Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Hindutva Terror to Spark India-Pakistan War?

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has warned in New Delhi today that Al-Qaeda is trying to destabilize the whole of South Asia hoping to provoke a deadly war between India and Pakistan, according to the BBC. In addition to Al-Qaeda, he has pointed the finger at the Taliban in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, and the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba as groups seeking to spark conflict between India and Pakistan, or to provoke instability in Pakistan.

Mr. Gates is only partially correct. Conspicuously absent from his list of the region's "bad guys" are the Hindutva terrorist outfits who are implicated in a series of bombings designed to fan the flames of hatred between Hindus and Muslims and then blame Pakistan for their handiwork. As India's minister P. Chidambram put it recently, "The tactics of the jihadis have been copied by militants belonging to other groups too, not excluding militants professing the Hindu faith."

In a new book titled "Who Killed Karkare?"(published by Pharos Media), the author and former Maharashtra police chief S.M. Mushrif says a nationwide network of Hindutva terrorists that has its tentacles spread up to Nepal and Israel is out to destroy India's secularism and to reshape it into a theocratic state like Afghanistan under the Taliban.

Mushrif has constructed an alarming picture out of former Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare’s indictment of alleged Hindutva terrorists like Lt. Col. Purohit, Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur and others. It showed a major nationwide conspiracy with international support to destabilize the secular democratic Indian state to be replaced by a Hindutva state run according to a new Constitution. For that the conspirators were prepared for a massive bloodbath, using bomb attacks on religious places to trigger an anti-Muslim holocaust.

These Hindutva terror groups, and their affiliates, have carried out a number of bomb blasts across India in the last few years, and tried to pin the blame on Indian Muslims or the Pakistan's intelligence service ISI. Mushrif describes nearly a dozen blasts conducted by Hindutva terror groups of different stripes. He argues that a section of India’s intelligence services, a small group in the armed forces and parts of different state police forces have been compromised and infiltrated by these elements, a development that bodes ill for the future of the country, and the region. Some of the blasts, such as the bombing of Samjhota Express, had been falsely blamed on Pakistan's ISI to try and heighten tensions in South Asia. The circumstances around the assassination of Mumbai anti-terror squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karakare, who was pursuing some the major Hindutva figures involved in the bombing campaigns in India, have not been investigated. Demands by Karakare's wife for independent investigation and transparency have been ignored.

Mushrif believes that it is not Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh or Rahul Gandhi who actually run India on a day-to-day basis. Rather, it is a "power establishment" that is in charge of India, and it does not want to expose the Hindutva terrorists. One example is the blasts in Samjhauta Express, which the IB said was carried out by Pakistan’s ISI. Mushrif quotes a report in The Times of India that said, “the Center had blamed the ISI on the basis of the IB’s findings.” However, during a narco-analysis test under Karkare, Lt. Col. Purohit had admitted having supplied the RDX used in the blast. The IB, which draws its power from its proximity to the Prime Minister (its director briefs the PM every morning for half an hour), did not want Karkare’s investigation that blew the cover off the IB’s shenanigans, to continue.

In a recent article titled "Procrastinating on Hindutva Terror", Subash Gatade describes a number of bomb blasts carried out by Hindutva groups in India, and talks about how the investigators have been dragging their feet on such incidents where the perpetrators attempted to frame innocent Muslims. Among others, the author describes Goa and Malegaon blasts which were blamed on Muslim youths. Here is what it says:

In a writeup in Indian Express (8 Nov, 2009)"Goa Bombers Tried To Leave Muslim Imprint" the reporter even quotes another police officer on the condition of anonymity " The material was enough to spark communal trouble in Margao and extremist elements from outside would have found it easy to aggravate it." A close look at the plan to 'leave Muslim imprint' had echoes of earlier attempts by Hindutva terrorists of different hues to spark communal tension. The Malegaon bomb blast in 2008 which saw the exposure of the wide Hindutva terrorist network - thanks to the efforts of a committed officer like Hemant Karkare - had also seen similar actions by the fanatics. In fact the members of Abhinav Bharat had parked their explosive laden motorcycle below the defunct office of the SIMI in Bhikhu Chowk, Malegaon. The Nanded bomb blast in 2006 had also seen fake beards and dresses normally worn by Muslims at the house of the terrorists who had died in the bomb blasts.

Another Indian writer, Yoginder Sikand, has been following the story of Muslims framed by India's police and intelligence agencies in various incidents of violence. Here is what he wrote:

For several months now, almost no week passes without the media reporting about 'dreaded Muslim fundamentalists' being picked up by the police and allegedly confessing to being involved in bomb blasts or plots to engineer violence across India. It is not my argument that all of these reports are cooked-up and dished-out propaganda. Some of these stories must be true, and those behind such acts must be caught and punished. But, the fact remains, many of these stories circulating in the media are wholly fabricated, and these are being manufactured and highlighted for a particular motive: to fuel anti-Muslim passions and, thereby, justify various forms of discrimination and oppression—even murder—of hapless Muslim citizens who, far from having anything to do with terrorism, are victims of terror—of agencies of the state, especially the police and Hindutva terror outfits.

Earlier this month, Indian Occupied Kashmir's People's Democratic Party leader Mehbooba Mufti alleged that the recent Srinagar hotel attack was an attempt by "some government agency" to sabotage the efforts to withdraw troops from the state. “Maybe some militant groups don’t want the troop withdrawal, maybe somebody in the agencies don’t want the troop withdrawal. So I think for their interests, they become one at this point of time. But I would say that the withdrawal of troops is the best compliment that you can pay to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, who have voted in huge numbers,” she added.

Recently, India's Vice President Hamid Ansari has called for greater "oversight and accountability" of the operations of the nation's intelligence agencies by the Indian parliament. Ansari also said that, just like in other democracies like the US and the UK, the “concerned agencies should make public their mission statement, outlining periodically their strategic intent, vision, mission, core values and their goals”.

As India constantly highlights the terror of green variety, it must not ignore its own homegrown terror dressed in saffron. The terror of either hue has the potential to spark a deadly conflict in South Asia that can easily spin out of control, and completely devastate the region.

Related Links:

Who Killed Karkare?

Procrastinating on Hindutva Terror

India's Guantanamos and Abu Ghraibs

Hindutva Government in Israeli Exile?

Growing US-India Military Ties Worry Pakistan

Taliban or Rawliban?

The 21st Century Challenges For Resurgent India

What Irked Purohit?

Hindu Rashtra ideology was driving force for Malegaon conspirators

Hindutva Terror Strikes India

The Rise and Rise of Mangalore's Taliban

Malegaon Files

Hindu Nationalists Gang Up on Musharraf at Stanford

Can India "Do a Lebanon" in Pakistan?

Priest Survivor: Hindu Radicals are Terrorists

Dawn of Hindutva Terror in India

Ajmer Blasts: Revisiting Hindutva Terror

Hindu Militants Copying Jihadi Tactics

43 comments:

Pak_Zindabad said...

You hit nail on its head!It is plain ridiculous that US is fighting "war on terror" against 100 or so "Al-Qaeda" fighters(by their own admission) with 100,000 troops, missiles and aircraft in Arab & Muslim countries. It is courageous of you to bring the facts to light. Mumbai attacks were staged by US-Zionist-Hindu terrorists to defame Pakistan. How else could they record conversation between attacking terrorists and their handlers at the time of attack. Remember those attackers were wearing saffron strings around their hand,clean shaven(& possibly uncircumcised) and honest police officers (though infidels & idol worshipers who deserved to die) were killed by Indian intelligence which was exposed in the new book.There is also huge gaps in evidence that WTC attacks and London Bus Bombings, Madrid etc were staged to create hysteria against fastest growing religion.
Attacks on Pak Army by Mesud tribes are well deserved since Pak Army betrayed Taliban for a few billion dollars. TTP has promised that as soon as Pak Army stops operation against innocent civilians of Mehsud tribes, they will stop the attacks. Pakistan must demand a UN enquiry into Mumbai attacks to expose Indian designs with investigators from Muslim nations. This author Mushrif must also be invited to UN and OIC to expose Indian deception and hypocrisy before the whole world.

anoop said...

hahahahahahahaha...
Seriously,Riaz??? I couldn't stop laughing when I read the Heading of this piece.

Fine, I give up. When do you think things will start unraveling in India due to the all-powerful IB? A theory ,sadly, no major publication,even in Pakistan, has thought of?

Oh Riaz,I am scared for my India!!! :P

Anonymous said...

riaz

I must say u have a great level of imagination. Hindutva extremist are pygmies before the islamic extremist. Probably usa is confident of handling that is the reason that they did not bother to mention.

Anonymous said...

"Mumbai attacks were staged by US-Zionist-Hindu terrorists to defame Pakistan. "

And all bombings in Pakistan for the last many years is also a work of ISI and RAW.

Now I got it. Pakistanis can never do anything wrong and all ills of Pakistan can be traced to India.
Gosh, how can I be so stupid.

Mullah Khullam Khullah said...

Just a small correction: it's col. "Prohit"; this is how Zaid Hamid pronounces it and he is always correct.

Also, it's disappointing that you forgot to mention the clandestine army that Col. Prohit is setting up in Israel along with many RSS and Zionist guys to overthrow the Indian government and establish Hindu rashtra all over the subcontinent. Again, this was unearthed by two of Pakistan's finest journalists, Ahmad Quereshi and Zaid Hamid, who confronted a red-faced bhindian who had no answer to this. That you forgot to mention these things suggests to me that you are an India/US sympathizer. May allah sic a thousand jinns on you!

Zen, Munich, Germany said...

