tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post3348779917427750879..comments2024-03-27T15:36:44.737-07:00Comments on Haq's Musings: BJP Makes "Akhand Bharat" Part of Indian School TextbooksRiaz Haqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-24224607150129172792023-07-08T07:59:50.224-07:002023-07-08T07:59:50.224-07:00Speaking at an event, (Bollywood Actor) Kajol said...Speaking at an event, (Bollywood Actor) Kajol said, “…Chnage especially in a country like India is slow. It’s very very slow because for one we are steeped in our tradition, steeped in our thought process and, of course, it has to be with tradition. You have political leaders who do not have educational system background. I’m sorry I’m going to go out and say that.”<br /><br /><br />https://www.jantakareporter.com/entertainment/kajol-issues-clarification-after-modi-supporters-attack-actor-for-uneducated-leaders-comments/405895/<br /><br />She added, “We are being ruled by leaders, so many of them, who do not have that viewpoint which I think education gives you.”<br /><br />Kajol’s comments evoked angry reactions from BJP supporters who felt that the popular actor was taking a potshot at Prime Minister Narendra Modi whose educational qualification has been a matter of intense scrutiny for many years. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had recently accused him of being ‘uneducated’ while others raised questions on his alleged fake degree.<br /><br />Modi and his administration have refused all attempts to make his degree public fearing that this could expose the Indian PM’s educational qualification.<br /><br />BJP supporters launched brutal attack on Kajol for her comments. Many accused her being influenced by the thought process of Muslim actors particularly Shah Rukh Khan. The pair of Shah Rukh and Kajol ruled the box office in the late 90s and 2020s.<br /><br />Facing backlash from BJP supporters, Kajol issued a clarification stating that she wasn’t pointing at anyone in particular. She wrote, “I was merely making a point about education and its importance. My intention was not to demean any political leaders, we have some great leaders who are guiding the country on the right path.”<br /><br />Kajol, meanwhile, has found plenty of support from netizens, who wondered why her comments had irked only Modi supporters even though the actor did not name anyone.<br /><br />Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi wrote, “So Kajol says we are governed by leaders who are uneducated and have no vision. Nobody outraging since its her opinion not necessarily a fact and also has named nobody but all Bhakts are outraged. Please don’t Yale your Entire Political Science knowledge.”<br /><br />Comedian Kunal Kamra tweeted, “Everyone is pointing out that Actress Kajol hasn’t finished her education & I believe that’s the only reason that she feels an educated leadership can help our country.”Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-82261725951786093712023-06-29T08:41:35.085-07:002023-06-29T08:41:35.085-07:00Over 50% of #India's children can not read by ...Over 50% of #India's children can not read by age 10. Can India educate its vast workforce? #Education for most Indians is still at best unskilled. #Unemployed youngsters risk bringing India’s #economic development to a premature stop. #Modi #BJP https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/29/can-india-educate-its-vast-workforce<br /><br />https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1674441854136512513?s=20<br /><br />As the rich world and China grow older, India’s huge youth bulge—some 500m of its people are under 20—should be an additional propellant. Yet as we report, although India’s brainy elite hoovers up qualifications, education for most Indians is still a bustUnskilled, jobless youngsters risk bringing India’s economic development to a premature stop.<br /><br />India has made some strides in improving the provision of services to poor people. Government digital schemes have simplified access to banking and the distribution of welfare payments. Regarding education, there has been a splurge on infrastructure. A decade ago only a third of government schools had handwashing facilities and only about half had electricity; now around 90% have both. Since 2014 India has opened nearly 400 universities. Enrolment in higher education has risen by a fifth.<br /><br />Yet improving school buildings and expanding places only gets you so far. India is still doing a terrible job of making sure that the youngsters who throng its classrooms pick up essential skills. Before the pandemic less than half of India’s ten-year-olds could read a simple story, even though most of them had spent years sitting obediently behind school desks (the share in America was 96%). School closures that lasted more than two years have since made this worse.<br /><br />There are lots of explanations. Jam-packed curriculums afford too little time for basic lessons in maths and literacy. Children who fail to grasp these never learn much else. Teachers are poorly trained and badly supervised: one big survey of rural schools found a quarter of staff were absent. Officials sometimes hand teachers unrelated duties, from administering elections to policing social-distancing rules during the pandemic.