Vinay Lal
[See also ‘Jallianwala Bagh Massacre’, and companion piece: ‘The Public Memory of Udham Singh in India’]
In the annals of anti-colonial revolutionary activity in India, the name of Udham Singh shines bright. He is remembered chiefly as the assassin of Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, often confused with Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, the perpetrator of the infamous Jallianwala Bagh Massacre at Amritsar in 1919. O’Dwyer was then the ruler of the Punjab, and O’Dwyer, though he did not order the massacre, not only did not issue any reprimand but was also clearly of the opinion that Dyer had taken appropriate action to stem a lawless mob from taking the law into its own hands. It was necessary, as O’Dwyer and Dyer were to state on subsequent occasions, to strike terror among the people and create the necessary ‘effect’. In nationalist historiography, particularly of the variety that celebrates patriots who embraced armed resistance, Udham Singh is viewed as among the more notable patriots, along with the likes of Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad, Rajguru, and Sukhdev, who had a burning desire to liberate the motherland from colonial rule.
Sher Singh, the name by which Udham Singh was known at birth and in his early years, was born on 26 December 1899 in Sunam in the Sangrur district of Punjab. [Colonial records list his date of birth as 23 August 1901.] Family members tilled the land though Sher Singh’s father served as a watchman at a railway crossing. Sher Singh lost both his parents when he was still a very young boy and he was sent to Amritsar’s Central Khalsa Orphanage in 1907, where he was initiated into the Sikh faith and named Udham Singh. The Orphanage is known as an institution which imparted instruction in Sikh history, religion and culture to its wards, transforming them eventually into fit recipients of the faith so that they might all the more serve as its future guardians.
The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre
It is in Amritsar, on 13 April 1919, that General Dyer entered the Jallianwala Bagh, where thousands of people had gathered for a political meeting, and ordered his troops to commence firing without giving people a chance to disperse. The official death toll stood at 379, though the Congress, which initiated an inquiry into the “Punjab Disturbances”, including the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, estimated that as many as 1,000 people may have died in the firing. Whatever the exact number of fatalities, which will never be ascertained with certainty, the young Udham Singh, then 20 years of age, is described as having been deeply hurt, and doubtless enraged, by O’Dwyer’s actions, and he is thought to have taken a vow to avenge the death of hundreds of fellow Indians – women, men, and children. The film “Shaheed Bhagat Singh” (2000) depicts Udham Singh as taking a pledge at Harmandar Sahib that the blood of Indians shall not have been shed in vain.
Interregnum: The Itinerant Revolutionary
Over the course of the next decade, Udham Singh led an existence that was at once peripatetic and revolutionary. He traveled to Africa – according to some accounts, to Nairobi; and more likely to Uganda, where Indian labor force helped to build the railways -- and eventually made his way to the United States. By the early 1920s, Udham Singh had joined forces with those waging armed struggle against British rule in India, and in the US he became an active supporter of the Ghadr movement. He came under the influence of Lala Lajpat Rai, but the dominant intellectual figure in his life was clearly Bhagat Singh, whose own turn towards revolutionary Marxism or Bolshevism was emulated by Udham Singh. In the mid-1920s, Udham Singh also traveled to France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Poland and a number of other countries before, apparently, making his way back to the US sometime around 1923-24.
Udham Singh returned to India in July 1927 with a cache of arms as well as prohibited political literature but was caught by the police in Amritsar, convicted under the Arms Act, and sentenced to a jail term which lasted four years. Upon his release in October 1931, Udham Singh returned to his hometown of Sunam, but constant harassment by the police forced him to depart for Amritsar. Here, according to some of his biographers, he opened up a business as a signboard painter. In 1933, Udham Singh made his way to London, and over the course of the next three years he traveled widely in Europe; he also appears to have been a motorcycle enthusiast. Late in the 1930s, according to British police records, he is said to have stated that by was a carpenter by profession, and he listed his name as Azad Singh.
The Assassination of O’Dwyer
Udham Singh, if the account of the pledge he had taken after the Amritsar pledge has any veracity, had long nursed the desire to avenge the death of his fellow Indians for whom he held O’Dwyer at least as much responsible as General Dyer himself. Dyer was relieved of his position in the army, though he had received the approbation of thousands of private citizens in Britain who hailed him as the savior of the British empire, but he succumbed to an illness a few years after the shooting at Jallianwala Bagh. O’Dwyer, meanwhile, had returned to England after retirement, and like many a celebrated ‘old India hand’ he occasionally attended public meetings. On 13 March 1940, O’Dwyer was one of the scheduled speakers at a joint meeting of the East India Association and the Royal Central Asian Society. As O’Dwyer was conversing with Lord Zetland, the Secretary of State for India, Udham Singh took out a concealed revolver and fired a number of shots: two bullets struck O’Dwyer, who died instantly, and another bullet wounded Zetland. Udham Singh made no attempt to escape and was at once apprehended.
Trial, Conviction, and Death of Udham Singh
Udham Singh was charged with the murder of Michael O’Dwyer on 1 April 1940 and his trial commenced on 4 June 1940 at “Old Bailey”, London, before Justice Atkinson. He gave his name as Ram Mohammad Singh Azad – an attempt on his part, three decades before Amar Akbar Anthony, to prove his secular credentials and to suggest, perhaps, that it remained for individuals to show how they could move beyond the communal outlook. To an India where communalism was assuming overwhelming importance, Udham Singh sought to demonstrate through his personal example that considerations of religion, creed, and caste ought to be no consequence to a genuine patriot.
The outcome of the trial was a foregone conclusion: Udham Singh had shot O’Dwyer before witnesses, and he never denied that he was responsible for the assassination. The trial lasted a mere two days; the proceedings were but a formality. Justice Atkinson sentenced him to death by hanging, and Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed his appeal and confirmed the death sentence. The order was carried out on July 31 at Pentonville Prison, also famous as the site for the execution of the Irish revolutionary Roger Casement. O’Dwyer was buried in the prison grounds and it is not until much later, at the request of the Indian government, that his remains were exhumed and repatriated back to India. Though a lesser-known figure than Bhagat Singh, he continues to be lionized in the Punjab and especially in Amritsar, and Punjabis have carried the memory of his name to other parts of India.
[For some brief notes on the public memory of Udham Singh, see the companion piece on him at MANAS.]
Copyright: Vinay Lal, May 2008
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Islamic militants shoot 21-year-old bride
Wedding plans cut short as militants shoot 21-year-old
Indian Express Dec 17, 2009
KELLER (SHOPIAN) : Sheeraza Akhtar was looking forward to her wedding in April next year to a boy from the nearby village of Sangam. The conversation on most nights in the family centred around the coming festivities. Till Tuesday, when a militant entered the house of labourer Mohd Maqbool Mir, asked him to point out Sheeraza and then shot the 21-year-old dead.
It was the sixth such incident in this area in the recent past, and the small village of Kellar in Shopian district, hemmed in on all sides by forests, was in a state of shock on Wednesday. Since April this year, unidentified assailants have killed seven civilians, including four women and a three-year-old child.
Mir recalled Sheeraza was serving dinner when the man came into the kitchen at 7.30 pm. “Clad in black phiran, this young man asked my younger daughter her name, then looked at Sheeraza and asked her name. When she told him, the man pumped five bullets into her body,” said the 70-year-old, breaking down. “I don’t know for what crime my young daughter was killed.”
Sheeraza’s younger sister Dazy, still to recover from the shock of seeing her sister killed before her eyes, said she didn’t utter a word as she lay there dying.
The Class X student recalled that they first believed their brother Tariq, who stays in Delhi, had returned. While the assailant wasn’t wearing a mask and speaking Kashmiri, Dazy said they hadn’t seen him before.
Neighbours remember Sheeraza as a caring, shy girl who loved her family. “We want to know who is behind this gruesome killing,” said Ghulam Ahmad Khan.
Station House Officer, Keller, Farooq Ahmad said they believed three men came to Mir’s house on Tuesday evening, and one of them went in and shot Sheeraza as the other two stayed outside on guard. “The killing is the handiwork of militants active in the area,” he said.
Sheeraza is the fourth woman to have fallen to bullets of unknown assailants in the past nine months. On April 4, militants had gunned down 60-year-old Reshma Begum near Kellar; on May 30, Sahib-ud-din of the same village was killed by unidentified persons; three days later, 26-year-old Nageena Akhtar was shot in the area; in July, another young woman, Parveena, was killed in similar circumstances; while later that month, Mohd Aslam Awan and his three-year-old son were shot by unknown gunmen in Gujjar Patti Keller.