@Pak_Zindabad

"Mumbai attacks were staged by US-Zionist-Hindu terrorists to defame Pakistan"

If you are sure of this, why do you need a UN enquiry? In anycase. if UN enquiry find blame on Pakistan - Ban Ki Moon is a Mossad agent and a closet Hindu? All of them were probably hysterical and envious about remarkable tribal governance in Afpak and wanted to topple that.

anoop said...

@Pak_Zindabad,

Riaz is,I guess, the milder version of you. Look at the similarities. You say Mumbai attacks were done by You-Know-Who(Its too silly to even mention it). Riaz says almost the same thing. There are nut cases like you in India also like that guy Mushriff whom Riaz quotes all the time.
Apart from the Pakistanis nobody seems to believe a word you or people like Riaz say. It'll be a very sad day even if International media even publishes your and Riaz's arguments.

P.S. If RAW is behind the attacks in Pakistan then RAW is damn better than ISI,isn't it?? The kind of mayhem that is undergoing in Pakistan is far far worse than what ISI did to us Indians.. :)
Clarification: I dont believe RAW is behind anything. Hope people got the sarcasm and the intention of the argument.

P.P.S If India is behind the attacks in Pakistan then Pakistan doesn't have to worry about anything,does it.. It doesn't have any Talibanisation problem and every nook and corner of Pakistan there is a RAW agent trying to convince innocent Muslims to wage Jihad,get this, against their own people- Muslims and Pakistanis. Why are people from India so smart and Pakistanis so gullible??? Its a compliment really..

Riaz Haq said...

Here is an interesting Op Ed piece in the Hindu, hinting at the possibility of the involvement of India's "shadowy security establishment" behind the IPL bidding fiasco:

When the Angels who rule India say they favour dialogue and peace with Pakistan but then fear to tread, is it any surprise that fools would rush in to destroy that virtuous path? We will never know whether somebody from our shadowy security establishment whispered something dark and fanciful in the ears of the owners and managers of the Indian Premier League as they went in for the player auction last week and if so, for whom he was batting.

Certainly, the manner in which every Pakistani cricketer was boycotted despite the initial expression of interest by the teams smacks of considerations other than sports, business or common sense. Most of all, the decision betrays such a poor understanding of the geographies of market development, brand building and soft power that its net effect will be to undermine India’s interests in the widest possible sense.

My own view is that the boycott was not ordered or engineered by the Government of India or any of its agencies acting on instructions from the top. But that does not free our leadership from the vicarious responsibility of needlessly perpetuating a bilateral vacuum that has produced one of the most spectacular self-dismissals sub-continental cricket — and diplomacy — have ever seen.

In the face of a popular backlash across the border, the Ministry of External Affairs rightly noted that the government had nothing to do with the IPL selection. But instead of expressing regret over an outcome that it played no direct role in producing, the MEA statement threw a heap of salt on the wounded national pride of all Pakistanis. “Pakistan,” the Ministry smugly declared, “should introspect on the reasons which have put a strain on relations between India and Pakistan and adversely impacted on peace, stability and prosperity in the region.”

If anything, a little introspection on the Indian side may have been equally appropriate, since some senior Ministers — including P. Chidambaram — later went out of their way to say the exclusion of Pakistani cricketers was indeed unfortunate. Apart from reflecting badly on India, the insulting exclusion has allowed reactionary, extremist elements in Pakistan to seize the moral high ground. And it has pushed Pakistani public opinion and civil society further into the embrace of those who would like to perpetuate a climate of hostility with India and who have more than a soft spot for terrorism.

Riaz Haq said...

Here is a report with some shocking revelations in Malegaon bomb blast trial of Purohit and his cohorts:

In a shocking revelation, an army officer, one of the 452 witnesses in the September 29 Malegaon blast case, has revealed in his statement that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had a grand design to split India into smaller independent countries by 2015.

According the statement, the officer had attended one of the meetings held by the Malegaon blast accused on April 12, 2008 at the Ram temple in Bhopal. The officer from the Army Education Corps said that he was shocked by the proceedings.

He added that an ex-Raw personnel, who was present in the meeting, divulged these sinister plans of splitting the nation, based on a similar operation in the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

The witness added that the ex-Raw official also revealed that the CIA had managed to penetrate several departments in India. The officer cautioned the witness that the meeting was being observed by the Intelligence Bureau.

Sinister plans

The officer met Lt Col Shrikant Purohit in an official dinner at the Officers' Mess of AEC training college and centre in the second week of December 2007 at Deolali. He told Purohit about a plan to take premature retirement to develop his village, and establish an old age home.

On January 26, 2008, Purohit asked him to come to Faridabad and meet a few people for his project. There he was introduced to Sameer Kulkarni and the other accused in the Malegaon blast case. Then on April 12, 2008, Purohit called him for a meeting at Ram Mandir. He met all the Malegaon accused and another 20 people, along with the ex-Raw officer and the IB source.

The former RAW officer spoke about the USSR and Purohit spoke about his plans to bring Abhinav Bharat to the fore. Purohit also spoke about Hindu fundamentals and his contacts in Israel and Thailand.

Riaz Haq said...

In a presentation to Pakistani media, Gen Kayani reiterated his widely reported comments on the Pakistan Army’s view of the situation in Afghanistan and the way forward there.

History, unresolved issues, India’s military capability and its ‘Cold Start’ doctrine meant that Pakistan could not afford to let its guard down. Repeating a well-known formulation, Gen Kayani said: “We plan on adversaries’ capabilities, not intentions.”

The tough, matter-of-fact line on India was in stark contrast to that of Gen Kayani’s predecessor, Gen (retd) Musharraf, who tried hard to push for peace with India in his latter years in power.
------------------------
The general was particularly keen to highlight the threat posed by India’s ‘Cold Start’ doctrine. Turing the traditional theory of war on its head, ‘Cold Start’ would permit the Indian Army to attack before mobilising, increasing the possibility of a “sudden spiral escalation”, according to Gen Kayani.

The Pakistan Army’s concerns about ‘Cold Start’ are well known, but Gen Kayani went as far as to put a timeline on its implementation: two years for India to achieve partial implementation and five years for full.

If true, the strategic impact could be of the highest order: defence analysts have speculated that ‘Cold Start’ may lead the Pakistan Army to lower its nuclear threshold as a way of deterring any punitive strikes or rapid capture of territory by the Indian armed forces.

Yet, Gen Kayani was also keen to point out that he did not have a one-dimensional view of security. Despite the fact that India’s defence budget is “seven times” that of Pakistan’s “there has to be a balance between development and military spending,” the general said.

He also pleaded that “peace and stability in South Asia should not be made hostage to a single terrorist act of a non-state actor”, a reference to the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Refusing to talk to Pakistan would send a bad signal on two counts: one, the non-state actors would know that they have the power to nudge India and Pakistan towards war; and two, within India it would become clear that relations with Pakistan could be suspended indefinitely.

The comments on India, though, came only later in an extended Power Point Presentation that covered everything from the operations in Swat and South Waziristan to the “way forward” in Afghanistan. Gen Kayani seemed relatively pleased with the reaction his presentation received when first unveiled at a meeting of chiefs of defence staff of Nato and its allied countries in Brussels late last month.

Emphasising what he termed the “fundamentals”, he claimed that until the Afghan government improved its credibility and governance record and until the Afghan population began to change its perception that Isaf is not winning, the Afghan government would not be able to establish its writ and the local Taliban would not be “weaned off”.

But on Afghanistan, too, India featured in Gen Kayani’s comments. Rejecting India’s reported interest in training the Afghan National Army and the country’s police force, Gen Kayani argued that Pakistan had a more legitimate expectation to do so.

Taken together, Gen Kayani’s comments suggest that the possibility of a thaw in relations between India and Pakistan any time soon is low.

Both India and Pakistan appear to have firmly lapsed into the old pattern of highlighting the differences between them and the threats they face from each other, while nominally leaving the door open to an improvement in relations if one side addresses the other’s concerns.

Unlike the past, though, the stakes appear to be higher because of the uncertain future of Afghanistan and a ‘nuclear overhang’ that may be affected by ‘Cold Start’.

Riaz Haq said...

It seems that the Hindutva aligned Indian intelligence in Lucknow is stepping up its harassment of Indian Muslims. Here's a forwarded email from Dr. Mustafa Kamal, Chairman of All-India Muslim Forum and former deputy VC of Zanzibar University in Tanazania:

Keeping a proper surveillance and vigil over each of the persons is the prerogative of all the governments, and whithout it, the effective administration cannot be ensured. However, when only one group or community is targetted for this purpose, it definitely depicts some presuppositions and prejudices against it.
The same is exactly true about Indian Muslims. On 3rd this month after sunset two L.I.U.( Local Intelligence Unit) persons came to me, saying that they want to collect my personal details and political activities. When I asked them the reason, they simply said that they have instructions to gather information about all the prominent Muslims of the city who are involved in Muslim politics.Anyhow, they evaded the reply when I asked them ' Is it about non-Muslims also'?. From my residence they proceeded to Mr. Manzoor Ahmed, a Retired IPS officer and former Vice Chancellor of Agra University who stays a little distant away from me for the same purpose.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt of how the BBC is reporting the Ayodhya verdict by Allahabad High Court today:

In a majority verdict, judges gave control of the main disputed section, where a mosque was torn down in 1992, to Hindus.

Other parts of the site will be controlled by Muslims and a Hindu sect.


Allahabad High Court is trying to create a false appearance of Solomon's wisdom by ordering what is being advertised as "split-the-baby" verdict.

In reality, though, the court has wrongly sided with the violent Hindutva outfits in practice by giving the main site where Babri masjid stood to Hindus.