<br /><br />Such problems have led many families to send their children to private schools instead. These educate about 50% of all India’s children. They are impressively frugal, but do not often produce better results. Recently, there have been hopes that the country’s technology industry might revolutionise education. Yet relying on it alone is risky. In recent weeks India’s biggest ed-tech firm, Byju’s, which says it educates over 150m people worldwide and was once worth $22bn, has seen its valuation slashed because of financial troubles.<br /><br />All this makes fixing government schools even more urgent. India should spend more on education. Last year the outlays were just 2.9% of gdp, low by international standards. But it also needs to reform how the system works by taking inspiration from models elsewhere in developing Asia.<br /><br />As we report, in international tests pupils in Vietnam have been trouncing youngsters from much richer countries for a decade. Vietnam’s children spend less time in lessons than Indian ones, even when you count homework and other cramming. They also put up with larger classes. The difference is that Vietnam’s teachers are better prepared, more experienced and more likely to be held accountable if their pupils flunk.<br /><br />With the right leadership, India could follow. It should start by collecting better information about how much pupils are actually learning. That would require politicians to stop disputing data that do not show their policies in a good light. And the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party should also stop trying to strip textbooks of ideas such as evolution, or of history that irks Hindu nativists. That is a poisonous distraction from the real problems. India is busy constructing roads, tech campuses, airports and factories. It needs to build up its human capital, too.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-42070050446219375312023-06-20T07:36:25.819-07:002023-06-20T07:36:25.819-07:00NCERT textbooks: Why some Indian scholars are diso...NCERT textbooks: Why some Indian scholars are disowning books they wrote<br /><br />https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65947356<br /><br /><br />Among dropped topics are paragraphs on attempts by extreme Hindu nationalists to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi and chapters on federalism and diversity.<br /><br /><br />The NCERT has also dropped content related to the 2002 Gujarat riots; removed a chapter on Mughal rulers in India; and moved portions on the periodic table and theory of evolution in science books to higher grades, sparking criticism.<br /><br />The council had said earlier that the changes, which were first announced last year as part of a syllabus "rationalisation" exercise, wouldn't affect knowledge but instead reduce the load on children after the Covid-19 pandemic.<br /><br />But now some academics who were part of committees that helped design and develop the older textbooks say they don't want to be associated with the new curriculum.<br /><br />On 8 June, political scientists Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav - who were advisers for political science books originally published in 2006 for classes 9 to 12 - wrote to NCERT, asking it to remove their names from the print and digital editions of the books.<br /><br />The academics said they objected to the "innumerable and irrational cuts and large deletions" as they failed to see "any pedagogic rationale" behind the changes.<br /><br />The NCERT issued a statement saying such a request "was out of question" because it holds the copyright of all the material it publishes. When contacted, NCERT director DS Saklani referred the BBC to the statement on its website.<br /><br />The deadlock intensified last week when more than 30 academics also wrote to NCERT asking for their names to be withdrawn from the Textbook Development Committees (TDC) listed in the books. The scholars argued that possessing copyright did not entitle the NCERT to make changes to texts they wrote.<br /><br />But NCERT said that the TDC's role was "limited to advising how to design and develop the textbooks or contributing to the development of their contents and not beyond this".<br /><br />It also clarified that the rationalised content is applicable only for the current academic year and that a new set of textbooks will soon be developed based on fresh guidelines that adhere to the new National Education Policy.<br /><br />The argument has pitted academics against each other. Critics argue that textbooks should serve as a source of introspection and accuse the NCERT of erasing portions that are not palatable to the governing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. "The decision of "rationalisation" shows either that the NCERT does not value its autonomy or its leadership does not understand its place in a democracy," Peter Ronald DeSouza, who asked for his name to be withdrawn, wrote last week.