. (Justice Tewatia Report and Justice Nanavati Report: p.88-89: 131.)

[3] Ibid.

[4] Justice Nanavati Report, p.39-41: 50-52, p.48-49: 67-68.

[5] To which Gujarat Chief Secretary sent a request to grand further time of 15 days, as “the State machinery is busy with the law & order situation, it would take some time to collect the information and compile the report.” Indeed.

[6] See Balbir Punj in Outlook, May 27th and July 8th; also in The New Indian Express, March 8th, 2002.

[7] See Vadodara Sessions Court, Best Bakery Case, Justice H.U. Mahida’s Judgement, June 27th, 2003.

[8] Columnist Arvind Lavakare in “Blindfolded in Best Bakery” (9.9.2003), commented: “ … The Gujarat government quickly appointed three public pleaders for the purpose of suing [Justice Anand] for contempt of court; these pleaders, in turn, filed an application before the Vadodara judge asking him to move the state's high court to punish the contemnor who, they said, had insulted the honour and dignity of the judge, besides undermining the entire judiciary. … But Justice Anand … went to the Supreme Court even before an appeal against the Vadodara verdict could be thought out by the Gujarat government. His NHRC petitioned the apex court to order a re-trial of the 21 'not guilty' Best Bakery accused. And the re-trial demanded is one that should be out of Gujarat state!…” Though article 20(2) of the Constitution of India prohibits trial for the same offence twice (M. N. Buch, The Indian Express, Mumbai, August 13th, 2003).

[9] Section 191 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, says, “Whoever, being legally bound by an oath or by an express provision of law to state the truth or being bound by law to make a declaration upon any subject, makes any statement which is false, and which he either knows to or believes to be false or does not believe to be true, is said to give false evidence.” Section 193 lays down that punishment for the offence of giving “false evidence” is imprisonment which may extend to seven years and shall also be liable to fine.

[10] Social activist and Secretary of the NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace, and co-editor of Communalism Combat, a CPI-CPI(M) affiliated magazine.

[11] Zaheera isn’t the only one to seek police protection from activist Teesta Setalvad. Rais Khan, who worked closely with her, now feels under threat and recently asked for it too.

[12] As it happens, “a host of Gujarat riot case victims were misled into signing affidavits giving false information at the behest of Setalvad’s Citizens for Justice and Peace, which was instrumental in organising payment of Rs. 1 lakh each to ten witnesses in various post-Godhra riot. Among the recipients, four are Best Bakery case witnesses. A list of names were sent to the CPI(Marxist) relief fund, and demand drafts were handed out at a function in Ahmedabad on August 26th, 2007 by CPI(M) politburo member Brinda Karat, Teesta Setalvad and Rais Khan. Incidentally, those who were both victims and eyewitnesses received 100,000 rupees, some others 50,000 rupees, while the victims got a mere 5,000 rupees each. This has raised eyebrows over the selection of beneficiaries and the purpose of paying a disproportionately large sum to the eyewitnesses before the trial.” See Navin Upadhyay, Daily Pioneer, Dec. 20th, 2008: www.dailypioneer.com/144856/Godhra-riot-witnesses-got-Rs-1-lakh-each.html

[13] South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch and author of the report.

[14] This New York-based Human Rights Watch, still watches the Indian shores closely, as it appears, but not to protect innocent lives. On Dec. 3rd, 2008, just a week after the ghastly Nov. 26th terrorist attacks in Mumbai, HRW issued a statement to the Government of India, offering gratuitous advice on how to manage its affairs and demanding that investigators should respect the human rights of captured terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab (also called “Butcher of Mumbai”). A commentator in The Jerusalem Post pointed out, “The HRW’s website lists 38 reports attacking counter-terrorism efforts around the globe but only three on the brutal impact of terrorism on civilians.” See also Kanchan Gupta’s excellent article, “Mumbai’s Butcher and human rights,” in The Pioneer, Dec. 17th, 2008.
www.dailypioneer.com/144038/Mumbai’s-Butcher-and-human-rights.html

[15] Council for International Affairs and Human Rights (governing body for the term 2001-2003), New Delhi. “Facts Speak for Themselves: Godhra and After,” A Field Study by Justice D. S. Tewatia, Dr. J.C. Batra, Dr. Krishan Singh Arya, Shri Jawahar Lal Kaul, Prof. B. K. Kuthiala. Available online at www.geocities.com/hsitah9/facts_speak_for_themselves.htm .

[16] From Justice Tewatia Report.

[17] The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) is a pro-Hindu organization.

[18] The Sangh Parivar is a network of pro-Hindu organizations deriving from the Rashtriya Sevak Sangh (RSS).

[19] The UPA is a coalition of political parties, the main one being the Congress presided over by Sonia Gandhi; Manmohan Singh is the Prime Minister. As many as 10 Cabinet ministers (at the helm of India’s affairs till today …) as well as 93 Lok Sabha MPs face criminal charges ranging from rape, extortion and murder (Association of Democratic Reforms, New Delhi, in The New Indian Express, Dec. 6th, 2006).

