Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Dutch & Indian Elections; Trump Travel Ban 2; Pakistan Census

What does the Dutch election result say about the right-wing populism wave in Europe? Is it a setback for anti-Muslim Geert Wilders, known as Dutch Trump, after Brexit and Trump wins? How will it impact the upcoming French presidential election? Will it help or hurt Marine Le Penn's chances?

What does the BJP sweep in UP elections mean for India and Indian politics? How did the BJP manage it? Did the Muslim vote-split between BSP and SP badly hurt Muslim representation in UP legislature? Has it further strengthened Hindu Nationalists and marginalized Muslims in Hinduized India?

What's new Trump's Muslim Ban 2.0? Why are the federal judges in Hawaii and Baltimore blocking it? Will the 6th Circuit and the US Supreme Court uphold the ban?

How will the long-awaited Pakistan census impact Pakistan's political map? Will smaller provinces with higher birth rates than Punjab gain more seats in the National Assembly? Will urban areas benefit from increased urbanization in gaining more power and resources? How will Sindh's Urdu-speaking population with its lower birth-rates fare?

Viewpoint From Overseas host Faraz Darvesh discusses these questions with panelist Misbah Azam and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)


https://youtu.be/wFBtSo3lQxI





Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Trump Slump Amid Muslim Ban

London Mayoral Election of British Pakistani Muslim Sadiq Khan

Hinduization of India

Islamophobia in the West

MQM Worried About Demographic Change in Karachi

Talk4Pak Youtube Channel

Talk4Pak Vimeo Channel

5 comments:

Riaz Haq said...

BBC News - #India #meat crackdown leaves butchers concerned after #BJP sweep in #upelections2017 #Modi

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-39364448#

Several slaughterhouses and meat shops have been shut in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh after the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) comprehensively won state assembly elections in India's most populous state.
The new chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, is a strong supporter of laws protecting cows, and has publicly opposed beef consumption. The slaughter of cows and consumption of beef is considered taboo by India's majority Hindu population - and is illegal in most Indian states including Uttar Pradesh.
Reports say that immediately after taking office, one of his first acts was to instruct police officials to crack down on "illegal" slaughterhouses in the state. Locals allege however, that many of them did not kill cows, but animals like goat and buffalo, the slaughter of which is legal.
Most of the butcher shops and slaughter houses in Uttar Pradesh are owned and run by Muslims who make up 18% of the state's population.
Cattle slaughter ban hits Indian farmers
Why beef ban in Indian state undermines secularism
Modi breaks silence on 'beef' lynching
The narrow, dingy lanes of Ghaziabad's Islam Nagar house nearly 100 meat shops, but now all of them are shuttered.
Both the owners and workers of the shop are sitting at home, unsure about how they will feed their families in the days and weeks to come.
'How will we survive?'
This is the only work they have known for decades and now with the government cracking down on meat shops, they are in a fix.
Locals told the BBC that policemen and administration officials swooped in early Tuesday morning.
"This is an injustice. They came on Tuesday morning, took away all our meat and even took a sample from a dead, sliced buffalo. What was the need for that? They might allege later that it was a dead cow," said Mohammed Yasin who owns four meat shops in the area.
"There was no prior notice. We have suffered financial losses. How will we survive?" he asks.
"I was told to stop cooking meat, as the government has changed," added Mohammed Azam, whose famous Baghdad Biryani Corner restaurant was also shut.
But officials deny that there has been a change.

Atul Kumar, a senior official in the state government, told the BBC that the raid was carried out after the officials received a tip that a buffalo was being butchered illegally at someone's home.
"This is illegal. There has to be an approved, designated area for slaughter." he told the BBC, adding that the decision to shut illicit butcher shops was taken following a state government order.
Locals admit that a large number of meat shops in the area did not have the mandatory licenses, but they allege that their efforts to secure them have been ignored for years.
Some complained of discrimination, alleging that meat shops run by lower caste Hindus in adjacent areas had not been touched. But when the BBC went there to check, we found that those shops had been closed too.
Mr Kumar said the administration was mulling a single window system to address concerns about granting licenses.