<br /><br />But the NCERT has also received support. Last week, 73 academics issued a statement arguing that school textbooks were in sore need of an update.<br /><br />"[The critics'] demand is that students continue to study from 17-year-old textbooks rather than updated textbooks. In their quest to further their political agenda, they are ready to endanger the future of crores [tens of millions] of children across the country," they said.<br /><br />Supporters include the head of India's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the chief of the country's university watchdog, the University Grants Commission (UGC).<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-89397371281347522852023-05-22T15:55:03.915-07:002023-05-22T15:55:03.915-07:00A new #Modi government-approved #Indian schoolbook...A new #Modi government-approved #Indian schoolbook no longer says why Nathuram #Godse killed #Gandhi and omits references to #Hindu hard-liners affiliated with #RSS who opposed his vision of religious pluralism. #Islamophobia #Hindutva #BJP https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-was-gandhi-killed-after-official-edit-indias-textbooks-dont-say-d5b86e77?st=gnzmnvpkv53jw42 via @WSJ<br /><br />NEW DELHI—For years, government-prescribed high-school textbooks in India included a few telling details about Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin: The man worked for an extremist Hindu newspaper and had denounced Gandhi, the iconic freedom fighter, as “an appeaser of Muslims.”<br /><br />A revised version of the Class 12 history book, whose printed copies became available this year, no longer says that. It identifies Nathuram Godse as Gandhi’s killer, but provides no information about him or his motive. Also deleted are broader references to Hindu hard-liners who opposed Gandhi’s vision of religious pluralism for newly independent India 75 years ago.<br /><br />The edits are among recent changes under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to what students learn about their country’s past. Members of his political party—which is linked to a decades-old movement to shape India into a Hindu-dominant nation—have long criticized school curriculum as unbalanced and biased against Hindus.<br /><br />It does little, they say, to instill pride in young Indians, and particularly the country’s Hindu majority, in their history and heritage.<br /><br />Underlying their grievances is a broader ideological debate. Modi supporters accuse the left-leaning, liberal forces that shaped India after independence in 1947 of representing Westernized values and of pandering to Muslims, India’s largest minority. To them, Modi’s rise symbolizes Hindu revival.<br /><br />Critics accuse Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party of promoting a divisive Hindu nationalist ideology that threatens India’s secular foundations.<br /><br /><br />The changes to textbooks “go against the idea that education should encourage an open mind and a liberal outlook,” said Krishna Kumar, an academic under whose leadership they were originally written. The books, he said, have been “mutilated so crudely.”<br /><br />Modi’s supporters say revisions were long overdue. Teaching of India’s precolonial history overemphasized Islamic empires established on its territory and sidelined Hindu kingdoms, they say. Too much importance was given, they say, to the Mughal dynasty, a vastly wealthy empire during the 16th and 17th centuries whose Muslim rulers built the Taj Mahal and left a lasting cultural imprint on the region’s architecture, food and literature.<br /><br />Hindu nationalists see the Mughal era as a period of temple destruction, religious conversion and the subjugation of Hindu customs.<br /><br />A chapter on Mughal courts is gone from the Class 12 history book, though another on agrarian life during the empire remains. A two-page table on the battlefield triumphs of Mughal emperors, from Akbar to Aurangzeb, has been removed from a Class 7 book. A chapter on the 13th century Muslim conquest of northern India has also been pruned.<br /><br />In a public letter, more than 250 historians and academics criticized the move.<br /><br />“The selective deletion in this round of textbook revision reflects the sway of divisive politics,” they said. Indian history cannot be seen as consisting of Hindu and Muslim periods, they said, adding: “These categories are uncritically imposed on what has historically been a very diverse social fabric.”<br /><br />The changes were made by the National Council of Educational Research and Training, an autonomous body whose members are mostly appointed by the government. It said it rationalized textbooks to help students catch up after the Covid-19 pandemic and to make space for critical thinking.<br /><br />The books are used by schools aligned with the central government’s education board and some state-level boards.<br /><br />College freshman Shivam Kumar, a Modi supporter, welcomes the changes.