[20] Among its specific tasks, the Nanavati Commission was required by the Government to consider: “Role and conduct of the then Chief Minister and/or any other Minister(s) in his council of Ministers, Police Officers, other individuals and organizations in both the events referred to in clauses (a) and (b); (e) Role and conduct … (i) in dealing with any political or non-political organization which may be found to have been involved in any of the events referred to hereinabove; (ii) in the matter of providing protection, relief and rehabilitation to the victims of communal riots (iii) in the matter of recommendations and directions given by National Human Rights Commission from time to time.” By that notification the Government also included within the scope of inquiry the incidents of violence that had taken place till 31-5-2002.

[21] Nanavati Commission Report, p.174-75: 229; p.175: 229; p.176: 230.

[22] New Indian Express, August 13th, 2006.

[23] Ananda K. Coomaraswamy in Essays in National Idealism, p.143 (Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1981).

Churches skirt destruction in Pakistan

Three churches were attacked in Karachi, Pakistan's economic capital
Sunday, February 01, 2009
SperoForum
By Aftab Mughal


Within a week, three churches were attacked in Karachi city, an economic capital of Pakistan. The Christ Awami Church was attacked twice; a church in Zia Colony in Korangi was also attacked, while a third Reformed Presbyterian Church in Golimar was attacked on Jan. 4.

Pakistan Minorities Front Chairman Michael Javaid (also a former Christians Member of Provincial Assembly, MPA) said that the R. P. Church was attacked allegedly by a group of Baloch men. The police intervened, however, and prevented the church from being destroyed, The News, a Pakistani English daily, reported on Jan. 6. During the attack on Christ Awami Church, unidentified men smashed windows of the church, broke a cross on the wall, damaged hymn books and dumped garbage in the premises of the church. An FIR was lodged the following day after immense pressure and protests from the Christian community.

However, according to Daily Times, another Pakistani English daily, of Jan. 3, the Boat Basin police arrested three men Sher Zaman, Sher Zamir and Bakhti Rehman for pelting Christ Awami Church in the Shah Rasool Colony under a registered case (First Information Report No 04/2009). A member of the church Yaqub Nazar said, “There was a fight between the young men from our community and others during a football match and we were threatened with consequences.”

Aftab Mughal edits the Minorities Concern newsletter of Pakistan.

Bangladesh's last Armenian

Bangladesh's last Armenian prays for unlikely future
Arab Times

DHAKA, Feb 1, 2009 (AFP) - Michael Joseph Martin is guarded about his exact age and reluctant to accept he will be the last in a long line of Armenians to make a major contribution to the history of Bangladesh.

Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, was once home to thousands of migrants from the former Soviet republic who grew to dominate the city's trade and business life.

But Martin, aged in his 70s, is now the only one left.

'When I die, maybe one of my three daughters will fly in from Canada to keep our presence here alive,' Martin said hopefully, speaking broken Bengali with a thick accent. 'Or perhaps other Armenians will come from somewhere else.'

Martin came to Dhaka in 1942 during World War II, following in the footsteps of his father who had settled in the region decades earlier.

They joined an Armenian community in Bangladesh dating back to the 16th century, but now Martin worries about who will look after the large Armenian church in the city's old quarter.

'This is a blessed place and God won't leave it unprotected and uncared for,' he said of the Church of Holy Resurrection, which was built in 1781 in the Armanitola, or Armenian district.

Martin -- whose full name is Mikel Housep Martirossian -- looks after the church and its graveyard where 400 of his countrymen are buried, including his wife who died three years ago.

When their children, all Bangladeshi passport-holders, left the country along, Martin became the sole remaining Armenian here. He now lives alone in an enormous mansion in the church grounds.

'When I walk, sometimes I feel spirits moving around. These are the spirits of my ancestors. They were noble men and women, now resting in peace,' said Martin, who is stooped and frail but retains a detailed knowledge of the Armenian history in Dhaka.

Marble tombstones display family names such as Sarkies, Manook and Aratoon from a time when Armenians were Dhaka's wealthiest merchants with palatial homes who traded jute, spices, indigo and leather.

Among the dead are M. David Alexander, the biggest jute trader of the late 19th century, and Nicholas Peter Poghose who set up Bangladesh's first private school in the 1830s and died in 1876.

Martin, himself a former trader, said the Armenians, persecuted by Turks and Persians, were embraced in what is now Bangladesh first by the Mughals in the 16th and 17th centuries and then by the British colonial empire.

Fluent in Persian -- the court language of the Mughals and the first half of the British empire in India -- Armenians were commonly lawyers, merchants and officials holding senior public positions.

They were also devout Christians who built some of the most beautiful churches in the Indian subcontinent.