Both factions of the Hurriyat Conference have condemned such killings.
Indian Express Dec 17, 2009
KELLER (SHOPIAN) : Sheeraza Akhtar was looking forward to her wedding in April next year to a boy from the nearby village of Sangam. The conversation on most nights in the family centred around the coming festivities. Till Tuesday, when a militant entered the house of labourer Mohd Maqbool Mir, asked him to point out Sheeraza and then shot the 21-year-old dead.
It was the sixth such incident in this area in the recent past, and the small village of Kellar in Shopian district, hemmed in on all sides by forests, was in a state of shock on Wednesday. Since April this year, unidentified assailants have killed seven civilians, including four women and a three-year-old child.
Mir recalled Sheeraza was serving dinner when the man came into the kitchen at 7.30 pm. “Clad in black phiran, this young man asked my younger daughter her name, then looked at Sheeraza and asked her name. When she told him, the man pumped five bullets into her body,” said the 70-year-old, breaking down. “I don’t know for what crime my young daughter was killed.”
Sheeraza’s younger sister Dazy, still to recover from the shock of seeing her sister killed before her eyes, said she didn’t utter a word as she lay there dying.
The Class X student recalled that they first believed their brother Tariq, who stays in Delhi, had returned. While the assailant wasn’t wearing a mask and speaking Kashmiri, Dazy said they hadn’t seen him before.
Neighbours remember Sheeraza as a caring, shy girl who loved her family. “We want to know who is behind this gruesome killing,” said Ghulam Ahmad Khan.
Station House Officer, Keller, Farooq Ahmad said they believed three men came to Mir’s house on Tuesday evening, and one of them went in and shot Sheeraza as the other two stayed outside on guard. “The killing is the handiwork of militants active in the area,” he said.
Sheeraza is the fourth woman to have fallen to bullets of unknown assailants in the past nine months. On April 4, militants had gunned down 60-year-old Reshma Begum near Kellar; on May 30, Sahib-ud-din of the same village was killed by unidentified persons; three days later, 26-year-old Nageena Akhtar was shot in the area; in July, another young woman, Parveena, was killed in similar circumstances; while later that month, Mohd Aslam Awan and his three-year-old son were shot by unknown gunmen in Gujjar Patti Keller.
Both factions of the Hurriyat Conference have condemned such killings.
Rajneesh Sharma's torture and murder
When silence tells a story
He and his kith and kin were hounded for over a month. No human rights organisation came to their defence. On the fateful night of September 29, the lawless arm of the law finally caught up with him. He was whisked away from Jammu to Srinagar. A week later — on October 6 — his body was found hanging in the Ram Munshi Bagh police station in Srinagar. The police said it was suicide. Just five weeks after their marriage, his bride became a widow.
Rajneesh Sharma’s only crime was that he was a Hindu from Jammu who had fallen in love with a Muslim woman from the Valley. He did not convert to Islam. Instead, the girl, Amina Yousaf, adopted Hinduism and took the name Aanchal Sharma after marriage. Her father, Mohammad Yousaf, a Sub-Inspector in the Sales Tax Vigilance Department in Srinagar, could not reconcile himself with this. At his instance, the helpful State police and the pliable, communalised administration came down heavily on Rajneesh and his family. ......
While the local media covered this macabre tragedy in detail, the national dailies, with the exception of The Pioneer, almost blacked it out.
The torture marks on Rajneesh’s body, seen by scores of people on its arrival in Jammu exposed the brutality the policemen practised. There were cigarette burn marks all over. His nails had been pulled out. Other evidence of torture suggests that he was given the option of giving up either the woman he loved or his faith. The courage Rajneesh showed in the face of such torture — which has been confirmed by post-mortem as well — needs to be commended.
Let us contrast the indifference towards Rajneesh’s death case with how civil society reacted in Kolkata when an influential and rich Hindu, Ashok Todi, was accused of getting the police to help him deal with a Muslim man, Rizwanur Rahman, who dared to marry his daughter. The people of Kolkata, irrespective of their religion, rose in protest. Some of India’s greatest intellectuals went and forced the Government to order an impartial probe which led to the prosecution of both Todi and the police officers who colluded with him.
Contrast Kolkata’s reaction with the deafening silence in Srinagar and Delhi over Rajneesh’s custodial death. The victim is from Jammu & Kashmir’s minority community. Will Rajneesh have to become a Rizwanur to get justice in India?
Links
Ex-Muslim Anchal Rajneesh seeks justice
Hindu minorities insecure in J&K
Why is Rajneesh different from Rizwan
He and his kith and kin were hounded for over a month. No human rights organisation came to their defence. On the fateful night of September 29, the lawless arm of the law finally caught up with him. He was whisked away from Jammu to Srinagar. A week later — on October 6 — his body was found hanging in the Ram Munshi Bagh police station in Srinagar. The police said it was suicide. Just five weeks after their marriage, his bride became a widow.
Rajneesh Sharma’s only crime was that he was a Hindu from Jammu who had fallen in love with a Muslim woman from the Valley. He did not convert to Islam. Instead, the girl, Amina Yousaf, adopted Hinduism and took the name Aanchal Sharma after marriage. Her father, Mohammad Yousaf, a Sub-Inspector in the Sales Tax Vigilance Department in Srinagar, could not reconcile himself with this. At his instance, the helpful State police and the pliable, communalised administration came down heavily on Rajneesh and his family. ......
While the local media covered this macabre tragedy in detail, the national dailies, with the exception of The Pioneer, almost blacked it out.
The torture marks on Rajneesh’s body, seen by scores of people on its arrival in Jammu exposed the brutality the policemen practised. There were cigarette burn marks all over. His nails had been pulled out. Other evidence of torture suggests that he was given the option of giving up either the woman he loved or his faith. The courage Rajneesh showed in the face of such torture — which has been confirmed by post-mortem as well — needs to be commended.
Let us contrast the indifference towards Rajneesh’s death case with how civil society reacted in Kolkata when an influential and rich Hindu, Ashok Todi, was accused of getting the police to help him deal with a Muslim man, Rizwanur Rahman, who dared to marry his daughter. The people of Kolkata, irrespective of their religion, rose in protest. Some of India’s greatest intellectuals went and forced the Government to order an impartial probe which led to the prosecution of both Todi and the police officers who colluded with him.
Contrast Kolkata’s reaction with the deafening silence in Srinagar and Delhi over Rajneesh’s custodial death. The victim is from Jammu & Kashmir’s minority community. Will Rajneesh have to become a Rizwanur to get justice in India?
Links
Ex-Muslim Anchal Rajneesh seeks justice
Hindu minorities insecure in J&K
Why is Rajneesh different from Rizwan
Friday, December 11, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
CAG Diva wins IMC's Tippu Sultan Genocide Award
CAG Diva wins IMC's Tippu Sultan Genocide Award
12 November, 2008 03:59:00 Ari Saja
In fact, every day is a Red Letter Day at CIIS. Or should I say “Red Flag Day?” CIIS Alumni who are unfortunate enough to have relatives who fought or died for the Free World against Communists, cite the unique experience of seeing a faculty member come in to a classroom in the United States of America, and declare: “My grandfather was a Communist, my father was a Communist, and I am a Communist”, in warning that other views would not be tolerated. Other accomplishments of CIIS can be found on the internet, for instance on an Open Letter on PetitionOnline that I found through GOOGLE, with 807 signatures. CIIS also tries to attract students by pointing out that 75% of its student body is female, and to their tradition of senior faculty taking wives from said student bodies.
There is considerable confusion what the “C” in CIIS stands for. This may shock many readers, but I am informed by usually reliable sources who prefer to remain anonymous that it does not stand for “Communist” or “Chinese”, it stands for “California”, and neither of the two “I”s stand for “Islamic” or “Insurgent”. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.
So who is this great Humanitarian, Tipu Sultan, the hero of the Indian Muslim Council of the USA? I am told that Tipu was, well, the Sultan. Of Mysore, in Karnataka, India, until his infestation ended in 1799. First son of Haider Ali, by second wife Fakhrunnisa, His capital was “Sri Ranga Pattanam”. According to my desi friends, that means: the city of Sri Ranga, but it was corrupted by whisky-slurred illiterate British thugs (i.e., South Asia Scholars like the ones who write California’s school textbooks) to “Seringapatam”. Tipu was a devout Indian Muslim. And we all know that Islam is the Religion of Peace. Tipu brought peace to villages all over the present-day Indian state of Karnataka and south into Kerala. Tens of thousands of villagers never felt anything at all after he was done with them.