Let's hope and pray that this latest verdict does not lead to more innocent blood being shed because of an unwise and unjust court ruling favoring the Hindu provocateurs and perpetrators of the crime of demolishing Babri mosque in 1992 and subsequent massacres of Muslim minority.

Riaz Haq said...

India's Congress leader Digvijay Singh has compared Hindutva extrenists' hatred of Musims with that of Nazi's against jews. Here's a Times of India report:


NEW DELHI: Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh launched a sharp attack on the RSS and the BJP, likening their "hatred" towards Muslims to that of the Nazis towards the Jews and claiming that the "roots of terrorism" in India lie in BJP leader L K Advani's 1990 'rath yatra'.

He also sought to take the battle over the 2G spectrum allocation issue into the opposition camp by alleging that the radiowaves scam originated under the NDA rule when late Pramod Mahajan was the telecom minister.

Singh said it was under Mahajan's tenure that allocation of spectrum was made on the first-come-first-serve basis as against the prevailing auction of circles.

In a hard-hitting speech, he also demanded fast-tracking of probe against two chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh who allegedly own assets disproportionate to their known sources of income. Singh, the AICC general secretary incharge of party affairs in UP, did not take any names.

There are disproportionate assets cases against chief minister Mayawati of BSP and former chief minister and SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Hitting out at the RSS, Singh said "in the 1930s Hitler's Nazi party attacked the Jews... similarly the RSS ideology wants to capture power by targeting Muslims under the garb of furthering nationalism."

Singh, who was seconding the political resolution moved by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee at the 83rd Congress plenary here, singled out senior BJP leader L K Advani for "sowing the seeds of division" among the Hindus and Muslims by undertaking the controversial 'rath yatra' in 1990.

He said the "demolition of the Babri Masjid...is the darkest patch in the history of India. The roots of terrorism in India lie in BJP leader L K Advani's rath yatra".

Accusing the BJP of maintaining that all Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims, Singh said, "can we apply the same logic and say that all Hindus are not terrorists but all Hindu terrorists arrested in various blast cases are RSS activists."

The RSS has been "sowing the seeds of Muslim hatred" in the minds of the new generation through 'Shishu Mandir' schools and "this is the biggest danger for us", he claimed.

He claimed the RSS had made its activists enter the bureaucracy, police and even the army.

Singh said the rise of RSS-BJP "ideology of violence and hatred" posed the "biggest challenge" before the nation. The other big challenges were the Communists and regional political parties, he said.

He said the Congress needs to take steps to convert into trust the mistrust in the minds "of our Muslim brothers".

Riaz Haq said...

Here is an excerpt of a Tehelka story on Hindutva terror:

The Malegaon blast probe threw up 37 audiotapes in which ultra-Hindu groups plot terror attacks. These tapes expose a shocking nexus between Military Intelligence men and the outfits. Two years later, why is this still unexplored, asks RANA AYYUB

HATE IS one of the obvious and evident yields of the Hindutva worldview. But few had imagined it could spawn a terror network until investigations into the 2008 Malegaon blast led to a series of startling arrests that included Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and Lt Col Shrikant Purohit of Abhinav Bharat, an ultra-right Hindu group. Since then, the issue of ‘saffron terror’ has entered national discourse as a fractious and heated debate.

Last week, the issue erupted once again, triggering livid responses across the political spectrum. First, senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh claimed that Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare — who had been investigating the Malegaon blast — had called him hours before he died on the fateful night of 26/11, saying he was being threatened by those opposed to his probes. Singh was speaking at the launch of a book by Aziz Burney, controversially titled 26/11 — A RSS Controversy? and both sections of his own party and the BJP were dismayed that his “irresponsible” remarks would play into Pakistan’s hands.

A few days later, in its ongoing exposé, WikiLeaks released a cable in which US Ambassador Timothy Roemer claimed that Rahul Gandhi had told him that ultra-Hindu terror was probably a greater threat to national security than Islamist terror. In all the furious exchanges that have followed, a crucial issue was overlooked. With the capture of Ajmal Kasab, it is undoubtedly an absurd stretch of imagination to believe 26/11 was engineered by ultra-Hindu groups, but the truth is the ‘saffron terror’ story is indeed far from being a closed book.

TEHELKA has found that, in the two years since the Malegaon blast, investigators have left many leads unexplored. Most alarmingly, they have failed to pin down eight Indian Army officers allegedly involved with the terror network. Why haven’t they been questioned by the army or sufficiently tracked? How far has the network penetrated sections of the army? To understand the full implication of this, it is important to recall the whole story.....

anoop said...

The notion that any Hindu militant Ideology can threaten a State than an Islamic one is ludicrous.

First, of all there is absolutely no justification of any violence against any living being, let alone Human, in the Religious Texts of Hindus. Heck, Hindus are so non violent that they prefer Vegetarianism and consequently India is the largest Vegetarian Country in the world. They consider killing Animals to be a Sin, forget killing Human Beings.

To gauge how strong Hindu Fundamentalism and Muslims Fundamentalism all you have to look at is the year of 2010.

While there wasn't a single incident of "Hindu" Terror, not even a riot, there were 2 blasts by Muslim Organizations, which call themselves Indian Mujahideen, in Pune and Varanasi(last month of November).

The score till now for 2010 is:
Hindu Terror: 0
Islamic Terror: 2.

Add this to the fact that India is a nation of 1 Billion Hindus and only 15% of the Population are Muslims you might say that there is absolutely no danger from these "Hindu" Terror groups.

Compare the same with Pakistan, where the roles are reversed. It is a nation full of Muslims and negligible Hindu population. It is a nation where discrimination is legalized starting from the Constitution and in its laws in the form of Blasphemy laws.

Acts of Terror in Pakistan for its entire existence:
Hindu Terror- 0
Islamic Terror- I honestly dont know the count but you get the picture if you are following world news, especially with respect to Pakistan.

So, Riaz, when the Islam-Inspired Texts are so overwhelmingly large and a million times more dangerous to the State, why do you feel to need to talk of an insignificant thing called "Hindu" Terror?

I hope you will publish my comment. I'd like to add that not to misinterpret the word Islamic Terror. I used it for the want of a better word. I do not want to suggest that Islam is the root cause of such kind of Terrorism.

Riaz Haq said...

Anoop: "While there wasn't a single incident of "Hindu" Terror, not even a riot, there were 2 blasts by Muslim Organizations, which call themselves Indian Mujahideen, in Pune and Varanasi(last month of November)."

And you believe this?

It's been the practice of Hindutva outfits and Indian police to frame Muslim organizations in such cases, as happened in Malegaon and Samjhota blasts.

anoop said...

"It's been the practice of Hindutva outfits and Indian police to frame Muslim organizations in such cases, as happened in Malegaon and Samjhota blasts. "

--> It is the same Indian Police and Indian State which exposed the "Hindu" Terror groups in the 2 cases. It is the Indian Police which is recently said the Ajmer Darga blasts was the handy work of Hindu groups and keeps on pushing the Investigation and giving reports as recently as today.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/New-leads-in-Ajmer-blast-case/articleshow/7162046.cms

So, who is framing who here. I dont get it.

Pune blasts were held near a Hindu Ashram. So, you mean to tell me that Hindus want to kill Hindus? For what?

Varanasi is a Holy City for the Hindus and most injured were Hindus too, even the little girl who got killed was a Hindu.

In Malegoan, Ajmer and Samjhota Train blasts Muslims were killed and they were the targets. Why would a "Hindu" Terror group will target its own kind?

Ideologically also there is no justification. There is no such thing something equivalent to, say the word Kafir or an Infidel, in the Hindu Texts.

Muslims kill Muslims in Pakistan, because the groups there think others are lesser Muslims and they dont follow a certain code as defined by the Holy Quran(They are wrong or right is a completely different matter. The point is they use those Texts to justify their acts). The most central feature to Hindu Culture is the tolerance to all Living Creatures. No where in the world can you see a Temple dedicated to Rats or Snakes, one considered dirty and the other dangerous and wild, apart from in the Hindu Culture.

So, the whole thing is an exercise to satisfy your ego that Hindu Terror, like Islamic Terror in Pakistan, is a threat to the State and the very Idea of a Nation.

Sadly, Ideologically or otherwise, there is no chance in hell they can even be compared, let alone talk about how big a threat they are to their respective States.

India is NOT Pakistan. Hindus of India have nothing in common with the genetically related Muslim Brothers in Pakistan.

Riaz Haq said...

Anoop: "So, the whole thing is an exercise to satisfy your ego that Hindu Terror, like Islamic Terror in Pakistan, is a threat to the State and the very Idea of a Nation. "

Don't worry about satisfying my "ego"...pay atention to what your own crown prince Rahul Gandhi says about Hindutva terror as a bigger threat to India than Islamic militants.

As to the active connivance of Indian police and serving military personnel with Hindutva elements, pay attention to what people like SM Mushrif, Digvijay Singh, Yoginder Sikand, and others have to say about it.

Ask the survivors of pogroms like Gujarat 2002 and Orissa 2008 and they'll tell you how the Indian state police forces participated in mass killings of minorities.

anoop said...

"Don't worry about satisfying my "ego"...pay atention to what your own crown prince Rahul Gandhi says about Hindutva terror as a bigger threat to India than Islamic militants. "

--> So, the Congress people talk about how dangerous "Hindu" outfits(Read BJP, their cheif political rival) are. Surprise surprise.

The others you speak of have access to same kind of information that I do. Just because they say something doesn't mean they are right. SM.Musriff is an Ex-Policeman and if he feels he has a case he can always take it up with the Courts!!