Riaz Haq said...

#Trump's ex NSA Flynn offers to testify to #FBI and #US #Congress in exchange for immunity from prosecution

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mike-flynn-offers-to-testify-in-exchange-for-immunity-1490912959?mod=e2fb



Mike Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has told the Federal Bureau of Investigation and congressional officials investigating the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia that he is willing to be interviewed in exchange for a grant of immunity from prosecution, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.

As an adviser to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, and later one of Mr. Trump’s top aides in the White House, Mr. Flynn was privy to some of the most sensitive foreign-policy deliberations of the new administration and was directly involved in discussions about the possible lifting of sanctions on Russia imposed by the Obama administration.

He has made the offer to the FBI and the House and Senate intelligence committees through his lawyer but has so far found no takers, the officials said.


–– ADVERTISEMENT ––


Mr. Flynn’s attorney, Robert Kelner, declined to comment.

It wasn’t clear if Mr. Flynn had offered to talk about specific aspects of his time working for Mr. Trump, but the fact that he was seeking immunity suggested Mr. Flynn feels he may be in legal jeopardy following his brief stint as the national security adviser, one official said.

Mr. Flynn was forced to resign after acknowledging that he misled White House officials about the nature of his phone conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during the presidential transition.

Mr. Flynn’s communications with the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, have been scrutinized by the FBI, which is examining whether Trump campaign personnel colluded with Russian officials who are alleged to have interfered with the presidential election, according to current and former U.S. officials. Russia has denied the allegations.

Mr. Flynn also was paid tens of thousands of dollars by three Russian companies, including the state-sponsored media network RT, for speeches he made shortly before he became a formal adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign, according to documents obtained by a congressional oversight committee.

Democratic lawmakers have requested a copy of the security-clearance form that Mr. Flynn was required to file before joining Mr. Trump in the White House, to see if he disclosed sources of foreign income.

And they have asked the Defense Department to investigate whether Mr. Flynn, a retired Army general, violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause by accepting money from RT, which U.S. intelligence officials say is part of a state-funded media apparatus.

Riaz Haq said...

Fears in #India over spread of '#Taliban-like' moral policing amid crackdown on meat and romance http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/02/fears-india-spread-taliban-like-moral-policing-amid-crackdown/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw … via @telegraphnews

Controversial “anti-Romeo” squads to police and control young couples in public are spreading across India after they were introduced by the firebrand Hindu leader of the country’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh.

The squads of plain-clothed and uniformed police officers have been accused of “Taliban-like" moral policing by patrolling public spaces to prevent men from loitering near women. The authorities claim they are only trying to protect women from sexual harassment.

The patrols were launched just over a week ago on the orders of Yogi Adityanath, 44, a right-wing Hindu monk repeatedly accused of fanning religious tensions and who was jailed for 15 days in 2007 on charges of inciting riots, but who now rules a state of over 200 million people.

The idea has since spread to Jharkhand, north-east India, where reports emerged that the squads had “rounded up some young men and slapped them” for being found too close to women-only colleges.

In cities across Uttar Pradesh local parks, where many young couples traditionally find privacy, are said to have emptied.

“Between 300 and 400 couples visit the park every day, but since 21 March, only 5 or 10 have showed up,” Atul Kumar, a ticket seller at a park in Ghaziabad, told the Hindustan Times, claiming to have seen nine young men rounded up for no reason.

On Monday, 50 couples were apprehended for “immoral activities” after police raided two hotels in Ghaziabad.

“India is going through a very conservative and orthodox, almost Stone Age, where we can’t accept young boys and girls, above the age of 18, may freely choose who they want to be with,” said Shehzad Poonawalla, a lawyer and official with the opposition Congress party.

“How is this any different from Taliban culture?”

Poonawalla is one of many Indians who fear the squads form part of a wider right-wing Hindu political agenda by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party who appointed Adityanath despite his controversial past.

The move coincides with a widespread crackdown on Uttar Pradesh slaughterhouses to protect cows, considered sacred animals by India’s Hindu majority.

Most butchers are Muslims and many suspect that they are being unfairly targeted as they face the loss of their livelihoods.