He was also one of the most religious of Sunni Muslims, in the way that the New Life Baptist Church followers are some of the most religious of Christians and the Taliban are the most religious of Muslims. It is said that he went to every village with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, and offered the choice to those who survived his army’s initial wave of peace. Accept the Religion of Peace – or get Eternal Peace in pieces after a few minutes of dismemberment and other happy acts by his soldiers.
An example of his humanitarian nature can be seen from this quote from someone who comes from one of the areas blessed by him [1] :
“Naraka Chaturdashi, is also known as Deepvali, the famous festival of lights, but Mandyam Iyengars don't celebrate it; they observe it as a Dark Day. It was on this day over 200 years ago that Tipu Sultan herded nearly 700 men and women belonging to this community and put them to a cruel death, according to two Mysore-based scholars who have more than academic interest in this particular aspect of history - Dr MA Jayashree and MA Narasimhan, whose close relation with the Wadiyars of Mysore goes back to more than 150 years.”
Another person who has done some research on the history of Tippu says [2]:
“But in reality, he was only a religious fanatic who believed in converting as many Hindus to Islam, and killing those who didn't fall in line.
Living in Kerala, one does not have to read historical books to know about Tipu's oppression. It was just a few generations back and Tipu's cruelty is a part of the folk-lore. Temples relocated, idols (some of them even made of gold) buried (some of them recently recovered) and people resettled, in the wake of Tipu's military campaign ('padayottam' as it is locally known)."
The book by Sitaram Goel is pretty blunt [3].
“Based on a novel by Bhagwan Gidwani, the docudrama ‘The Sword of Tipu Sultan’ provoked widespread outrage. ‘Tipu Sultan: Villain or Hero?’ originally published by the Bombay Malayalee Samajam, is an anthology of essays that excoriates Doordarshan's depiction of Tipu Sultan and criticizes the peculiar "secularism" practised by the contemporary Indian State.
In the words of Ravi Varma, one of the contributors to the anthology: "It was Tipu Sultan and his fanatic Muslim army who converted thousands of Hindus to Islam all along the invasion route and occupied areas in North Kerala, Coorg, Mangalore, and other parts of Karnataka. Besides over 8,000 Hindu temples were desecrated and/or destroyed by his Muslim army. Even today, one can see large concentrations of Muslims and ruins of hundreds of destroyed temples in North Kerala as standing evidence of the Islamic brutalities committed by Tipu Sultan ... He was, all through, waging a cruel Islamic war against the Hindu population of Kerala, with a large Muslim army and ably assisted by the French with powerful field guns and European troops. ...In spite of all this, historical documents and records are being suppressed.
So what do the original sources tell us about Tipu? The anthology includes excerpts from Tipu's letters as researched by the distinguished Kerala historian K. M. Panicker, which he reviewed in the Bhasha Poshini magazine, August 1923:
1. Letter dated March 22, 1788, to Abdul Kadir: "Over 12,000 Hindus were honoured with Islam. There were many Namboodri Brahmins among them. This achievement should be widely publicized among the Hindus. Then the local Hindus should be brought before you and converted to Islam. No Namboodri Brahmin should be spared. "
2. Letter dated December 14, 1988, to his army chief in Calicut: " I am sending two of my followers with Mir Hussain Ali. With their assistance, you should capture and kill all Hindus. Those below 20 may be kept in prison and 5000 from the rest should be killed from the tree-tops. These are my orders."
3. Letter dated January 18, 1790, to Syed Abdul Dulai: " ...almost all Hindus in Calicut are converted to Islam. I consider this as Jehad."
The anthology also quotes from A Voyage to the East Indies by Fra Barthoelomeo, a renowned Portuguese traveller and historian, who was present in Tipu's war zone in early 1790:
"First a corps of 30,000 barbarians who butchered everybody on the way ... followed by the field gun unit under the French commander, M. Lally. Tipu was riding on an elephant behind which another army of 30,000 soldiers followed. Most of the men and women were hanged in Calicut, first mothers were hanged with their children tied to necks of mothers. That barbarian Tipu Sultan tied the naked Christian and Hindus to the legs of elephants and made the elephants to move around till the bodies of the helpless victims were torn to pieces. Temples and churches were ordered to be burned down, desecrated, and destroyed. ... Those Christians who refused to be honoured with Islam were ordered to be killed by hanging immediately. These atrocities were told to me by the victims of Tipu Sultan who escaped from the clutches of his army and reached Varapphuza, which is the centre of Carmichael Christian Mission. I myself helped many victims to cross the Varapphuza river by boats."
Moreover, evidence of Tipu's atrocities abounds in many contemporary church records in Mangalore, Calicut, and Varapphuza.”
However, one must note that these are gripes from the Kufr, the Unbelievers whose extermination the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and Sheikh Osama Bin Laden so clearly designated as “halal” for peaceful Muslims. In all fairness to the IMC one must note that Tipu Sultan, like so many Islamic rulers such as Saddam Hussein and General Pervez Musharraf, enjoyed at least a 399% approval rating among all those who lived to express opinions in the lands that he ruled.
We can see clearly that Tipu Sultan is exactly the kind of hero that the Indian Muslim Council of the USA, and Associate Professor Angana Chatterji of the CIIS, would adore. The Tipu Sultan Prize is better than the Nobel Peace Prize in that Tipu brought Eternal Peace (and the Religion of Peace) to far more people than Nobel did.
The CAG – or is it CAC? – or CSFH?
To understand the relevance of the Tipu Sultan Genocide Award, one must go a bit deeper into Associate Professor Chatterji’s credentials. She is a founder member of the Forum of Indian Leftists, credited with organizing a steady stream of articles and OpEds to the media. She is co-author of the FOIL’s “Five-Year Comprehensive Research Report” on (non-Muslim, non-Communist) fundraising in the US, a report that brought so much enjoyment and laughter to so many people in 2002-2003. An example of the smoking-gun proof that they cited for hateful behavior is the following quote. This is slightly paraphrased since the original sounds like it was written by someone in a South Asia Scholar state of sobriety, but the gist is accurate:
“The (law-abiding Indian-American charity) sent $25000 to the families of New York firefighters killed in the September 11, 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center Twin Towers. This was clearly anti-Muslim, since most of the victims were non-Muslim, and the perpetrators were all Muslim”.
Apparently the internal peer review at CIIS found this to be of the highest intellectual quality ever seen in anything generated at that institution. Unfortunately the ignorant general public outside did not agree. Since the highly amused public reaction to this masterpiece of her “research” competence, Dr. Chatterji appears to have given up co-authoring research reports, papers etc. and switched to less mentally challenging modes of propaganda.
The FOIL’s “CSFH” (Communists Seeking to Fund Hate?) mutated into CAC (Communists Amplifying Communalism?). Then the Darfur genocide brought funding opportunities, they made the minor change from “C” to “G” and became “CAG”. What CAG stands for is anyone’s guess. Someone told me, so I will tell you, that CAG does NOT stand for “COMMUNISTS ADMIRING GENOCIDE” but I really don’t see how that could be.
The Only Genocide That Matters
The “CAG” recognizes only one “genocide”. This is the death of several Muslims in the riots in Gujarat in 2002. Of course, the grim, sober “count” of that horrible time, is that some 700 people died, of whom about 400 to 500 were Muslims, and the rest mostly Hindus. This included about 100 policemen, of all religions, who died trying to protect innocents against mobs. Many of the Muslims and Hindus killed were violent rioters shot by the greatly outnumbered police as they tried to loot, rob and kill others.
What triggered this horror? The CAG would have us forget that. At 7 AM on the cold morning of February 27, 2002, the Sabarmati Express train to Ahmedabad was stopped by someone pulling the emergency chain, about a mile outside Godhra station. The train was immediately attacked by a (peaceful Islamic) mob estimated at 4000 that, to believe the CAG’s version of events, just happened to be loitering there at 7AM on a winter morning. A barrage of rocks from the embankment kept the passengers from trying to escape, until the sleeper coaches were decoupled and the doors were barred from outside (windows of overnight sleepers in India have metal anti-theft grilles). Someone cut through (or came through) the vestibule connecting to the other coaches and poured gasoline into the sleeper. Others tossed in flaming rags. Fire trucks racing to the scene were stoned and obstructed until it was far, far too late.