You entertain his theories because it fits in with your notion that Hindu Terror is more dangerous than its Islamic Counterpart. The very fact that there were no Hindu Teror incidences in 2010 while there were plenty around the Globe of Islamic Terror incidences show how strong they are.

Here is what an US thinks about all this:"Post 26/11, a section of the Congress leadership was seen playing religious politics after one of its leaders, A R Antulay, implied that Hindutva forces may have been involved in the Mumbai terror attacks, according to a confidential memo by the then US ambassador to India, David Mulford, released by WikiLeaks. "

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/post-26-11-congress-played-religious-politics-wikileaks/723371/

Obviously you have not highlighted this particular piece of news. Why? I am guessing because it doesn't fit in with your world view while you highlight that Rahul Gandhi said so and so, which fits perfectly well with it.

You will believe a neutral Country like the US over some ex-policeman, who finds no support in any section in India or outside(except ofcourse with Pakistanis), with his mind-boggling theories and statements?

"Ask the survivors of pogroms like Gujarat 2002 and Orissa 2008 and they'll tell you how the Indian state police forces participated in mass killings of minorities. "

--> India is nation of 1 Billion and 64 years of History and there are lapses of governance, there will be problems of all kind.

Compare this to Pakistan which has 1/7th the population but 7 times more frequency of such incidences occurring tells you that these incidences are an exception more than a rule in India.

Unlike in Pakistan discrimination is not legalized and we have a Secular and forward-looking Constitution and State Organs, compared to the bigoted, piece-of-junk-Constitution in Pakistan.

Heck, even to get a Pakistani passport you people have to discriminate against a community by signing this.

http://changinguppakistan.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/picture-2.png

I hope you dont have a passport but considering that you live in the US, it is a certainty that you do. So, you are guilty of personally insulting and discriminating against the Ahmadi Community.

India has all kinds of people. The important thing is Indian Constitution and its Institutions are Secular and Independent, which you cannot say about Pakistan.

Riaz Haq said...

anoop: "So, the Congress people talk about how dangerous "Hindu" outfits(Read BJP, their cheif political rival) are. Surprise surprise."

But why did Rahul Gandhi confide it to the US ambassador? If it was for domestic public consumption, why didn't he go public with it through the Indian media?

Riaz Haq said...

Here is a report by The Independent on the unfolding story of Hindutva terrorists framing Muslims:

India is being forced to confront disturbing evidence that increasingly suggests a secret Hindu terror network may have been responsible for a wave of deadly attacks previously blamed on radical Muslims.


Information contained in a confession given in court by a Hindu holy man, suggests that he and several others linked to a right-wing Hindu organisation, planned and carried out attacks on a train travelling to Pakistan, a Sufi shrine and a mosque as well as two assaults on Malegaon, a town in southern India with a large Muslim population.

He claimed the attacks were launched in response to the actions of Muslim militants. "I told everybody that we should answer bombs with bombs," 59-year-old Swami Aseemanand, whose real name is Naba Kumar Sarkar, told a magistrate during a closed hearing in Delhi. "I suggested that 80 per cent of the people of Malegaon were Muslims and we should explode the first bomb in Malegaon itself. I also said that during partition, the Nizam of Hyderabad had wanted to go with Pakistan so Hyderabad was also a fair target. Then I said that since Hindus also throng [a Sufi shrine in] Ajmer we should also explode a bomb in Ajmer which would deter the Hindus from going there. I also suggested the Aligarh Muslim University as a target."

Police in India have suspected for some time that Hindus may have been responsible for the attacks carried out between 2006 and 2008, and in November of that year several arrests were made, including that of a serving military officer. But the confession of Swami Aseemanand, obtained by an Indian news magazine, is perhaps the most damning evidence yet that Hindu extremists were responsible. It also suggests those involved were senior members of a religious group that is the parent organisation of India's main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

"The evidence is not conclusive but people have to take notice of this," said Bahukutumbi Raman, a former national security adviser and now a leading regional security analyst. "This could aggravate tensions between India's [Hindu and Muslim] communities. It will create problems."

Mayraj said...

Live discussion on IBN TV with a Muslim young man who had been incarcerated and tortured by the Andhra Police for the crime committed by Swami Aseemanand and his gang. How this young man's life has been turned upside down after false accusations and tortures.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4ophj0c-KI

Riaz Haq said...

Forensic evidence against Hindutva terror in India is mounting, according to Tehelka.com:

Not unexpectedly, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have alleged that Asimananda’s confession was made under coercion and thus rubbished the ongoing probe into Hindutva terror.

But the fact remains that Asimananda had made the confession in the closed chamber of a Delhi Metropolitan Magistrate with no one else being around and after spending two days in judicial custody contemplating possible repercussions. Again, what is being completely overlooked in this politically charged debate is a whole body of evidence — both material and circumstantial — which has been pieced together by different agencies over the past four years. Asimananda’s confession only confirms and adds to the existing pool of evidence.
-----------

Curiously, the 6.53 volt battery found in the unexploded IED at Mecca Masjid was exactly the same as the batteries used to power the IEDs planted on the Samjhauta Express. Besides, the metallic shells used to stuff explosives in the Mecca Masjid bombs were similar to the iron shells which were part of the IEDs planted on the Samjhauta Express.

Similar shells were recovered from the house of a Hindu radical in Nanded, Maharashtra, in April 2006 when an RSS member and a Bajrang Dal activist had died while assembling a bomb. During the investigation it had emerged that the Hindu extremists had exploded similar shell bombs outside a few mosques in Jalna and Parbhani in 2003 and 2004.

Also in December 2002, more than half-a-dozen live pipe or shell bombs were recovered from an ijtema, a large religious gathering of Muslims, held near the Bhopal railway station.

The design of the shells used in bombs in Nanded, Jalna, Parbhani, Bhopal, Samjhauta and Mecca Masjid was similar and thus hinted towards the involvement of one terror group behind all these cases.

Interestingly, between 2005 and 2008, in the terror strikes targeted at Hindu neighbourhoods and temples — like the 2005 Delhi Diwali blasts, 2006 Sankatmochan Mandir blasts and 2007 Hyderabad twin blasts — the design of bombs was strikingly different from these bombs which were aimed at Muslims.

----
As opaque and extrapolated intelligence inputs — Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) being behind the Samjhauta blasts and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) behind the Mecca Masjid attack — continued to pour in, the CBI investigation pursued the forensic trail.

THE MECCA Masjid IED consisted of two pairs of metallic shells with their ends sealed, save for a small hole at one end to stuff the explosives. In the case of Mecca Masjid the explosive used was a lethal mix of high-intensity RDX and Trinitrotoluene (TNT) — both these explosives are only available with the army and paramilitary forces. Electrical detonators connected a 6.53 volt battery to the explosives through the hole at an end of each pair of the cast iron shells. The battery in turn was connected to an electrical circuit which in turn was connected to a Nokia 6030 cell phone with a SIM card. An alarm for 1.22 pm was set on the phone. Thus the cell phone served both as a timer and also the power source to trigger the circuit that would then result in the explosion of the IED. Each IED was neatly placed in a black iron box which in turn was placed in a rexine bag.
-----------
The Maharashtra ATS under its then chief Hemant Karkare carried out an excellent forensic investigation and retrieved the chassis number of the motorcycle used in the Malegaon blast. The motorcycle belonged to self-styled Hindu leader Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur. Her arrest led to a series of other arrests including serving Lt Col Purohit and a Hindu religious leader Dayanand Pandey.

Riaz Haq said...

After a slew of recent evidence of multiple acts of terror by the Sangh Parivar in India, the RSS is increasingly convinced that there is a move afoot to ban it, according to Bharat Bhushan.

RSS ideologue M G Vaidya wrote in a recent article: “ The present Congress, under the leadership of the new Mrs. Gandhi, needs a ban on the RSS — not to finish the RSS but to placate its Muslim vote bank.

Under these circumstances, a terrorist tag would be extremely damaging. Already graying, the marginalisation of the RSS would be accelerated. Funds from abroad will dry up, and domestic accounts of all associated organisations would be frozen. People would be wary of associating with it. Parents would advise their children to keep away from it. This is what the RSS is really worried about.

What is curious is that for preventing this predicament, its leaders do not blame their poisonous ideology which is essentially militaristic, demonises people of other religions and takes it upon itself to protect an exclusivist Indian nationalism. If the gray eminences of the RSS had any sense, they would distance themselves from the likes of Indresh Kumar. However, if the fire has already engulfed the outhouses and reached their door- step, they may find that there is no escape route left.

They will blame their favourite hate figures, the Nehru- Gandhi family for their predicament.

The RSS needs to dissolve itself. India needs no protection from self- styled militias. It has a state structure and judiciary capable of handling criminals and terrorists of various hues. It does not need religious vigilante groups to take revenge for jihadi terror or to save Hinduism, which has thrived for centuries without knobbly- kneed men in khaki shorts and black caps, bamboo staff in hand, taking part in an elaborate costume drama.


Source: http://www.sacw.net/article1884.html

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a piece by Kapil Komireddi on Hindu terrorism published in the Guardian:

For far too long, the enduring response of the Indian establishment to Hindu nationalists has rarely surpassed mild scorn. Their organised violent eruptions across the country – slaughtering Muslims and Christians, destroying their places of worship, cutting open pregnant wombs – never seemed sufficient enough to the state to cast them as a meaningful threat to India's national security.


But the recently leaked confession of a repentant Hindu priest, Swami Aseemanand, confirms what India's security establishment should have uncovered: a series of blasts between 2006 and 2008 were carried out by Hindu outfits. The attacks targeted a predominantly Muslim town and places of Muslim worship elsewhere. Their victims were primarily Muslim. Yet the reflexive reaction of the police was to round up young Muslim men, torture them, extract confessions and declare the cases solved.