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-74647915892221437692023-04-30T07:30:42.997-07:002023-04-30T07:30:42.997-07:00Scientists in India protest move to drop Darwinian...Scientists in India protest move to drop Darwinian evolution from textbooks<br /><br />https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-india-protest-move-drop-darwinian-evolution-textbooks<br /><br />Decision marks troubling rejection of science, critics say<br /><br />Scientists in India are protesting a decision to remove discussion of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution from textbooks used by millions of students in ninth and 10th grades. More than 4000 researchers and others have so far signed an open letter asking officials to restore the material.<br /><br />The removal makes “a travesty of the notion of a well-rounded secondary education,” says evolutionary biologist Amitabh Joshi of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. Other researchers fear it signals a growing embrace of pseudoscience by Indian officials.<br /><br />The Breakthrough Science Society, a nonprofit group, launched the open letter on 20 April after learning that the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), an autonomous government organization that sets curricula and publishes textbooks for India’s 256 million primary and secondary students, had made the move as part of a “content rationalization” process. NCERT first removed discussion of Darwinian evolution from the textbooks at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to streamline online classes, the society says. (Last year, NCERT issued a document that said it wanted to avoid content that was “irrelevant” in the “present context.”)<br /><br />NCERT officials declined to answer questions about the decision to make the removal permanent. They referred ScienceInsider to India’s Ministry of Education, which had not provided comment as this story went to press.<br /><br />“The country’s scientific community is seriously dismayed to see that the theory of biological evolution … has been dropped,” the Breakthrough Science Society said in a statement. “Students will remain seriously handicapped in their thought processes if deprived of exposure to this fundamental discovery of science.”<br /><br />One major concern, Joshi says, is that most Indian students will get no exposure to the concept of evolution if it is dropped from the ninth and 10th grade curriculum, because they do not go on to study biology in later grades. “Evolution is perhaps the most important part of biology that all educated citizens should be aware of,” Joshi says. “It speaks directly to who we are, as humans, and our position within the living world.”<br /><br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-64299126414812931822022-12-17T20:45:08.318-08:002022-12-17T20:45:08.318-08:00Indian culture and civilization have been enriched...Indian culture and civilization have been enriched by Muslims. The biggest draw of tourists to India is the Taj Mahal built by a Muslim king. The Red Fort where Modi stands every year to deliver Independence Day speech was built by Muslims. Indian musical instruments like sitar and tabla were developed by Muslims. Choli and lehenga worn by Indian women were brought to India by Muslims. Biryani, samosa and nan came to India with Muslims. Indian language has been enriched by Arabic and Farsi words added by Muslims. Even the words Hindi and Hindu are of Arabic/Persian origin.<br /><br />Now Hindutva rulers are trying to erase Muslim history in India. They can not succeed.<br /><br />Muslims have given the world algebra, calculus, scientific method, physics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, social sciences and a whole lot more.<br /><br />Watch Prof Roy Casagranda explain it in detail in the following video:<br /><br />https://youtu.be/C8M4i9fvq1M<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-78960816095751280182020-05-03T11:07:43.892-07:002020-05-03T11:07:43.892-07:00#Hindutva attempt to enslave #India under #Hindu e...#Hindutva attempt to enslave #India under #Hindu elite castes by @Swamy39 via #Sanskrit language. Myth being sold that Sanskrit was the language of #India and #Muslim invaders wiped it out. Fact: Sanskrit forbidden for common #Hindus. They spoke Prakrit. https://aamjanata.com/religion-philosophy/sanskriti-sanskrit-language-brahmins/<br /><br />The attempt to enslave India under Hindu elite castes continues. This time it is by shoving Sanskrit down the throats of upcoming generations so that those who know “most” about it (read priests) will once more be the final word on knowledge.<br /><br />The myth being sold is that Sanskrit was the language of India and Muslim invaders wiped it out. I suppose the RSS has never heard of Sant Dnyaneshwar who wrote the Dnyaneshwari so that people could have access to the knowledge of the Bhagwad Gita in THEIR LANGUAGE which was Prakrit. Sanskrit was FORBIDDEN to them.<br /><br />This is before the Muslim invasions, incidentally.<br /><br />Sanskrit has been the barrier that firewalled the unwashed masses from power and knowledge recorded in it by the simple virtue of being forbidden to the masses. Its exclusiveness became its limitation.