Fitfy-three charred bodies were found when firefighters and police eventually entered the smoldering steel ovens. They included the (Muslim) wife of the station master of Godhra station, and no one so far has published a religious breakdown of the victims, who were sleeping passengers on a regularly scheduled overnight train heading into a cosmopolitan industrial center in India. But the Sepoys of the Indian English-language media did what they do best – they parroted what the racist western news channels run by Pakistanis, such as AP, CNN and BBC, said: that the victims were all “Hindu activists”.
I remember seeing that news report while eating breakfast in the US West. My immediate reaction, beyond the horror, was rage at the obviously incendiary and utterly inhuman characterization of the victims as “Hindu Activists”, and I remember praying: “Oh, PLEASE, stop the reaction that this will provoke”, and knowing even as I prayed that this was too much to hope for.
When the train eventually pulled into Ahmedabad, and the relatives of the victims took the bodies to funerals, the explosion of rage all over Gujarat was just far too much for any police to contain. The Army was then deployed across the rivers of Punjab, at the border with Pakistan. It took a few days to bring them back into Gujarat and deploy them in the interior, where the roads had not recovered from the violent Bhuj earthquake of January 26, 2001.
The Communists, Conversionists and Islamists of the CAG have tried for 6 years to pin criminal guilt for these “riots” on Chief Minister Narendra Modi of Gujarat. The latest exhaustive report headed by the respected Judge Nanavati again clears him. The Central government headed by political enemies of Modi have utterly failed to pin anything on him that would stand up in court. While the Supreme Court found many faults with police investigations of the riots, no sensible evidence has ever surfaced that the Chief Minister failed to do his duty in stopping the riots. In fact, Zaheera Shaikh, one of the young Muslim complainants, 19 at the time of the riots, was sent to prison for perjury because she insisted that the “Affidavit” attributed to her was one composed by FOIL’s sponsor Teesta Setalwad, and that she had been bullied and threatened into signing it. Setalwad enjoys unmatched access to the Indian Supreme Court, since she is a relative of a very famous attorney who practiced in the Court.
In 2008, terrorist bombings, very clearly done by Islamic terrorists, struck Ahmedabad, as horrible in effect as the Godhra atrocity. The terrorists even targeted the relatives gathered at the hospitals, in blasts set off right in front of the entrance to Emergency. My prayers had been accepted, apparently, as this time there was not a single incident of rioting in the aftermath.
But none of this matters to the CAG. Their one-point agenda is to “get” Chief Minister Modi. So, to the CAG, if I read their website right, the deaths of 500 Muslims in a riot that followed the horrible burning to death of 53 innocents by a Muslim mob, is the only example in history of “Genocide”. Darfur doesn’t matter (let’s see now: the victims there are mostly non-Muslim, and the perpetrators are Muslim, so it can’t be genocide). The Holocaust wouldn’t matter (it was mostly Jews who were killed, right? ) The killing of over 1 million Cambodian people wouldn’t matter (The killers were Communists). The genocide in East Pakistan, where 3 million were killed in a year by the Pakistan Army in 1970-71, cannot matter, because most of the victims were Hindus and the perpetrators were, of course, Muslim. The killing of half a million Tutsis in Rwanda wouldn’t matter – they were not Communists or Islamists.
And as we see above, the genocide that killed tens of thousands of non-Muslims (Tipu was equally kind to Christians) is a historical event that the Indian Muslim Council, the CIIS and Angana Chatterji, and hence the CAG, remember with fond admiration and longing.
So who constitute the CAG? According to their website, “35 organizations”. Never mind that the membership of most is pretty much the same. Let’s see a list:
* Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia (ASDSA)
* Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA)
* American Federation of Muslims of Indian Origin (AFMI)
* Association of Indian Muslims of America (AIM)
* Association of South Asian Progressives (ASAP)
* Building Bridges of Understanding Coalition (BB)
* Coalition for a Secular and Democratic India (CSDI)
* Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (CSFH)
* Center for Study and Research in South Asia (CERAS, Montreal)
* Coalition against Communalism (CAC)
* Dharma Megha
* EKTA
* Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America (FIACONA)
* Forum of Inquilabi Leftists (FOIL)
* Foundation For Pluralism
* Friends Of South Asia (FOSA)
* Indian Christian Forum (ICF)
* Indian Muslim Educational Foundation of North America (IMEFNA)
* Indian Muslim Council-USA (IMC-USA)
* Indian Muslim Relief and Charities (IMRC)
* Indian Progressive Study Group of Los Angeles (IPSG-LA)
* International South Asia Forum (INSAF)
* Manavi (An organization for South Asian women)
* Muslim Youth Awareness Alliance (MYAA)
* NRI's for Secular and Harmonious India (NRI-SAHI)
* Organizing Youth (OY)
* Policy Institute For Religion And State (PIFRAS)
* Sikh American Heritage Organization (SAHO)
* Sneha (A network for women of South Asian origin)
* South Asian Collective (SAC)
* South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection (SAMAR)
* South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD, Canada)
* South Asian Progressive Action Collective (SAPAC)
* Students For Bhopal (SFB)
* Supporters of Human Rights in India (SHRI)
* The Organization of Universal Communal Harmony (TOUCH)
* Vaishnava Center for Enlightenment
* Vedanta Society of East Lansing
* Voices for Freedom (VFF)
* World Tamil Organisation (WTO)
* Youth Solidarity Summer (YSS)
Supporting organizations:
* Center for Religious Freedom (Freedom House)
* Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
* DC Collective for South Asians (DCCSA)
* Genocide Watch
* Institute on Religion and Public Policy (IRPP)
* Interfaith Freedom Foundation (IFF)
* Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA)
* National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF)
* Project REACH
* Tikkun
I happen to have found out a few things about these by reading what I find, and talking to people:
* 1. Coalition against Communalism (CAC) is simply the pre-mutation “CAG”. When funding opportunities came up related to the Darfur Genocide (there are enough Americans stupid enough not to ask which side these people are on in that genocide), they changed the “C” to a “G”. The “CAG” website is easily seen to be essentially the CAC website, even the content has not changed.
* 2. Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (CSFH) is what mutated into “CAC” after the “CSFH” was exposed and dissolved in ridicule. The website of CAC obviously started with a copy of the CSFH website.
* 3. FOIL describes themselves as “Leftists”. See “FOIL Primer Part 1” by Komerath [4] for an in-depth expose. I think they would be insulted if they were NOT described as Communists. Angana Chatteri, Biju Matthew, Girish Agarwal, Shalini Gera, Akhila Ra(h)man, Vijay Prashad of Trinity College, CT, Vinay Lal of UCLA, and “Ra” T. Ravishankar are some of its loudest noises.
* 4. “FOSA” is a combination of FOIL and the Pakistan-American Association, with very apparent sponsorship from the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence, per the Pakistani media [5]. Led by Gera, Ra(h)man, Vinay Lal, Mainland Chinese CIIS graduate student(s) working for Chatterji , and several Pakistanis. FOSA with the Pakistan American Association (PAA) are the worthies seen on San Francisco streets holding signs saying :
“Allah Will Destroy Terrorist India and America!”
* 5. “South Asian Collective (SAC)” is a communist organization, partly based in France. Essentially same as FOIL. Mutated from the “SACW” (South Asia Communist Web).
* 6. South Asian Progressive Action Collective (SAPAC) is perhaps the subset of the SAC that can spell a longer name.
* 7. Youth Solidarity Summer (YSS). Communist organization set up to recruit youth, on the “catch’em when they have nothing better to do and no sense to figure it out” principle. Recently tried generating a FOIL-type “REPORT” (with FOIL authors who wisely chose to remain anonymous given their sad experience in 2002), slandering the Hindu Students Council. Fortunately the HSC and everyone else, just ignored them, not even bothering to laugh in public [6]. The “Youth” of YSS includes semi-permanent graduate student teaching assistants at California universities, including some who have the distinction of earning direct condemnation by their university presidents, and causing the dissolution of their entire departments.
* 8. Organizing Youth (OY) is a mutation/ offshoot of YSS, the (lotus-eating) equivalent of the Soviet Comintern’s Young Pioneers, the Chinese Red Guards, and the Indian DYFI.
* 9. Muslim Youth Awareness Alliance (MYAA). Teaching Muslim Youth the techniques perfected by the Communists in their long-running Class War. See also “Student Islamic Movement of India” or SIMI. SIMIans have been “credited” with many “progressive youth” actions in India related to shall we say, fireworks in crowded places, according to police reports.