Pundits now conduct cautious enquiries on television. Does this revelation mean India is now under attack by "Hindu terrorism"? But to treat this as a new phenomenon is to overlook the bulky corpus of terrorist violence in India that has its roots in explicitly Hindu-political grievances. Why is the attack on a Jewish centre in Mumbai by Pakistani gunmen an example of "Islamic terrorism", but the slaughter of a thousand Muslims by sword-wielding Hindus in Gujarat in 2002 not proof of "Hindu terrorism", particularly when the purpose of the violence was to establish an Hindu state in India? How do we describe attacks on churches, the kidnappings of pastors, the burning to death of a missionary? What do we make of the war-cry pehle kasai, phir isai: first the butchers (Muslims), then the Christians? What has prompted this debate over "Hindu terrorism" is not Aseemanand's confession: it is the fact that, in carrying out their violence, his accomplices appropriated methods which, in popular imagination, have become associated exclusively with Islamic terrorism. Detonating bombs in crowded areas: isn't that what Muslims do?


It is when you look at the reactions to non-Hindu extremism that you absorb how strongly majoritarian assumptions inform the state and society's conduct in India. In 2002, the Indian government banned the radical Muslim group Simi (Students' Islamic Movement of India) citing the group's charter, which seeks to establish sharia rule in India, and the terror charges some of its members were facing. But the Hindu radical outfit RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or the National Volunteer Corps) remains open for business – even though it campaigns, very openly, for a Hindu state in India, and its members incite and perpetrate violence against Muslim and Christian minorities. Mahatma Gandhi's assassin was a member of the RSS, as are Aseemanand and his confreres. To get an idea of which of the two groups poses a more immediate threat to India, consider this: the government that banned Simi was headed by the BJP, the political wing of the RSS.

Riaz Haq said...

Indian newspaper The Hindu is publishing some wikileaks cables on India. Here are a few interesting ones:

1. The Hindu reveals that PM Singh isolated on wanting talks with Pakistan:

During the interaction, Mr. Narayanan, who had been described by the Embassy in a January 12, 2005 cable (25259: confidential) as a long-time Gandhi family loyalist “who is seen as part of the traditional ‘coterie' around Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi,” came through as a hardliner on Pakistan, never afraid to voice his differences with Prime Minister Singh.

In an August 11, 2009 cable (220281: confnoforn), sent a day after the meeting, Mr. Roemer noted that Mr. Narayanan, a former chief of the Intelligence Bureau who is now Governor of West Bengal, readily conceded that he had differences with Prime Minister Singh on Pakistan. The Prime Minister was a “great believer” in talks and negotiations with Islamabad, but Mr. Narayanan himself was “not a great believer in Pakistan.”

2. India was locked in a tussle with the United States over sharing information from the 2008 Mumbai attacks investigation with Pakistan, according to a chain of U.S. Embassy cables accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks.

During the India-Pakistan standoff in the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation helped the two sides share information of each other's investigations.

But India, suspicious of Pakistan's intentions, tried as long as it could to fend off U.S. pressure on information-sharing — before relenting, but with some conditions.

Unhappy about those conditions, the U.S. then sought to work around them through a “broad” reading of the assent.

On January 3, 2009 Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice instructed the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi to deliver a demarche (cable 185593: secret) that the U.S. was making available to it material on the Mumbai attacks provided by the Government of Pakistan.

Dr. Rice asked Ambassador David Mulford to tell New Delhi that “this information originated from top Pakistani officials in very sensitive positions and is passed to you with their permission. It represents a genuine willingness on their part to share sensitive and significant information with India.”

Riaz Haq said...

Muslim rulers deliberately projected as intolerant: Katju

Vidya Subrahmaniam, The Hindu

New Delhi: Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju on Sunday attributed simmering Hindu-Muslim tensions to a deliberate rewriting of history to project Muslim rulers as intolerant and bigoted, whereas ample evidence existed to show the reverse was true.

The judge also said that Indians were held together by a common Sanskrit-Urdu culture which guaranteed that India would always remain secular.

Justice Katju said the myth-making against Muslim rulers, which was a post-1857 British project, had been internalised in India over the years. Thus, Mahmud Ghazni's destruction of the Somnath temple was known but not the fact that Tipu Sultan gave an annual grant to 156 Hindu temples. The judge, who delivered the valedictory address at a conference held to mark the silver jubilee of the Institute of Objective Studies, buttressed his arguments with examples quoted from D.N. Pande's History in the Service of Imperialism.

Dr. Pande, who summarised his conclusions in a lecture to members of the Rajya Sabha in 1977, had said: “Thus under a definite policy the Indian history textbooks were so falsified and distorted as to give an impression that the medieval period of Indian history was full of atrocities committed by Muslim rulers on their Hindu subjects and the Hindus had to suffer terrible indignities under Islamic rule.”

Justice Katju said Dr. Pande came upon the truth about Tipu Sultan in 1928 while verifying a contention — made in a history textbook authored by Dr. Har Prashad Shastri, the then head of the Sanskrit Department in Calcutta University — that during Tipu's rule 3,000 Brahmins had committed suicide to escape conversion to Islam. The only authentication Dr. Shastri could provide was that the reference was contained in the Mysore Gazetteer. But the Gazetteer contained no such reference.

Further research by Dr. Pande showed not only that Tipu paid annual grants to 156 temples, but that he enjoyed cordial relations with the Shankaracharya of Sringeri Math to whom he had addressed at least 30 letters. Dr. Shastri's book, which was in use at the time in high schools across India, was later de-prescribed. But the unsubstantiated allegation continued to masquerade as a fact in history books written later.

Justice Katju said the secular-plural character of India was guaranteed both by the Indian Constitution and the unmatched diversity of the Indian population. The judge attributed the diversity to the fact of India being a land of old immigrants, dating back to 10,000 years (Justice Katju and fellow judge Gyan Sudha Misra first propounded this thesis in a judgment, excerpts from which were carried as an op-ed article in The Hindu edition dated January 12, 2011). The diversity, reflected in the wide range of religions, castes, languages and physical attributes found among the descendants, led the founding fathers to draft a Constitution with strong federal features. “Diversity is our asset and our guarantee for staying secular,” said Justice Katju.

Earlier, a resolution passed at the conference urged the government to forthwith set up an Equal Opportunity Commission as recommended by the Rajinder Sachar Committee.

The resolution said: “The conference resolves that inclusive growth is not possible without equal opportunities being given to all sections of society, particularly minorities and other marginalised communities.”

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article1704204.ece

Riaz Haq said...

India is reviewing a list of 50 "most wanted fugitives" it says are hiding in Pakistan, a day after one of them was traced to a prison in Mumbai (Bombay), according to the BBC:

Feroz Abdul Rashid Khan, who is accused of involvement in a 2003 train bombing, was arrested last year and is behind bars in the city's Arthur Road jail.

Earlier it turned out that another "fugitive" had already been bailed and was living in Mumbai with his mother.

Opposition parties and Pakistani media have derided the episode as a fiasco.

Correspondents say the mistakes are likely to cost India dear, as well as being hugely embarrassing. They say Islamabad will now be able to raise doubts about other names on the list too.

For years Pakistan has denied harbouring militants India says are guilty of attacks on its soil.

Riaz Haq said...

It appears that the Norwegian white supremacist terrorist Breivik shared the thinking of Nazi-loving Hindu Nationalists like Golwalkar and his Sangh Parivar buddies. Here's an excerpt from a Express Tribune story:

"While Breivik’s rhetoric against Muslim immigration into Europe is not unusual, he cites many names that might be familiar to Pakistanis, including Allama Muhammad Iqbal and Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, as well as prominent human rights activist Hina Jilani and Dawn columnist Irfan Hussain.
He seems to believe that Iqbal, in particular, was sympathetic to communism and views multiculturalism as a Marxist concept. He quotes Iqbal as saying “Islam equals communism plus Allah.”
Breivik also claims that Pakistan is systematically annihilating all non-Muslim communities. He claimed that Hindu girls are being forced to convert to Islam in Sindh. In this context he even quotes Hina Jilani as saying: “Have you ever heard of an Indian Muslim girl being forced to embrace Hinduism? It’s Muslims winning by intimidation.”
He goes on to describe the situation for Christians in Pakistan as being no better, citing Father Emmanuel Asi of the Theological Institute for Laity in Lahore as saying in 2007 that Pakistani Christians are frequently denied equal rights.
Jamaat-e-Islami founder Abul Ala Maududi is also quoted in the manifesto, though in a manner that would imply that the stated objective of an Islamic state is to kill or subdue all non-Muslims around the world.
Breivik seems to be a fan of Daily Times columnist Razi Azmi, whom he calls “one of the more sensible columnists of Pakistan”. He mentions one of Azmi’s pieces where the columnist asks whether it was possible to imagine a Muslim converting to Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism in a Muslim country, using it to support his view of Islam as an intolerant religion.
He also cites Dawn’s Irfan Hussain’s column criticising Hizb u-Tahrir’s vision of a caliphate.
His ire against Pakistanis and Muslims seems to have at least partial origin in personal experience. He speaks at length about his childhood best friend, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant to Norway who, despite having lived several years in Europe still appeared to resent Norway and Norwegian society. “Not because he was jealous… but because it represented the exact opposite of Islamic ways,” Breivik conjectures.
The inability of Muslim immigrants to assimilate into European society seems to bother him, which he blames on Muslim parents not allowing their children to adopt European ways. He also asks why Muslim girls are considered ‘off-limits’ to everyone, including Muslim boys, and why Muslim men view ethnic Norwegian women as ‘whores’.
He also seems to believe that the Muslims in Europe who collect government benefits view it as a form of jizya, a medieval Islamic tax charged on non-Muslim minorities."


http://tribune.com.pk/story/216830/oslo-attacker-feared-pakistanisation-of-europe/

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an Op Ed by The Hindu on Breivik's Hindytva rhetoric:

Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik hailed India's Hindu nationalist movement as a key ally in a global struggle to bring down democratic regimes across the world.