<br /><br />Today there is hardly anyone other than priests who bothers with Sanskrit and the language continues to be the language of rituals conducted for the masses by the brahmans.<br /><br />Now, as language is accessible to all, and the priests are left hoarding a coma while both power and knowledge proliferate in languages accessible to more people, the priests see this mythical Hindu Rashtra as an opportunity to reestablish the eroding supremacy. When the language they hoarded is no longer useful to the masses and on the verge of extinction, they impose it on the masses as their true language. Dnyaneshwar is laughing in his samadhi here.<br /><br />First the upper classes used Sanskrit to hoard power, now use to regain power. Indian history is peppered with the persecution of great people for touching that holy cow Sanskrit without the “gate pass” of the Brahmin caste. When Brahmins held power, Sanskrit was hoarded and denied to the masses. The Brahmins teaching Sanskrit in the Pune Hindu college threatened to resign rather than teach Sanskrit to non-Brahmins. Now that Sanskrit is left hollow and of little practical use, its utility must be revived if the Brahmin is to be restored to supremacy. Those forbidden to use it will now be the slave labour engaged to revive it. Far from refusing it to non-Brahmins, it will now be repackaged as the true heritage of those it was denied to.<br /><br />In my view, imposing an alien language on the people is a sign of colonization. Sanskrit is no longer forbidden to non-Brahmins. However, it also is no longer of interest to enough people for the removal of the ban to mean anything. Without popular adoption, Sanskrit will remain the language of mumbo jumbo rituals and the Brahmins who claim the knowledge of it will be left with a white elephant. So now the supremacists want to impose Sanskrit to restore wealth to their intellectual hoard, while people are led to believe that secrets of modern knowledge are hidden in the vedas. The masses that the language of snobs suppressed by denying Sanskrit will be the slave labour to restore it to its supremacist glory. Free! Free! Free!<br /><br />The RSS are trying to invade India with a cold war on the majority of Indians who were never native adopters of Sanskrit. Nor were their ancestors. A history is being invented so that a country may be appropriated by citing it.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-89240731776315215682019-09-22T14:36:33.321-07:002019-09-22T14:36:33.321-07:00Dubious "Origins" of Bharat
Is the Hind...Dubious "Origins" of Bharat<br /><br />Is the Hindoo Land,which is "named as Bharat", so named ,after "Bharat the son of Dushyant "and the "son of a harlot" ? Who knows ? Let us Cogitate ! "Sum Fallor Est "- For Augustine,the Manichean,from Tagaste. dindooohindoo<br /><br />As per Dushyant, the father of Bharat - "Bharat's mother (Shakuntala) was a Harlot" , his "grandmother (Menaka) was a harlot" and his "Nana (Vishwamitra) was a pimp".(This is in the vedas and the Puranas)<br /><br />Bharat's Mother was "abandoned at birth" (just like Sita), by "both her parents"and Bharat the Limpet, was "abandoned by his father" for the 1st 15 years, of his life (This is in the vedas and the Puranas)<br /><br />Bharat,son of Dushyant,had "a peculiar problem" - he had "3 wives and nine sons" - and "none of the nine", looked like him ! Mamma Mia ! So they were all killed ! "El Classico Limpdickio" !<br /><br />So what did Bharat the Limpet do ? He "adopted" a "Limpet", called "Bharadwaj" ! Who was this clown ?<br /><br />One Day, Mr.Brahaspati, "copulated with the pregnant wife" (named as Mamta) of his limpet brother.<br /><br />It is said that , the boy in the womb said - "dont copulate with Mommy Mamta" - but Mr.Brhaspati ,"did not give a cahoot".<br /><br />The son ,so born, was "discarded at birth" and adopted by Mr. Bharat<br /><br />What is the problem with Hindooism ?samir sardananoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-78092205717300100452019-04-06T20:24:25.908-07:002019-04-06T20:24:25.908-07:00#Modi's Global Danger: "Akhand Bharat&quo...#Modi's Global Danger: "Akhand Bharat" is #Nazi #Germany's "Lebensraum" of The 21st Century. #Hindutva #India #BJP #Hitler https://eurasiafuture.com/2019/04/06/modis-global-danger-akhand-bharat-is-the-lebensraum-of-the-21st-century/ via @eurasia_future<br /><br />The fact of the matter is that not every post-colonial leader harbours blood-soaked expansionist ambitions against neighbouring post-colonial states – but Modi does. Not every post-colonial leader rules on the basis of promulgating sectarian hatred against minorities – but Modi does. Furthermore, whilst empires like that of Britain sought to divide and rule for the purposes of securing material gain, Modi’s BJP is governed by a principle which seeks something far beyond divide and rule. The end-goal of the Hindutva philosophy to which Modi subscribes is not to divide and rule but to divide and eliminate. In this sense, Hindutva + political power is far more dangerous than was a British Empire whose violence was motivated by avarice, rather than conducted as an end in itself.