* 10. Association of South Asian Progressives (ASAP). The ASAP denotes their need to keep morphing to stay ahead of the police, perhaps. The mother ship was the “PROXSA” (Progressive South Asian… etc) based in France, until perhaps things got too hot there.
* 11. (FIACONA) is a name that makes Christians who believe in Jesus Christ, cringe. This is a federation of the commercial soul-harvesting combines of the Baptist and Methodist and Jesuit fringe groups set up to spread hate and liberally spread weapons and destabilize India. See the history of terrorism in North East India and Nepal, the case of the Purulia Arms Drop, and the roots of riots in Gujarat, Orissa, Andhra and now Karnataka, the horrible stories of well-fed conversionists riding into tsunami-destroyed villages in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka and telling the starving residents that they could get food- if they converted. FIACONA’s leadership is most definitely not the same (I hope!!) as that of the mainstream Christianity in India or North America. Recently, with the Maoist takeover in Nepal, the close collaboration between the Conversionists and the Maoists has become all too clear, both in Northeast India and in organizing murders in Orissa. In the “CAG” we see proof of this happy marriage in the US as well.
* 12. “South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection (SAMAR)” The smart acronym means “war” in Indian languages, the term used by the Communists to denote violent strikes and other terror campaigns. Need one say more?
* 13. Indian Muslim Council-USA (IMC-USA). The people who gave Chatterji the Tipu Sultan Genocide Award. Apostles of peace, inter-religious harmony, freedom of worship, and respect for the (Unbelievers’) Constitution. Well connected to SIMI, CAIR, Pakistan-American Association and FIACONA, FOIL and FOSA. Top office bearers included the founder of the SIMI.
* 14. Indian Muslim Relief and Charities (IMRC). Well… No particular comments on this organization. But one might be prudent to check out “Google” for news items related to “Muslim Relief and Charities” especially in the context of the Al Qaida, to stay informed on this general topic.
* 15. NRI's for Secular and Harmonious India (NRI-SAHI). Most interesting Orwellian name. This is the interface between the IMC and certain organizations associated with a major political party in India, to channel funds from Pakistani and other sources, to worthwhile causes. The founders included Kaleem K. Kawaja.
* 16. Association of Indian Muslims of America (AIM). Headed by Kaleem Kawaja, famous author [7] (See Pakistan Link for his publications) of the February 2002 article, "Can You Spare A Tear For the Taliban?" This was soon after the Revolutionary Women of Afghanistan website showed that image of the basket full of severed human hands, many feminine, the handiwork (no pun intended) of Kawaja's Taliban brothers. Kawaja, sitting in Maryland, praised the Taliban's commitment to protecting women even as American soldiers were dying to save the Afghan people from Taliban tyranny.
* 17. Coalition for a Secular and Democratic India (CSDI): You get the idea – another combination of the words “Coalition, Secular, India” and the signature of a Communist organization: the word “Democratic” in the title. Like those democratic heavens GDR and DPRK, to name a couple.
* 18. Sikh American Heritage Organization (SAHO). This is another interesting mutation. In the 1970s through 80s, Pakistani-trained, Canadian-funded terrorists killed over 20,000 people in Punjab (oh, no, that can’t be genocide because the victims were non-Muslim and the perpetrators were armed by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan). Their most infamous international accomplishment was the murder of over 350 passengers including 44 little children, many of the passengers US and Canadian and Indian citizens, when a bomb blew the Air India Boeing 747 “Emperor Kanishka” apart over the Irish Sea. The same day, two baggage handlers at Narita airport, Japan, were killed when a bomb in a bag destined for another Air India flight exploded. A precursor of today’s Pakistani dominance in global terrorism.
The “Khalistan” (nation of the empty-headed) movement became, shall we say, less popular and more recognizable to the Department of Homeland Security with the revived investigation in Canada on why the Air India case was so badly bungled. The lead suspect had died in India on one of his terrorist missions). The “Babbar Khalsa” sub-sect of this bloody gang is on the US State Department’s Honor Roll of foreign terrorist organizations. At the first Convention of the Indian Muslim Council in 2003, the Khalistan representative came as the Khalistan Representative. Today apparently it’s called “SAHO”.
* 19. The Organization of Universal Communal Harmony (TOUCH). Unabashed acronym, set up to “touch” desis silly enough to buy the “Harmony” line used by the NRI-SAHI.
* 20. Vaishnava Center for Enlightenment & 21. Vedanta Society of East Lansing These are probably run by the same persons, who have a very wide range of other businesses. This appears to be the link from the NRI-SAHI to other interesting entities set up in East Lansing, Michigan, for instance by General Musharraf.
* 22. EKTA: I don’t know what if anything the acronym stands for, but the word “Ekta” means “unity” in Hindi, and this is a long-running umbrella organization that spawned many of the others like a spider laying eggs. In the “South Asia Communist Web” in America.
So we see that 22 of the “35 organizations” of CAG are basically the same gang of Communist-Islamist and commercial soul-harvesting gangs and fronts for other entities with too much money and way too much hatred for democracy, freedom of religion, and anything else that characterizes free societies. Many of the rest are simply permutations and combinations of the same gangs.
So what is the IMC’s point in awarding the “Tipu Sultan Award” to Angana Chatterji of CIIS? Very simple and obvious. The “Tipu Sultan Award” is a blatant provocation, the equivalent of the KKK (no reflection on Kaleem K. Kawaja) setting up the “Adolf Hitler Award” and awarding it to, say, Rafsanjani of Iran for his well-known rants of hatred against Israel and Jews. It is deliberate, and it shows exactly what the IMC and the AIM represent.
As for the CAG, this award and simple consideration of the reality of their composition, show that they are indeed Communists Admiring Genocide. What this makes the CIIS, I leave to the gentle reader to conclude.
References:
1. Maolan Cadambi, “Did Tipu massacre 700 Iyengar men, women & kids?” Ramanuja list archive, Oct. 26, 2006.
2. Meanderthalis, “Tipu Sultan - the Glorified Butcher?” August 28, 2006. http://meanderthalis.blogster.com/tipu_sultan_glorified_butcher
3. Walia, C.J.S. IndiaStar Review of the book edited by Sitaram Goel, “Tipu Sultan:Villain or Hero?” Voice of India, new Delhi, 1996. 85p. http://www.indiastar.com/wallia7.htm
4. Komerath, N., “Yesterday once more: FOIL Primer - Part 1”. In Radha Rajan and Krishen Kak, Ed., “NGOs, Activists and Foreign Funds – Anti Nation Industry”. Vigil Public Opinion Forum, Chennai, India 2006, p. 81-99.
5. Komerath, N., “The Lashkar-e-Pinocchio Rides Again”. In Radha Rajan and Krishen Kak, Ed., “NGOs, Activists and Foreign Funds – Anti Nation Industry”. Vigil Public Opinion Forum, Chennai, India 2006, p. 100-115.
6.Saja, A., “Anarchist Losers Attack American College Students – And Flunk As Usual”. May 07, 2007. http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_070507.htm
7. Kawaja, Kaleem K., "Can You Spare a Tear For the Taliban?" Letter to PakistanLink, February 2002. http://www.pakistanlink.com/Letters/2002/Feb/08/10.html
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12 November, 2008 03:59:00 Ari Saja
In fact, every day is a Red Letter Day at CIIS. Or should I say “Red Flag Day?” CIIS Alumni who are unfortunate enough to have relatives who fought or died for the Free World against Communists, cite the unique experience of seeing a faculty member come in to a classroom in the United States of America, and declare: “My grandfather was a Communist, my father was a Communist, and I am a Communist”, in warning that other views would not be tolerated. Other accomplishments of CIIS can be found on the internet, for instance on an Open Letter on PetitionOnline that I found through GOOGLE, with 807 signatures. CIIS also tries to attract students by pointing out that 75% of its student body is female, and to their tradition of senior faculty taking wives from said student bodies.
There is considerable confusion what the “C” in CIIS stands for. This may shock many readers, but I am informed by usually reliable sources who prefer to remain anonymous that it does not stand for “Communist” or “Chinese”, it stands for “California”, and neither of the two “I”s stand for “Islamic” or “Insurgent”. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.
So who is this great Humanitarian, Tipu Sultan, the hero of the Indian Muslim Council of the USA? I am told that Tipu was, well, the Sultan. Of Mysore, in Karnataka, India, until his infestation ended in 1799. First son of Haider Ali, by second wife Fakhrunnisa, His capital was “Sri Ranga Pattanam”. According to my desi friends, that means: the city of Sri Ranga, but it was corrupted by whisky-slurred illiterate British thugs (i.e., South Asia Scholars like the ones who write California’s school textbooks) to “Seringapatam”. Tipu was a devout Indian Muslim. And we all know that Islam is the Religion of Peace. Tipu brought peace to villages all over the present-day Indian state of Karnataka and south into Kerala. Tens of thousands of villagers never felt anything at all after he was done with them.