'Their numbers fluctuated with the prospects in trading in Dhaka,' said Muntasir Mamun, a historian at Dhaka University.

'Sometimes there were several thousand Armenians trading in the Bengal region. They were always an important community in Dhaka and dominated the country's trading. They were the who's who in town. They celebrated all their religious festivals with pomp and style.'

The decline came gradually after the British left India and the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 with Dhaka becoming the capital of East Pakistan and then of Bangladesh after it gained independence in 1971.

These days, the Armenian Church holds only occasional services on important dates in the Orthodox Christian calendar, with a Catholic priest from a nearby seminary coming in to lead prayers at Christmas.

Martin said the once-busy social scene came to a halt after the last Orthodox priest left in the late 1960s, but he is determined to ensure the church's legacy endures.

'Every Sunday was a day of festival for us. Almost every Armenian would attend the service, no matter how big he was in social position. The church was the centre of all activities,' he said.

'I've seen bad days before, but we always bounced back. I am sure Armenians will come back here for trade and business. I will then rest in peace beside my wife.'

The deviants of Mangalore and Malegaon are demonised fallaciously.

Francois Gautier


When I began reporting on this, I went to interview the RSS leadership in Delhi, expecting, from what I had heard, a few bloodthirsty fascists. I was surprised to meet those old daddies with their long khaki shorts, who would not hurt a fly. Twenty-five years later, the word 'Hindu Talibanisation' is being heard amidst the clamour following the odious pub episode in Mangalore. Such incidents should be condemned, as it has no precedent in Indian history—from Prithviraj Chauhan to Shivaji, Hindus respected the women of even their enemies. Yet, I beg to disagree: this is not about the Talibanisation of Hindu groups, it is about their demonisation.

British colonisers in league with the Christian missionaries realised 200 years ago that the biggest obstacle to fully subjugating India was Hinduism, as it was ancient, woven into the fabric of life and held the country together. They set upon defaming Hinduism, by dwelling on what they perceived as its negatives: castes, sati, superstition, etc. Simultaneously, they created in a span of two or three generations a class of Indians who looked up only to the West.

Macaulay, the architect of the scheme, summed it up in his Minute on Education: "We must do our best to form a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect." Macaulay despised Indian culture: "Hindus have a literature of small intrinsic value, hardly reconcilable with morality, full of monstrous superstitions...." The demonisation of Hinduism was apace.

As a result, these Anglicised Indians became ashamed of their own culture. This Western/anti-Hindu outlook was handed down from generation to generation, right down to our age, where many of India's brilliant and articulate Hindu-Marxist intellectuals, products all of institutions like jnu, or St Stephen's, keep on repeating, as if by rote, what their hoary forebears were taught by the British. And unfortunately, they pass it back to their friends from the West, neatly marking a full circle. How else could a film like Slumdog Millionaire, made by an Englishman, which literally craps on India from the very first frame, be feted by most of India's intelligentsia? How else could India specialists like Christophe Jaffrelot peddle to his gullible French readers the spurious theory that there is a "Hindu tradition of terror"?

Politically, the Congress just took over from the British, as I explain in my new book (A New History of India, 2008, Har Anand), and used its English-speaking press to present Hindu social and political parties as fanatical and ridiculous. The goal was to corner the Muslim vote, which was—and still remains—achieved. It does not help today that the supreme leader of India is a Christian. Whether her aides or her ministers (many of them capable people in their own right) rush to gratify her in true bhakti spirit or whether she directly speaks her will, one does not know. But what better way to please her than by equating Hindu fundamentalism with the Muslim one and to turn the flak on to small Hindu outfits which are amateur lambs compared to the Islamic ones?

There are two standards today used by India's media and intelligentsia. One for minorities and the other for Hindus. It is totally illogical: if 4,00,000 Hindus are hounded out of the Kashmir Valley which has always been their home, nobody protests; but New Delhi has been rooting for Palestinians for four decades and recently donated a million dollars for their welfare. When blast after blast wrecks Indian markets, when trains are bombed, hotels attacked by men worse than animals, intellectuals blame it on Babri Masjid (where nobody was killed) or Gujarat (triggered by the burning of 59 innocent Hindus).But when a few Hindus plan to establish a Hindu rashtra and plot a clumsy, small-scale revenge, they are equated with deadly fundamentalists. A universal theorem is made of their single act, which should stand out as isolated, because Hindus have been for thousands of years tolerant to the point of cowardice. Our intellectuals never theorised when, in Kashmir, militants used to throw acid on women who did not cover up, but now devote reams to the goons of Mangalore.

Finally, to be fair, one has to say that a lot of prudishness has seeped into India because of the Islamic purdah and, later, Victorian stuffiness. Yet, Hinduism always enjoined its adherents to live life fully, including its sexual aspect. We do not want an Indian youth which blindly apes the West: drinking, drugs and promiscuity. But the Hindu political leadership should also shun rough, prudish and moralistic acts which will only alienate its young voters.