<br /><br />Long before the Lahore Resolution of 1940 and prior to Choudhary Rahmat Ali’s Pakistan Declaration, the political so-called philosophy of Hindutva was born. Hindutva’s founding father Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is a man whose shrines Narendra Modi has visited many times. Savarkar was also a man who argued for the use of rape against Muslims and other minorities as a “legitimate” political tool. But while many throughout the world are familiar with those who committed atrocities on behalf of the British Empire, including in instances such as the Amritsar Massacre, few are aware that the Hindutva call for the British to de-colonise India was not a righteous one, but instead was a call to replace British rule with something far worse.<br /><br />Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and his Hindutva brethren wanted Britain to leave so that the multicultural land that Britain ruled with an increasingly iron fist, could be transformed into a land where Hindu supremacy would be enshrined into the law of a modern state. As such, Savarkar opposed both the Quit India movement and later the partition of India. He did so however, not because he believed in a genuine multicultural democracy but because he believed in the opposite. The Hindutva political programme advocates for Hindu supremacist rule over not just the borders of modern India, but over the modern territory of Pakistan, Bangladesh and according to many Hindutva agitators, also Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, parts of Myanmar, and parts of China. This envisaged Hindutva empire known as Akhand Bharat, continues to be the default position of the Hindutva extremists of the RSS para-military group and its political wing, BJP.<br /><br />Crucially, far from seeking to live harmoniously in a super-state, Savarkar and his comrades sought to subjugate and moreover eliminate non-Hindus based on the theory that Muslims and other minority religious groups represent an alien force living on supposedly pure Hindu lands. To bolster his fake view of history, Savarkar openly praised the fascist policies of Adolf Hitler who sought to cleanse Europe of supposed alien elements. He likewise praised Zionist leaders who believed were carrying out a unique duty to “reclaim” Palestine from “invaders”.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-59211136486010659152018-06-01T20:45:30.807-07:002018-06-01T20:45:30.807-07:00US Asia Study India Pakistan Summer 1999 (Indian-A...US Asia Study India Pakistan Summer 1999 (Indian-Americans Ashley Tellis and Rajan Menon along with RAND Corp contributed to it)<br /><br />Page 77 Pakistan Near Collapse, India broad progress, <br /><br />Page 78 India-Pakistan War 2012<br /><br />Page 83 Anarchy in Pakistan, Pakistan accedes incrementally to India, Emergence of Indian Confederation as Regional Hegemon<br /><br /> 2015-18 Afghanistan Disintegrates, India <br /><br />Page 85 Pakistan Disappears, South Asian Superstate (Akhand Bharat) Emerges, India-Iran Axis Emerges With Gulf Orientation<br /><br /><br />https://archive.org/stream/UnderSecretaryofDefenseUSDPolicy1999SummerStudyFinalReportASIA2025/Under%20Secretary%20of%20Defense%20USDPolicy%201999%20Summer%20Study%20Final%20Report%20ASIA%202025#page/n75/mode/2up<br /><br /><br />In his self-propelled enthusiasm, Durrani even proposes a confederation between the two countries – a fanciful prospect that Dulat is even reluctant to admire. I found interesting similarities between Durrani’s vision of Akhand Bharat and a US-funded official study about the future of South Asia. The study, Asia 2025, conducted by the US Undersecretary of Defence (Policy) in 1999, envisaged India taking over Pakistan after the US neutralizes Pakistani nuclear weapons to avoid a nuclear war following deadly ‘terrorist incursion’ from Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) into the Indian side of the territory. As Pakistan loses control of the situation, it fails to respond to the Indian calls to reign in the militants, and as a result, India moves into AJK. According to the study, India also launches an unsuccessful conventional strike on Pakistani nuclear arsenal, prompting Pakistan to launch nuclear strikes against Indian forces along their common border. The US threatens China to keep away from the theatre of war and attacks and destroys the remainder of the Pakistani nuclear forces leading to total anarchy. In the American imagination, Pakistan disappears by 2020, and the Indian confederation emerges as a regional super state. In the meantime, Afghanistan is also dismembered and annexed by the neighbour states – Iran, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – per their ethnic proximity. In the end, India and Iran emerge as great powers and become allies of the US willing “to participate in combined peace operations with the US” and also as a countervailing force against China.