He was also one of the most religious of Sunni Muslims, in the way that the New Life Baptist Church followers are some of the most religious of Christians and the Taliban are the most religious of Muslims. It is said that he went to every village with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, and offered the choice to those who survived his army’s initial wave of peace. Accept the Religion of Peace – or get Eternal Peace in pieces after a few minutes of dismemberment and other happy acts by his soldiers.
An example of his humanitarian nature can be seen from this quote from someone who comes from one of the areas blessed by him [1] :
“Naraka Chaturdashi, is also known as Deepvali, the famous festival of lights, but Mandyam Iyengars don't celebrate it; they observe it as a Dark Day. It was on this day over 200 years ago that Tipu Sultan herded nearly 700 men and women belonging to this community and put them to a cruel death, according to two Mysore-based scholars who have more than academic interest in this particular aspect of history - Dr MA Jayashree and MA Narasimhan, whose close relation with the Wadiyars of Mysore goes back to more than 150 years.”
Another person who has done some research on the history of Tippu says [2]:
“But in reality, he was only a religious fanatic who believed in converting as many Hindus to Islam, and killing those who didn't fall in line.
Living in Kerala, one does not have to read historical books to know about Tipu's oppression. It was just a few generations back and Tipu's cruelty is a part of the folk-lore. Temples relocated, idols (some of them even made of gold) buried (some of them recently recovered) and people resettled, in the wake of Tipu's military campaign ('padayottam' as it is locally known)."
The book by Sitaram Goel is pretty blunt [3].
“Based on a novel by Bhagwan Gidwani, the docudrama ‘The Sword of Tipu Sultan’ provoked widespread outrage. ‘Tipu Sultan: Villain or Hero?’ originally published by the Bombay Malayalee Samajam, is an anthology of essays that excoriates Doordarshan's depiction of Tipu Sultan and criticizes the peculiar "secularism" practised by the contemporary Indian State.
In the words of Ravi Varma, one of the contributors to the anthology: "It was Tipu Sultan and his fanatic Muslim army who converted thousands of Hindus to Islam all along the invasion route and occupied areas in North Kerala, Coorg, Mangalore, and other parts of Karnataka. Besides over 8,000 Hindu temples were desecrated and/or destroyed by his Muslim army. Even today, one can see large concentrations of Muslims and ruins of hundreds of destroyed temples in North Kerala as standing evidence of the Islamic brutalities committed by Tipu Sultan ... He was, all through, waging a cruel Islamic war against the Hindu population of Kerala, with a large Muslim army and ably assisted by the French with powerful field guns and European troops. ...In spite of all this, historical documents and records are being suppressed.
So what do the original sources tell us about Tipu? The anthology includes excerpts from Tipu's letters as researched by the distinguished Kerala historian K. M. Panicker, which he reviewed in the Bhasha Poshini magazine, August 1923:
1. Letter dated March 22, 1788, to Abdul Kadir: "Over 12,000 Hindus were honoured with Islam. There were many Namboodri Brahmins among them. This achievement should be widely publicized among the Hindus. Then the local Hindus should be brought before you and converted to Islam. No Namboodri Brahmin should be spared. "
2. Letter dated December 14, 1988, to his army chief in Calicut: " I am sending two of my followers with Mir Hussain Ali. With their assistance, you should capture and kill all Hindus. Those below 20 may be kept in prison and 5000 from the rest should be killed from the tree-tops. These are my orders."
3. Letter dated January 18, 1790, to Syed Abdul Dulai: " ...almost all Hindus in Calicut are converted to Islam. I consider this as Jehad."
The anthology also quotes from A Voyage to the East Indies by Fra Barthoelomeo, a renowned Portuguese traveller and historian, who was present in Tipu's war zone in early 1790:
"First a corps of 30,000 barbarians who butchered everybody on the way ... followed by the field gun unit under the French commander, M. Lally. Tipu was riding on an elephant behind which another army of 30,000 soldiers followed. Most of the men and women were hanged in Calicut, first mothers were hanged with their children tied to necks of mothers. That barbarian Tipu Sultan tied the naked Christian and Hindus to the legs of elephants and made the elephants to move around till the bodies of the helpless victims were torn to pieces. Temples and churches were ordered to be burned down, desecrated, and destroyed. ... Those Christians who refused to be honoured with Islam were ordered to be killed by hanging immediately. These atrocities were told to me by the victims of Tipu Sultan who escaped from the clutches of his army and reached Varapphuza, which is the centre of Carmichael Christian Mission. I myself helped many victims to cross the Varapphuza river by boats."
Moreover, evidence of Tipu's atrocities abounds in many contemporary church records in Mangalore, Calicut, and Varapphuza.”
However, one must note that these are gripes from the Kufr, the Unbelievers whose extermination the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and Sheikh Osama Bin Laden so clearly designated as “halal” for peaceful Muslims. In all fairness to the IMC one must note that Tipu Sultan, like so many Islamic rulers such as Saddam Hussein and General Pervez Musharraf, enjoyed at least a 399% approval rating among all those who lived to express opinions in the lands that he ruled.
We can see clearly that Tipu Sultan is exactly the kind of hero that the Indian Muslim Council of the USA, and Associate Professor Angana Chatterji of the CIIS, would adore. The Tipu Sultan Prize is better than the Nobel Peace Prize in that Tipu brought Eternal Peace (and the Religion of Peace) to far more people than Nobel did.
The CAG – or is it CAC? – or CSFH?
To understand the relevance of the Tipu Sultan Genocide Award, one must go a bit deeper into Associate Professor Chatterji’s credentials. She is a founder member of the Forum of Indian Leftists, credited with organizing a steady stream of articles and OpEds to the media. She is co-author of the FOIL’s “Five-Year Comprehensive Research Report” on (non-Muslim, non-Communist) fundraising in the US, a report that brought so much enjoyment and laughter to so many people in 2002-2003. An example of the smoking-gun proof that they cited for hateful behavior is the following quote. This is slightly paraphrased since the original sounds like it was written by someone in a South Asia Scholar state of sobriety, but the gist is accurate:
“The (law-abiding Indian-American charity) sent $25000 to the families of New York firefighters killed in the September 11, 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center Twin Towers. This was clearly anti-Muslim, since most of the victims were non-Muslim, and the perpetrators were all Muslim”.
Apparently the internal peer review at CIIS found this to be of the highest intellectual quality ever seen in anything generated at that institution. Unfortunately the ignorant general public outside did not agree. Since the highly amused public reaction to this masterpiece of her “research” competence, Dr. Chatterji appears to have given up co-authoring research reports, papers etc. and switched to less mentally challenging modes of propaganda.
The FOIL’s “CSFH” (Communists Seeking to Fund Hate?) mutated into CAC (Communists Amplifying Communalism?). Then the Darfur genocide brought funding opportunities, they made the minor change from “C” to “G” and became “CAG”. What CAG stands for is anyone’s guess. Someone told me, so I will tell you, that CAG does NOT stand for “COMMUNISTS ADMIRING GENOCIDE” but I really don’t see how that could be.
The Only Genocide That Matters
The “CAG” recognizes only one “genocide”. This is the death of several Muslims in the riots in Gujarat in 2002. Of course, the grim, sober “count” of that horrible time, is that some 700 people died, of whom about 400 to 500 were Muslims, and the rest mostly Hindus. This included about 100 policemen, of all religions, who died trying to protect innocents against mobs. Many of the Muslims and Hindus killed were violent rioters shot by the greatly outnumbered police as they tried to loot, rob and kill others.
What triggered this horror? The CAG would have us forget that. At 7 AM on the cold morning of February 27, 2002, the Sabarmati Express train to Ahmedabad was stopped by someone pulling the emergency chain, about a mile outside Godhra station. The train was immediately attacked by a (peaceful Islamic) mob estimated at 4000 that, to believe the CAG’s version of events, just happened to be loitering there at 7AM on a winter morning. A barrage of rocks from the embankment kept the passengers from trying to escape, until the sleeper coaches were decoupled and the doors were barred from outside (windows of overnight sleepers in India have metal anti-theft grilles). Someone cut through (or came through) the vestibule connecting to the other coaches and poured gasoline into the sleeper. Others tossed in flaming rags. Fire trucks racing to the scene were stoned and obstructed until it was far, far too late.