Riaz Haq said...


What is Hindutva?
A.G. NOORANI

https://www.dawn.com/news/1301496/what-is-hindutva


Savarkar wrote, “... Hindutva is not identical with what is vaguely indicated by the term Hinduism. By an ‘ism’ it is generally meant a theory or a code more or less based on spiritual or religious dogma or system. But when we attempt to investigate the essential significance of Hindutva we do not primarily — and certainly not mainly — concern ourselves with any particular theocratic or religious dogma or creed”. His concern was politics; the political mobilisation of Hindus into one nation.

If not religion, what, then, is the basis for the divide? With crystal clarity, he wrote, “To every Hindu … this Sindhusthan is at once a pitribhu and a punyabhu — fatherland and a holy land. That is why in the case of some of our ... countrymen, who had originally been forcibly converted to a non-Hindu religion and who consequently have inherited along with Hindus, a common fatherland and a greater part of the wealth of a common culture — language, law, customs, folklore and history — are not and cannot be recognised as Hindus. For though Hindusthan to them is fatherland as to any other Hindu yet it is not to them a holy land too. Their holy land is far off in Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and god-men, ideas and heroes are not the children of this soil. Consequently their name and their outlook smack of a foreign origin”.

The divide cannot be bridged except by obeying Hindutva’s demand for conversion to Hinduism. Savarkar exhorted, “Ye, who by race, by blood, by culture, by nationality possess almost all the essentials of Hindutva and had been forcibly snatched out of our ancestral home by the hand of violence — ye, have only to render wholehearted love to our common mother and recognise her not only as fatherland (Pitribhu) but even as a holy land (Punyabhu), and ye would be most welcome to the Hindu fold”.

Gandhi’s assassination put paid to Savarkar’s ambitions, but the RSS picked up the baton. Its supremo, M.S. Golwalkar, drew inspiration from Hindutva and coined its synonym, ‘cultural nationalism’, in contrast to ‘territorial nationalism’ in his book, A Bunch of Thoughts (1968). Everyone born within the territory of India is not a nationalist; the nation is defined by a common ‘culture’ (read: religion).

Golwalkar wrote, “... here was already a full-fledged ancient nation of the Hindus and the various communities which were living in the country were here either as guests, the Jews and Parsis, or as invaders, the Muslims and Christians. They never faced the question how all such heterogeneous groups could be called as children of the soil merely because, by an accident, they happened to reside in common territory under the rule of a common enemy … The theories of territorial nationalism and of common danger, which formed the basis for our concept of nation, had deprived us of the positive and inspiring content of our real Hindu nationhood ...”

This explains the RSS’ ghar wapsi (‘return to your home’) campaign, simply a repeat of the past shuddhi (‘purification’) movement. Nothing has changed; an unbroken ideological thread binds Savarkar’s Hindutva, Golwalkar’s ‘cultural nationalism’ and the RSS-BJP policies today. On Sept 24, 1990, BJP president L.K. Advani launched “a crusade in defence of Hindutva”, which culminated in the demolition of Babri Masjid, in his presence, on Dec 6, 1992.

Since 1996, the BJP’s election manifestoes for Lok Sabha elections pledge to espouse Hindutva in these terms: “The cultural nationalism of India … is the core of Hindutva.” This explains the Modi government’s systematic purge of educational and cultural institutions. It is a quarrel with history. As scholars Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph remarked, modern hatreds are supported by ancient, remembered wrongs, whether real or imagined. The RSS-BJP combine rejects the concept of composite culture that Jawaharlal Nehru and others propounded.

Riaz Haq said...

Under #Trump, non-immigrant #US visas for #Muslim nations fall 44% overall. Down 26% from #Pakistan to 4,200 a month
http://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/trump-travel-ban-muslim-visa-decline/

The monthly average of such visas issued to the six countries — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — has fallen 44 percent this year when compared with the monthly average in fiscal year 2016, according to State Department data.

Some South Asian countries also have seen declines. Pakistan, for instance, received 26 percent fewer non-immigrant visas in 2017 compared with its monthly average in fiscal year 2016.