"2080: A European declaration of independence"lays out a road map for a future organisation, the Justiciar Knights, to wage a campaign that will graduate from acts of terrorism to a global war involving weapons of mass destruction — aimed at bringing down what Breivik calls the “cultural Marxist” order.

India figures in a remarkable 102 pages of the sprawling 1,518-page manifesto. Breivik's manifesto says his Justiciar Knights “support the Sanatana Dharma movements and Indian nationalists in general.” In section 3.158 of the manifesto, he explains that Hindu nationalists “are suffering from the same persecution by the Indian cultural Marxists as their European cousins.”
“Appeasing Muslims”

The United Progressive Alliance government, he goes on, “relies on appeasing Muslims and, very sadly, proselytising Christian missionaries who illegally convert low caste Hindus with lies and fear, alongside Communists who want total destruction of the Hindu faith and culture.”

Even though Hindus who are living abroad “get an eagle's view of what's happening in India, Indian Hindu residents don't see it being in the scene.”

Breivik's manifesto applauds Hindu groups who “do not tolerate the current injustice and often riot and attack Muslims when things get out of control,” but says, “this behaviour is nonetheless counterproductive.”

“Instead of attacking the Muslims, they should target the category A and B traitors in India and consolidate military cells and actively seek the overthrow of the cultural Marxist government.”

“It is essential that the European and Indian resistance movements learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible,” he concludes. “Our goals are more or less identical.”
Lists websites

Breivik lists the websites of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the National Volunteers' Organisation, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad as resources for further information.

The manifesto pledges military support “to the nationalists in the Indian civil war and in the deportation of all Muslims from India.” This is part of a larger campaign to “overthrow of all western European multiculturalist governments” and evict “U.S. military personnel on European soil.”
---
He uses the work of historians K.S. Lal and Shrinandan Vyas to point to the threat posed by Islam to Europe, saying their work has established that millions of Hindus were killed in a genocide during 1000-1525 AD. N.S. Rajaram, another historian, is quoted as saying India's “political class have been so debilitating that they continue to live in a state of constant fear.”

Breivik's manifesto envisages that this future organisation would hand out a “multi-cultural force medal,” which would be awarded for “military cooperation with nationalist Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and/or atheist forces (non-European) on Hindu, Buddhist or Jewish territory. These efforts must be directed against Jihadi or cultural Marxist forces, personnel or interests.”
---
Even though Breivik's Knights would fight shoulder to shoulder with Hindu nationalists, his vision for their rights in a post-revolutionary Europe is limited. The manifesto envisages the creation of a “servant class,” made up of non-Muslim individuals from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India.

“During their stay,” the manifesto envisages, “they will work 12 hours a day for the duration of their contracts (6 or 12 months) and are then flown back to their homelands.” “These individuals,” it goes on, “will live in segregated communities in pre-defined areas of each major city.”


http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2293829.ece

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an Economist magazine story about Indian interference in Bangladeshi politics on the side of the Awami League:

NOT much noticed by outsiders, long-troubled ties between two neighbours sharing a long border have taken a substantial lurch for the better. Ever since 2008, when the Awami League, helped by bags of Indian cash and advice, triumphed in general elections in Bangladesh, relations with India have blossomed. To Indian delight, Bangladesh has cracked down on extremists with ties to Pakistan or India’s home-grown terrorist group, the Indian Mujahideen, as well as on vociferous Islamist (and anti-Indian) politicians in the country. India feels that bit safer.

Now the dynasts who rule each country are cementing political ties. On July 25th Sonia Gandhi (pictured, above) swept into Dhaka, the capital, for the first time. Sharing a sofa with Sheikh Hasina (left), the prime minister (and old family friend), the head of India’s ruling Congress Party heaped praise on her host, notably for helping the poor. A beaming Sheikh Hasina reciprocated with a golden gong, a post humous award for Mrs Gandhi’s mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi. In 1971 she sent India’s army to help Bangladeshis, led by Sheikh Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, throw off brutal Pakistani rule.

As a result, officials this week chirped that relations are now “very excellent”. They should get better yet. India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, will visit early in September to sign deals on sensitive matters like sharing rivers, sending electricity over the border, settling disputed patches of territory on the 4,095km (2,500-mile) frontier and stopping India’s trigger-happy border guards from murdering migrants and cow-smugglers. Mr Singh may also deal with the topic of trade which, smuggling aside, heavily favours India, to Bangladeshi ire.

Most important, however, is a deal on setting up a handful of transit routes across Bangladesh, to reach India’s remote, isolated north-eastern states. These are the “seven sisters” wedged up against the border with China.

On the face of it, the $10 billion project will develop poor areas cut off from India’s booming economy. The Asian Development Bank and others see Bangladeshi gains too, from better roads, ports, railways and much-needed trade. In Dhaka, the capital, the central-bank governor says broader integration with India could lift economic growth by a couple of percentage points, from nearly 7% already.

India has handed over half of a $1 billion soft loan for the project, and the money is being spent on new river-dredgers and rolling stock. Bangladesh’s rulers are mustard-keen. The country missed out on an earlier infrastructure bonanza involving a plan to pipe gas from Myanmar to India. China got the pipeline instead.

Yet the new transit project may be about more than just development. Some in Dhaka, including military types, suspect it is intended to create an Indian security corridor. It could open a way for army supplies to cross low-lying Bangladesh rather than going via dreadful mountain roads vulnerable to guerrilla attack. As a result, India could more easily put down insurgents in Nagaland and Manipur. The military types fear it might provoke reprisals by such groups in Bangladesh.

More striking, India’s army might try supplying its expanding divisions parked high on the border with China, in Arunachal Pradesh. China disputes India’s right to Arunachal territory, calling it South Tibet. Some Bangladeshis fret that if India tries to overcome its own logistical problems by, in effect, using Bangladesh as a huge military marshalling yard, reprisals from China would follow.


http://www.economist.com/node/21524917

Riaz Haq said...

90% of Indians are idiots, says Justice Katju according to India Times:

NEW DELHI: Ninety percent of Indians are “idiots” who can easily be misled by mischievous elements in the name of religion, Press Council of India (PCI) chairperson Justice Markandey Katju claimed today.

“I say ninety percent of Indians are idiots. You people don’t have brains in your heads….It is so easy to take you for a ride,” he said at a seminar here.

He said that a communal riot could be incited in Delhi for as meagre an amount as Rs 2000. He said that all somebody has to do is make a mischievous gesture of disrespect to a place of worship and people start fighting each other.

“You mad people will start fighting amongst yourself not realising that some agent provocateur is behind this,”he said.

Katju said that before 1857 there was no communalism in the country but the situation was different now. “Today 80 percent Hindus are communal and 80 percent Muslims are communal. This is the harsh truth, bitter truth that I am telling you. How is it that in 150 years you have gone backwards instead of moving forward because the English kept injecting poison,” Katju said.

“The policy that emanated from London after the mutiny in 1857 that there is only one way to control this country that is to make Hindus and Muslims fight each other,” he said.

He said that then there was a propaganda that Hindi was the language of Hindus and Urdu of Muslims. “Our ancestors also studied Urdu, but it is so easy to fool you. You are idiots so how difficult is it to make an idiot of you,” Katju said.

Katju said that he was saying these harsh things to make Indians, whom he loved to understand the whole game and not remain fools.


http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-12-08/news/35689114_1_justice-markandey-katju-hindus-communal-riot

Hopewins said...

^^RH copy-pastes: "The judge also said that Indians were held together by a common Sanskrit-Urdu culture which ..."
----

This is downright silly.

Sankrit is a classical language. Ordu or Urdu is vernacular.

Sankrit is at the level of Old Persian and Quranic Arabic.

Ordu/Urdu is at the level of Hindustani, Hindi, Awadhi, Bhojori, Maithili et cetera.

There is NO COMPARSION whatsoever between Urdu and Sanskrit. No more than there can be a comparison between Old Persion and Dari.

Why is this so hard? Even if 80% of Indian are communal and 90% of Indians are fools (other than himself, of course), why is it so hard for Katju to grasp such simple facts?

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an India Times report on allegations of Indian intelligence orchestrating attacks on Indian Parliament and Mumbai hotels:

NEW DELHI: In what is certain to escalate the already vicious fight between the CBI and the IB over the IshratJahan "fake encounter case", a former home ministry officer has alleged that a member of the CBI-SIT team had accused incumbent governments of "orchestrating" the terror attack on Parliament and the 26/11 carnage in Mumbai.

R V S Mani, who as home ministry under-secretary signed the affidavits submitted in court in the alleged encounter case, has said that Satish Verma, until recently a part of the CBI-SIT probe team, told him that both the terror attacks were set up "with the objective of strengthening the counter-terror legislation (sic)".

Mani has said that Verma "...narrated that the 13.12. 2001(attack on Parliament) was followed by Pota (Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act) and 26/11 2008 (terrorists' siege of Mumbai) was followed by amendment to the UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act)."

The official has alleged Verma levelled the damaging charge while debunking IB's inputs labelling the three killed with Ishrat in the June 2004 encounter as Lashkar terrorists.