Fitfy-three charred bodies were found when firefighters and police eventually entered the smoldering steel ovens. They included the (Muslim) wife of the station master of Godhra station, and no one so far has published a religious breakdown of the victims, who were sleeping passengers on a regularly scheduled overnight train heading into a cosmopolitan industrial center in India. But the Sepoys of the Indian English-language media did what they do best – they parroted what the racist western news channels run by Pakistanis, such as AP, CNN and BBC, said: that the victims were all “Hindu activists”.
I remember seeing that news report while eating breakfast in the US West. My immediate reaction, beyond the horror, was rage at the obviously incendiary and utterly inhuman characterization of the victims as “Hindu Activists”, and I remember praying: “Oh, PLEASE, stop the reaction that this will provoke”, and knowing even as I prayed that this was too much to hope for.
When the train eventually pulled into Ahmedabad, and the relatives of the victims took the bodies to funerals, the explosion of rage all over Gujarat was just far too much for any police to contain. The Army was then deployed across the rivers of Punjab, at the border with Pakistan. It took a few days to bring them back into Gujarat and deploy them in the interior, where the roads had not recovered from the violent Bhuj earthquake of January 26, 2001.
The Communists, Conversionists and Islamists of the CAG have tried for 6 years to pin criminal guilt for these “riots” on Chief Minister Narendra Modi of Gujarat. The latest exhaustive report headed by the respected Judge Nanavati again clears him. The Central government headed by political enemies of Modi have utterly failed to pin anything on him that would stand up in court. While the Supreme Court found many faults with police investigations of the riots, no sensible evidence has ever surfaced that the Chief Minister failed to do his duty in stopping the riots. In fact, Zaheera Shaikh, one of the young Muslim complainants, 19 at the time of the riots, was sent to prison for perjury because she insisted that the “Affidavit” attributed to her was one composed by FOIL’s sponsor Teesta Setalwad, and that she had been bullied and threatened into signing it. Setalwad enjoys unmatched access to the Indian Supreme Court, since she is a relative of a very famous attorney who practiced in the Court.
In 2008, terrorist bombings, very clearly done by Islamic terrorists, struck Ahmedabad, as horrible in effect as the Godhra atrocity. The terrorists even targeted the relatives gathered at the hospitals, in blasts set off right in front of the entrance to Emergency. My prayers had been accepted, apparently, as this time there was not a single incident of rioting in the aftermath.
But none of this matters to the CAG. Their one-point agenda is to “get” Chief Minister Modi. So, to the CAG, if I read their website right, the deaths of 500 Muslims in a riot that followed the horrible burning to death of 53 innocents by a Muslim mob, is the only example in history of “Genocide”. Darfur doesn’t matter (let’s see now: the victims there are mostly non-Muslim, and the perpetrators are Muslim, so it can’t be genocide). The Holocaust wouldn’t matter (it was mostly Jews who were killed, right? ) The killing of over 1 million Cambodian people wouldn’t matter (The killers were Communists). The genocide in East Pakistan, where 3 million were killed in a year by the Pakistan Army in 1970-71, cannot matter, because most of the victims were Hindus and the perpetrators were, of course, Muslim. The killing of half a million Tutsis in Rwanda wouldn’t matter – they were not Communists or Islamists.
And as we see above, the genocide that killed tens of thousands of non-Muslims (Tipu was equally kind to Christians) is a historical event that the Indian Muslim Council, the CIIS and Angana Chatterji, and hence the CAG, remember with fond admiration and longing.
So who constitute the CAG? According to their website, “35 organizations”. Never mind that the membership of most is pretty much the same. Let’s see a list:
* Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia (ASDSA)
* Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA)
* American Federation of Muslims of Indian Origin (AFMI)
* Association of Indian Muslims of America (AIM)
* Association of South Asian Progressives (ASAP)
* Building Bridges of Understanding Coalition (BB)
* Coalition for a Secular and Democratic India (CSDI)
* Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (CSFH)
* Center for Study and Research in South Asia (CERAS, Montreal)
* Coalition against Communalism (CAC)
* Dharma Megha
* EKTA
* Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America (FIACONA)
* Forum of Inquilabi Leftists (FOIL)
* Foundation For Pluralism
* Friends Of South Asia (FOSA)
* Indian Christian Forum (ICF)
* Indian Muslim Educational Foundation of North America (IMEFNA)
* Indian Muslim Council-USA (IMC-USA)
* Indian Muslim Relief and Charities (IMRC)
* Indian Progressive Study Group of Los Angeles (IPSG-LA)
* International South Asia Forum (INSAF)
* Manavi (An organization for South Asian women)
* Muslim Youth Awareness Alliance (MYAA)
* NRI's for Secular and Harmonious India (NRI-SAHI)
* Organizing Youth (OY)
* Policy Institute For Religion And State (PIFRAS)
* Sikh American Heritage Organization (SAHO)
* Sneha (A network for women of South Asian origin)
* South Asian Collective (SAC)
* South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection (SAMAR)
* South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD, Canada)
* South Asian Progressive Action Collective (SAPAC)
* Students For Bhopal (SFB)
* Supporters of Human Rights in India (SHRI)
* The Organization of Universal Communal Harmony (TOUCH)
* Vaishnava Center for Enlightenment
* Vedanta Society of East Lansing
* Voices for Freedom (VFF)
* World Tamil Organisation (WTO)
* Youth Solidarity Summer (YSS)
Supporting organizations:
* Center for Religious Freedom (Freedom House)
* Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
* DC Collective for South Asians (DCCSA)
* Genocide Watch
* Institute on Religion and Public Policy (IRPP)
* Interfaith Freedom Foundation (IFF)
* Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA)
* National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF)
* Project REACH
* Tikkun
I happen to have found out a few things about these by reading what I find, and talking to people:
* 1. Coalition against Communalism (CAC) is simply the pre-mutation “CAG”. When funding opportunities came up related to the Darfur Genocide (there are enough Americans stupid enough not to ask which side these people are on in that genocide), they changed the “C” to a “G”. The “CAG” website is easily seen to be essentially the CAC website, even the content has not changed.
* 2. Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (CSFH) is what mutated into “CAC” after the “CSFH” was exposed and dissolved in ridicule. The website of CAC obviously started with a copy of the CSFH website.
* 3. FOIL describes themselves as “Leftists”. See “FOIL Primer Part 1” by Komerath [4] for an in-depth expose. I think they would be insulted if they were NOT described as Communists. Angana Chatteri, Biju Matthew, Girish Agarwal, Shalini Gera, Akhila Ra(h)man, Vijay Prashad of Trinity College, CT, Vinay Lal of UCLA, and “Ra” T. Ravishankar are some of its loudest noises.
* 4. “FOSA” is a combination of FOIL and the Pakistan-American Association, with very apparent sponsorship from the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence, per the Pakistani media [5]. Led by Gera, Ra(h)man, Vinay Lal, Mainland Chinese CIIS graduate student(s) working for Chatterji , and several Pakistanis. FOSA with the Pakistan American Association (PAA) are the worthies seen on San Francisco streets holding signs saying :
“Allah Will Destroy Terrorist India and America!”
* 5. “South Asian Collective (SAC)” is a communist organization, partly based in France. Essentially same as FOIL. Mutated from the “SACW” (South Asia Communist Web).
* 6. South Asian Progressive Action Collective (SAPAC) is perhaps the subset of the SAC that can spell a longer name.
* 7. Youth Solidarity Summer (YSS). Communist organization set up to recruit youth, on the “catch’em when they have nothing better to do and no sense to figure it out” principle. Recently tried generating a FOIL-type “REPORT” (with FOIL authors who wisely chose to remain anonymous given their sad experience in 2002), slandering the Hindu Students Council. Fortunately the HSC and everyone else, just ignored them, not even bothering to laugh in public [6]. The “Youth” of YSS includes semi-permanent graduate student teaching assistants at California universities, including some who have the distinction of earning direct condemnation by their university presidents, and causing the dissolution of their entire departments.
* 8. Organizing Youth (OY) is a mutation/ offshoot of YSS, the (lotus-eating) equivalent of the Soviet Comintern’s Young Pioneers, the Chinese Red Guards, and the Indian DYFI.
* 9. Muslim Youth Awareness Alliance (MYAA). Teaching Muslim Youth the techniques perfected by the Communists in their long-running Class War. See also “Student Islamic Movement of India” or SIMI. SIMIans have been “credited” with many “progressive youth” actions in India related to shall we say, fireworks in crowded places, according to police reports.
* 10. Association of South Asian Progressives (ASAP). The ASAP denotes their need to keep morphing to stay ahead of the police, perhaps. The mother ship was the “PROXSA” (Progressive South Asian… etc) based in France, until perhaps things got too hot there.
* 11. (FIACONA) is a name that makes Christians who believe in Jesus Christ, cringe. This is a federation of the commercial soul-harvesting combines of the Baptist and Methodist and Jesuit fringe groups set up to spread hate and liberally spread weapons and destabilize India. See the history of terrorism in North East India and Nepal, the case of the Purulia Arms Drop, and the roots of riots in Gujarat, Orissa, Andhra and now Karnataka, the horrible stories of well-fed conversionists riding into tsunami-destroyed villages in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka and telling the starving residents that they could get food- if they converted. FIACONA’s leadership is most definitely not the same (I hope!!) as that of the mainstream Christianity in India or North America. Recently, with the Maoist takeover in Nepal, the close collaboration between the Conversionists and the Maoists has become all too clear, both in Northeast India and in organizing murders in Orissa. In the “CAG” we see proof of this happy marriage in the US as well.
* 12. “South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection (SAMAR)” The smart acronym means “war” in Indian languages, the term used by the Communists to denote violent strikes and other terror campaigns. Need one say more?
* 13. Indian Muslim Council-USA (IMC-USA). The people who gave Chatterji the Tipu Sultan Genocide Award. Apostles of peace, inter-religious harmony, freedom of worship, and respect for the (Unbelievers’) Constitution. Well connected to SIMI, CAIR, Pakistan-American Association and FIACONA, FOIL and FOSA. Top office bearers included the founder of the SIMI.
* 14. Indian Muslim Relief and Charities (IMRC). Well… No particular comments on this organization. But one might be prudent to check out “Google” for news items related to “Muslim Relief and Charities” especially in the context of the Al Qaida, to stay informed on this general topic.
* 15. NRI's for Secular and Harmonious India (NRI-SAHI). Most interesting Orwellian name. This is the interface between the IMC and certain organizations associated with a major political party in India, to channel funds from Pakistani and other sources, to worthwhile causes. The founders included Kaleem K. Kawaja.
* 16. Association of Indian Muslims of America (AIM). Headed by Kaleem Kawaja, famous author [7] (See Pakistan Link for his publications) of the February 2002 article, "Can You Spare A Tear For the Taliban?" This was soon after the Revolutionary Women of Afghanistan website showed that image of the basket full of severed human hands, many feminine, the handiwork (no pun intended) of Kawaja's Taliban brothers. Kawaja, sitting in Maryland, praised the Taliban's commitment to protecting women even as American soldiers were dying to save the Afghan people from Taliban tyranny.
* 17. Coalition for a Secular and Democratic India (CSDI): You get the idea – another combination of the words “Coalition, Secular, India” and the signature of a Communist organization: the word “Democratic” in the title. Like those democratic heavens GDR and DPRK, to name a couple.
* 18. Sikh American Heritage Organization (SAHO). This is another interesting mutation. In the 1970s through 80s, Pakistani-trained, Canadian-funded terrorists killed over 20,000 people in Punjab (oh, no, that can’t be genocide because the victims were non-Muslim and the perpetrators were armed by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan). Their most infamous international accomplishment was the murder of over 350 passengers including 44 little children, many of the passengers US and Canadian and Indian citizens, when a bomb blew the Air India Boeing 747 “Emperor Kanishka” apart over the Irish Sea. The same day, two baggage handlers at Narita airport, Japan, were killed when a bomb in a bag destined for another Air India flight exploded. A precursor of today’s Pakistani dominance in global terrorism.
The “Khalistan” (nation of the empty-headed) movement became, shall we say, less popular and more recognizable to the Department of Homeland Security with the revived investigation in Canada on why the Air India case was so badly bungled. The lead suspect had died in India on one of his terrorist missions). The “Babbar Khalsa” sub-sect of this bloody gang is on the US State Department’s Honor Roll of foreign terrorist organizations. At the first Convention of the Indian Muslim Council in 2003, the Khalistan representative came as the Khalistan Representative. Today apparently it’s called “SAHO”.
* 19. The Organization of Universal Communal Harmony (TOUCH). Unabashed acronym, set up to “touch” desis silly enough to buy the “Harmony” line used by the NRI-SAHI.
* 20. Vaishnava Center for Enlightenment & 21. Vedanta Society of East Lansing These are probably run by the same persons, who have a very wide range of other businesses. This appears to be the link from the NRI-SAHI to other interesting entities set up in East Lansing, Michigan, for instance by General Musharraf.
* 22. EKTA: I don’t know what if anything the acronym stands for, but the word “Ekta” means “unity” in Hindi, and this is a long-running umbrella organization that spawned many of the others like a spider laying eggs. In the “South Asia Communist Web” in America.
So we see that 22 of the “35 organizations” of CAG are basically the same gang of Communist-Islamist and commercial soul-harvesting gangs and fronts for other entities with too much money and way too much hatred for democracy, freedom of religion, and anything else that characterizes free societies. Many of the rest are simply permutations and combinations of the same gangs.
So what is the IMC’s point in awarding the “Tipu Sultan Award” to Angana Chatterji of CIIS? Very simple and obvious. The “Tipu Sultan Award” is a blatant provocation, the equivalent of the KKK (no reflection on Kaleem K. Kawaja) setting up the “Adolf Hitler Award” and awarding it to, say, Rafsanjani of Iran for his well-known rants of hatred against Israel and Jews. It is deliberate, and it shows exactly what the IMC and the AIM represent.
As for the CAG, this award and simple consideration of the reality of their composition, show that they are indeed Communists Admiring Genocide. What this makes the CIIS, I leave to the gentle reader to conclude.
References:
1. Maolan Cadambi, “Did Tipu massacre 700 Iyengar men, women & kids?” Ramanuja list archive, Oct. 26, 2006.
2. Meanderthalis, “Tipu Sultan - the Glorified Butcher?” August 28, 2006. http://meanderthalis.blogster.com/tipu_sultan_glorified_butcher
3. Walia, C.J.S. IndiaStar Review of the book edited by Sitaram Goel, “Tipu Sultan:Villain or Hero?” Voice of India, new Delhi, 1996. 85p. http://www.indiastar.com/wallia7.htm
4. Komerath, N., “Yesterday once more: FOIL Primer - Part 1”. In Radha Rajan and Krishen Kak, Ed., “NGOs, Activists and Foreign Funds – Anti Nation Industry”. Vigil Public Opinion Forum, Chennai, India 2006, p. 81-99.
5. Komerath, N., “The Lashkar-e-Pinocchio Rides Again”. In Radha Rajan and Krishen Kak, Ed., “NGOs, Activists and Foreign Funds – Anti Nation Industry”. Vigil Public Opinion Forum, Chennai, India 2006, p. 100-115.
6.Saja, A., “Anarchist Losers Attack American College Students – And Flunk As Usual”. May 07, 2007. http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_070507.htm
7. Kawaja, Kaleem K., "Can You Spare a Tear For the Taliban?" Letter to PakistanLink, February 2002. http://www.pakistanlink.com/Letters/2002/Feb/08/10.html
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Angana Chatterji maligns India again
India basher Angana Chatterji - has come out with specious and circumstantial report that tries to draw correlations between unmarked graves found in Kashmir and the Indian Government's campaign to end terrorism in that state. "There is bound to be a reasonable correlation between these graves and the people who have disappeared," claims IPT convener Angana Chatterji, with a straight face.
Anyone familiar with life in islamic countries knows that most graves of poor people are "unmarked."
Those who follow this person's career will remember that she was instrumental in getting Modi's visit to the US blocked, opposing the efforts by Hindus in California to correct the educational curriculum, misrepresenting the Christian violence in Orissa and is the author of "Violent Gods."
Angana Chatterji addressing the audience after receiving the award at the 2008 National Convention of the Indian Muslim Council - USA.
Anyone familiar with life in islamic countries knows that most graves of poor people are "unmarked."
Those who follow this person's career will remember that she was instrumental in getting Modi's visit to the US blocked, opposing the efforts by Hindus in California to correct the educational curriculum, misrepresenting the Christian violence in Orissa and is the author of "Violent Gods."
Angana Chatterji addressing the audience after receiving the award at the 2008 National Convention of the Indian Muslim Council - USA.
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