Contacted by TOI, Verma refused to comment. "I don't know what the complaint is, made when and to whom. Nor am I interested in knowing. I cannot speak to the media on such matters. Ask the CBI," said the Gujarat cadre IPS officer who after being relieved from the SIT is working as principal of the Junagadh Police Training College.

Mani, currently posted as deputy land and development officer in the urban development ministry, has written to his seniors that he retorted to Verma's comments telling the IPS officer that he was articulating the views of Pakistani intelligence agency ISI.

According to him, the charge was levelled by Verma in Gandhinagar on June 22 while questioning Mani about the two home ministry affidavits in the alleged encounter case.

In his letter to the joint secretary in the urban development ministry, Mani has accused Verma of "coercing" him into signing a statement that is at odds with facts as he knew them. He said Verma wanted him to sign a statement saying that the home ministry's first affidavit in the Ishrat case was drafted by two IB officers. "Knowing fully well that this would tantamount to falsely indicting of (sic) my seniors at the extant time, I declined to sign any statement."

Giving the context in which Verma allegedly levelled the serious charge against the government, Mani said the IPS officer, while questioning him, had raised doubts about the genuineness of IB's counter-terror intelligence. He disputed the veracity of the input on the antecedents of the three killed in June 2004 on the outskirts of Ahmedabad with Ishrat in the alleged encounter which has since become a polarizing issue while fuelling Congress's fight with Gujarat CM Narendra Modi....


http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/shocking-govt-behind-parliament-attack-2611_-88910.html

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an Economic Times story on RSS involvement in terror attacks:

Claims by Swami Aseemanand, an accused in the Samjhauta Express and other blast cases, that the RSS leadership had "sanctioned" these terror acts have sparked off a controversy but the sangh parivar founthead has questioned the veracity of the interview.

Latching on to an "interview" of Aseemanand carried by a magazine, the Congress and other parties including BSP called it a "serious" issue and demanded that a proper probe should be ordered and action should be taken against the guilty.

The BJP and its ally Shiv Sena, however, dismissed the media report about Aseemanand's allegation against RSS as "baseless" and blamed it on the "dirty tricks" department for diverting attention from the real issues before elections.

RSS spokesman Ram Madhav described as "concocted" Aseemanand's purported interview with the "Caravan" magazine in which he made the claim that the RSS leadership had sanctioned the "Hindu terror conspiracy" that included the blasts in Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Sheriff.

He said Aseemanand has clearly denied having said anything like this. "A lot of questions have been raised about the veracity of this interview. The veracity of the audio that has surfaced is also questionable."

Madhav said there seemed to be a motive behind bringing these things out now. Aseemanand had earlier too issued a statement before a magistrate that no such thing had ever happened, he said.

Dismissing the report, RSS ideologue M G Vaidya said Congress will not benefit by this "false propaganda".

"Since elections are round the corner many such things will crop up. Authenticity of the interview and whether Aseemanand has said these things or not have to be ascertained," he said.

Union Minister and Congress leader Rajiv Shukla said it was a "serious" matter and the Home Ministry should take cognisance and ascertain the truth.

His colleague Salman Khurshid said the truth should come out and a debate take place on the issue.

Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said "let's go into what he had said. If he has made some expose, it may be true."

BSP leader Mayawati said the allegation of RSS leadership's role in the blasts was a serious case and should not be taken lightly by the Centre.

"The case should be probed by CBI and if they are guilty strictest action should be taken," he said.

Echoing similar sentiments, LJP leader Ram Vilas Paswan said the case should be thoroughly investigated as in previous cases of blasts the name of RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal had cropped up.

Rejecting all the charges against the RSS leadership, BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters that they were "baseless" and his (Aseemanand) lawyer has denied this interview. "This is the work of dirty tricks department before elections," he said.


http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-02-06/news/47089819_1_ram-madhav-rss-m-g-vaidya

Riaz Haq said...

#Pakistan couple who lost 5 children in #Samjhauta Express blasts are DENIED visas to visit their graves in #India http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-3003009/I-dream-children-night-Pakistani-couple-lost-five-sons-daughters-Samjhauta-Express-blasts-DENIED-visas-visit-graves.html …

Rana Shaukat Ali and his wife Rukhsana have no tears. But their grief is palpable as they speak about their five children who died in the Samjhauta Express train blasts of 2007.
After eight years they cannot visit their children’s graves in Delhi.
A Pakistani citizen, Ali has a soft spot for India because Panipat in Haryana contains the graves of all five of his sons and daughters.

Ali, 55, feels that the loss of his five children ironically brought him closer to India due to his frequent trips to the country.
“This year, we have got the visa but only for Noida. We reached here by bus on February 9. For over a month, we have been waiting for the Indian Government’s permission to let us visit the graves to offer prayers.
"I dream about my children every night. They are asking me when will I come to meet them. I want to go to their graves as soon as possible,” said Rukhsana, as tears rolled down her cheeks.
This year, the duo has got visas to visit India but are restricted to Noida because they provided the reference of their cousin, residing in Gautam Budh Nagar, at the time of filing the application.
“We want to travel to Panipat to visit our children’s graves for ‘Quran Khawani’ (prayers at the graves of loved ones on their death anniversary). We have been going to Panipat for ‘Quran Khawani’ since 2008.
"But since 2011, the Indian High Commission in Islamabad has not granted us permission for the visit,” said Ali who runs a general store back home.
“We had applied for visas to visit Panipat but the Indian Government only granted permission to stay in Noida where we have sponsors,” he said.
Ali had lost his 15-year-old daughter Ayesha in the blast along with his other children Bilal, 13, Meer Hamza, 11, Abdul Rehman, 6, and Aasma, 4.

The couple have been given a visa to stay in Noida till April 10 this year.
Rukhsana said: “We have applied for a fresh visa to visit Panipat. We humbly request the Indian Government to allow us to visit the graves of our children and offer prayers. We will be grateful to the authorities.”
The couple have a friend in India - Ashok Randhawa who is the convener of the South Asian Forum Against Terrorism. He works for the welfare of people affected by terrorism.
Randhawa said: “I have written to the Ministry of External Affairs to provide the couple with visas to visit Panipat. I have given a written guarantee to the authorities that they will not harm the country.”
Ali said: “I am still hopeful that the Indian authorities will grant me my request, else I will have to return without seeing my children’s graves.”


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-3003009/I-dream-children-night-Pakistani-couple-lost-five-sons-daughters-Samjhauta-Express-blasts-DENIED-visas-visit-graves.html#ixzz3VY99hzRP
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Riaz Haq said...

False #terror charges against #Indian #Muslims cause for concern: #India's Gowda #Islamophobia http://toi.in/NZtgyZ20 via @timesofindia

Touching on an issue that has for long agonized Muslims in India, Union minister for law and justice DV Sadananda Gowda on Tuesday said he is concerned about false terror charges slapped on Muslim youths that are followed by acquittals due to lack of evidence across the country. More importantly, he said legal reforms are in the pipeline to address such cases.
Gowda, here for the 'Vikas Parv' celebrations to mark two years of the Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the centre, said, "Cases of arrest of Muslim youths on false terror charges are a matter of concern. We are thinking of bringing in changes. The law commission is working on a report in this matter to bring about reforms in criminal procedure, bail, prosecution lapses, etc. A Supreme Court judge is the chairperson of a panel preparing the report, and there are other legal experts who are helping in preparing this report, and it is being worked upon."

Gowda's remarks on the thorny subject have come barely a week after home minister Rajnath Singh told TOI that "the government has settled for a calibrated approach to terror investigations, advising police to adopt a more sophisticated approach, including de-radicalisation strategies, rather than necessarily prosecuting all suspects".
Singh had then gone on to point out how the Delhi Police had recently released seven of the 10 suspects held for their alleged involvement in a Jaish-e-Mohammed terror plot. "You would have seen only three of the lot were arrested. We are working in a balanced manner. Earlier, all would be sent (to jail)," he had then said.
Slapped with untenable terror charges, many Muslim men have lost the prime years of their lives as they languished in jail. After their release they have found it difficult to adjust to a world that has changed in the interim, graduating from buses to metros, banks to ATMs, landlines to smartphones.
Recently, Nisaruddin Ahmad was acquitted in the Babri anniversary blast case after he spent 23 years in a Jaipur jail. There have been others too. Mohd Amir Khan was acquitted in 17 out of the 19 terrors charges he was fending off, but only after being incarcerated for 14 years. He had been charged with setting off 20 low-intensity bombs over 10 months during 1996-1997 in Delhi, Rohtak, Panipat and Ghaziabad. He told TOI on Tuesday: "The government has policies to rehabilitate surrendered terrorists, but nothing for those who are falsely charged."


In the past, six Muslim men accused of being trained operatives of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islam (HUJI) were acquitted of the terror charges for lack of evidence by a special court in Lucknow. Five Muslim youths who were arrested in 2006 by the Mumbai police from different parts of the city on charges of terrorism were also acquitted this year. Gulzar Ahmad Bani, an alleged Hizbul Mujahideen operative who had been in jail from 2001 in a blast case in Agra, was set free for want of evidence by a local court.
The problem runs deep. A film based on legal activist Shahid Azmi, who himself faced false charges and after his release fought to defend those accused wrongly in cases of terrorism, poignantly points that out. Mufti Abdul Qayyum, who had spent 11 years in jail and was later acquitted by the Supreme Court in the Akshardham attack case, wrote a book, 'Gyarah Saal Salakhon Ke Peeche', narrating the stories of trumped up terror charges.

Riaz Haq said...

Anti-#Muslim Malegaon Accused #Hindu Nationalist Terrorist Sadhvi Pragya Denied Bail. #Modi #BJP #India http://www.ndtv.com/cheat-sheet/sadhvi-pragyas-bail-rejected-by-mumbai-court-in-malegaon-blast-case-1424419 … via @ndtv

Berating the NIA, the court said charges against Sadhvi Pragya under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act would stay.
"There are reasonable grounds to believe that accusations against Pragya are prima facie true. It is difficult to accept the (bail plea) merely on the ground that the NIA has given a clean chit to Sadhvi Pragya," the court said.
The NIA had, in a new chargesheet last month, dropped charges against Sadhvi Pragya and five others citing lack of evidence against them.
The court said today that the NIA, which took over the case in 2011, launched a "fresh investigation" instead of taking forward the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad's work on the case.
Seven people were killed and 101 injured when two bombs fitted on a motorcycle exploded in Malegaon, around 270 km from Mumbai, on September 29, 2008.
Sadhvi Pragya, Army Colonel Srikant Purohit and others were arrested and were charged with plotting the blasts as part of a pro-Hindu group, Abhinav Bharat.
The Anti-Terror Squad said Sadhvi Pragya's motorcycle was used in the attack. It also alleged that Lt Col Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya had met Swami Aseemanand , the main accused in the Samjhauta Express blast of 2007, and plotted the Malegaon blasts. Many witnesses have since turned hostile.
The NIA said in its charge-sheet that "during investigation, sufficient evidences have not been found" against Sadhvi Pragya. It also said the motorcycle registered in her name was used by an accused who is missing.
Both the Sadhvi and Col Purohit, called the face of "saffron terror" by the Congress, have been in jail for about seven years now.
The case was first investigated by Hemant Karkare as the chief of Maharashtra's Anti-terror Squad. Mr Karkare was killed battling the Lashkar e Taiba terrorists who attacked Mumbai on November 26, 2008.

Riaz Haq said...

https://tribune.com.pk/story/1728183/4-quantico-fire-recent-episode-featuring-india-pakistan-conflict/


https://www.hindustantimes.com/tv/priyanka-chopra-s-quantico-slammed-for-showing-indians-as-terrorists/story-57W2J1fLZnrATTA92v0k0N.html


The group (Hindu Nationalists) apparently plans an attack in Manhattan with the intention of blaming it on Pakistan. Meanwhile, this has angered several fans online.

In the episode, which aired on June 1, an MIT professor acquires uranium with which he plans to make a nuclear bomb. An India-Pakistan summit to be held in New York City is his target.

Twitterati slammed the show’s decision to include such a plot.





Quantico, from ABC Studios and producer Mark Gordon, was a breakout when it debuted in 2015, setting delayed viewing lift records.

Priyanka Chopra suffers concussion on sets of ‘Quantico’

But with its dense narrative and heavy serialisation, the series started to lose momentum in the second half of its first season and continued to see a decline through season 2 and into season 3.

The cast also included Jake McLaughlin, Johanna Braddy, Russell Tovey, Alan Powell, Marlee Matlin and Blair Underwood.

Riaz Haq said...

Pieter Friedrich
@FriedrichPieter

The Nazi-inspired #RSS paramilitary has been implicated in lynchings, assassinations, TERRORIST BOMBINGS, and over a dozen large-scale pogroms targeting minorities.

https://twitter.com/FriedrichPieter/status/1455683140010139651?s=20

(Mumbai High Court Justice Kolse Patil's video attached)

Riaz Haq said...

Ghanznavi's Destruction of Somnath Was Not a Hindu-Muslim Issue When it Happened

It was deliberately distorted by the British colonial rulers to divide and conquer India, according to Indian historian Romila Thapar.
British distortions of history have since been exploited by Hindu Nationalists to pursue divisive policies. 
https://books.google.com/books/about/Somanatha.html?id=4-NxAAAAMAAJ

In 1026, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni raided the Hindu temple of Somanatha (Somnath in textbooks of the colonial period). The story of the raid has reverberated in Indian history, but largely during the  (British) raj. It was first depicted as a trauma for the Hindu population not in India, but in the House of Commons. The triumphalist accounts of the event in Turko-Persian chronicles became the main source for most eighteenth-century historians. It suited everyone and helped the British to divide and rule a multi-millioned subcontinent.
In her new book, Romila Thapar, the doyenne of Indian historians, reconstructs what took place by studying other sources, including local Sanskrit inscriptions, biographies of kings and merchants of the period, court epics and popular narratives that have survived. The result is astounding and undermines the traditional version of what took place. These findings also contest the current Hindu religious nationalism that constantly utilises the conventional version of this history.

Riaz Haq said...

Did you know that the composition of Mahmood Ghaznavi's army when he raided the Somnath temple in 1025 was, solely not a Muslim Army. Out of 12 Generals, 5 were Hindus. Their names are:1. Tilak2. Rai3. Sondhi4. Hazran5. Not knownAfter the battle, Mahmood issued coins in his name with inscriptions in Sanskrit. He appointed a Hindu Raja as his representative in Somnath. Arab traders who had settled in Gujarat during the 8th and 9th century died to protect the Somnath temple against Ghaznavi's Army.

Just three years before Ghaznavi's raid on Somnath in 1022, a general acting on the authority of Rajendra I, Maharaja of the Chola empire (848–1279) had marched 1,600 kilometres north from the Cholas’ royal capital of Tanjavur. After subduing kings in Orissa, Chola warriors defeated Mahipala, maharaja of the Pala empire (c.750–1161), who was the dominant power in India’s easternmost region of Bengal. The Chola's crowned their victory by carrying off a bronze image of the deity Åšiva, which they seized from a royal temple that Mahipala had patronized. In the course of this long campaign, the invaders also took from the Kalinga Raja of Orissa images of Bhairava, Bhairavi and Kali. These, together with precious gems looted from the Pala king, were taken down to the Chola capital as war booty.
The question arises why is Mahmud Ghaznavi demonized but not Rajendra Chola's plunder of Hindu temples?In fact, the demonization of Mahmud and the portrayal of his raid on Somnath as an assault on Hinduism by Muslim invaders dates only from the early 1840s.

In 1842, the British East India Company suffered the annihilation of an entire army of some 16,000 in the First Afghan War (1839–42). Seeking to regain face among their Hindu subjects after this humiliating defeat, the British contrived a bit of self-serving fiction, namely...that Mahmud, after sacking the temple of Somnath, carried off a pair of the temple’s gates on his way back to Afghanistan.
By ‘discovering’ these fictitious gates in Mahmud’s former capital of Ghazni, and by ‘restoring’ them to their rightful owners in India, British officials hoped to be admired for heroically rectifying what they construed heinous wrongs that had caused centuries of distress among Hindus. Though intended to win the letters' gratitude while distracting the locals from Britain’s catastrophic defeat just beyond the Khyber, this bit of colonial mischief has stoked Hindus’ ill-feeling towards Muslims ever since.By contrast, Rajendra Chola’s raid on Bengal remained largely forgotten outside the Chola country.12 years after the attack, a king from the Goa region recorded performing a pilgrimage to the temple, but he failed to mention Mahmud’s raid. Another inscription dated 1169 mentioned repairs made to the temple owing to normal deterioration, but again without mentioning Mahmud’s raid. In 1216 Somnath’s overlords fortified the temple to protect it not from attacks by invaders from beyond the Khyber Pass, but from those by Hindu rulers in neighbouring Malwa; apparently, such attacks were so frequent as to require precautionary measures; apparently, such attacks were so frequent as to require precautionary measures.
The silence of contemporary Hindu sources regarding Mahmud’s raid suggests that in Somnath itself it was either forgotten altogether or viewed as just another unfortunate attack by an outsider, and hence unremarkable.

1. “India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765” by Richard M. Eaton2. “Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History” by Romila Thapar

Riaz Haq said...

Hindu Mahasabha workers slaughtered cows to cause communal violence, says UP Police - India Today

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/hindu-mahasabha-workers-slaughtered-cows-themselves-to-cause-communal-violence-up-police-2357323-2023-04-08

By Siraj Qureshi: Uttar Pradesh Police on Saturday revealed that some members of the Bharat Hindu Mahasabha slaughtered cows themselves to incite communal violence in Agra during the Ram Navami procession.

Agra Police had arrested four youths accused of cow slaughter on the occasion of Ram Navami. The youths were arrested during Ram Navami celebrations in Gautam Nagar of Etmaduddaula area in Agra during a raid.

Regional police told India Today that the names of several office-bearers of the Bharat Hindu Mahasabha have also surfaced in the cow slaughter plot.


According to the information, the name of the Hindu Mahasabha’s national spokesperson, Sanjay Jat, has emerged as the main conspirator. Many workers are also said to be involved in the conspiracy. Jitendra Kushwaha had lodged an FIR about cow slaughter at Etmaduddaula police station.

DCP Suraj Rai said that many facts had come to the fore during the police investigation. Two, named Imran alias Thakur and Shanu named in the FIR were arrested by the police.

Shanu told the police that he reached Mehtab Bagh at 8 pm on March 29 and found Imran, Salman, and Sairo there. They then decided to kill a cow roaming there. That's when Shanu and Imran went and informed Jitendra Kushwaha about this.


Some Hindu Mahasabha workers complained against Jitendra Kushwaha and Sanjay Jat and said they themselves were getting the cow slaughtered to spoil the communal harmony of Agra on Ram Navami.

On the other hand, Sanjay Jat has told India Today that he has been deliberately trapped by the office bearers of the Hindu Mahasabha and the entire episode should be investigated by CBCID. He said that he will complain about these officials to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.