<br /><br /><br />https://countercurrents.org/2018/05/30/spy-chronicles-a-one-sided-narrative/ <br /><br /><br /><br />https://books.google.com/books?id=-KWU0bBpsbQC&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=1999+US+study+Asia+2025+India&source=bl&ots=kTuNSdMd4R&sig=iy_IamlbXmOsaA6FjJj8TWhme9U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAxanIgrTbAhWHFHwKHRkyA90Q6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=1999%20US%20study%20Asia%202025%20India&f=false<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-29209692002944368682017-12-31T08:43:16.577-08:002017-12-31T08:43:16.577-08:00#Islamophobia, #casteism characterize #Hindu comic...#Islamophobia, #casteism characterize #Hindu comics Amar Chitra Katha. #BJP #Modi #Hinduism<br /><br />https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/12/the-comics-that-redefined-hinduism/539838/<br /><br />since its debut in 1967, ACK has also helped supply impressionable generations of middle-class children a vision of “immortal” Indian identity wedded to prejudiced norms. ACK’s writing and illustrative team (led by Pai as the primary “storyteller”) constructed a legendary past for India by tying masculinity, Hinduism, fair skin, and high caste to authority, excellence, and virtue. On top of that, his comics often erased non-Hindu subjects from India’s historic and religious fabric. Consequently, ACK reinforced many of the most problematic tenets of Hindu nationalism—tenets that partially drive the platform of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, currently under fire domestically and internationally for policies and rhetoric targeting religious minorities and lower castes.<br /><br />Yet millions of children—myself included—revered “Uncle Pai” for creating a popular avenue to an Indian heritage, however limited. Like many other Indian diaspora kids, my mother brought her own collection when she immigrated to the United States as a 9-year-old in 1973. My family had built a library of some 90 issues by the time I began to read them, tattered from decades of swapping between cousins. When I was a boy growing up in upstate New York, my parents had no Indian friends or nearby relatives. We only spoke in English and ate burritos more often than dal bhat. <br /><br />The heroes of ACK became my superheroes long before I discovered Spider-Man or the Flash. They also became my first window into a culture I barely knew. I didn’t care that the protagonists I was reading about were drawn with white skin. I was unaware of the broader, ongoing effort by Hindu nationalists to define a doctrine devaluing lower castes, women, tribal populations, and religious minorities. I didn’t understand how ideals of obedience to authority—something the comics taught—can feed systemic inequality. I was just reading about heroes who made me feel stronger than I was, and who would teach me, I believed, how to be Indian.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />ACK defines Indian identity via stories—which naturally appealed to a bookish child like me who constantly escaped into the worlds of Philip Pullman, Garth Nix, and C.S. Lewis. Most histories in the comics feature virtuous Hindus who fight against evil rulers, an encroaching Muslim horde, or arrogant British imperialists. The religious stories are drawn from (usually Hindu) epics, sacred texts, and folktales, and they frequently weave the same gods and heroes among minor vignettes and massive story arcs. Though many ACK issues could stand alone, roughly 30 pages at a time the series constructed a limited and tonally consistent India sanitized through a distinctively Hindu lens.<br /><br />While many scholars reject the notion of a single Hindu doctrine, they have some opponents. In 2008, Hindu nationalist students at Delhi University protested the inclusion of A.K. Ramanujan’s landmark essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas” in the history syllabus. The protestors alleged that it demeaned Hinduism to imply nonclassical versions of the epic were equally legitimate. Under a renewed wave of dissent in 2011, the university dropped the essay from the syllabus.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-45162316446563741742017-12-10T16:24:20.587-08:002017-12-10T16:24:20.587-08:00Geopolitically, the (Nepal) elections also reveal ...Geopolitically, the (Nepal) elections also reveal to what extent China will emerge as a viable alternative to India in Nepal's foreign policy. Nepal, sandwiched as it is between the nuclear rivals, is the quintessential buffer state. Although India has long been the dominant actor in Nepalese foreign policy, the country faced a tipping point during the 2015 blockade at the India-Nepal border. The nearly five-month ordeal exposed Nepal's almost singular economic dependence on trade routes crossing through India and gave the government an incentive to diversify its relations through closer ties with China. In addition, the blockade caused many of the ruling elite in Kathmandu to cast a suspicious eye toward India, believing that the government in New Delhi tacitly supported the blockade.<br />Although none of the parties explicitly aligned themselves with India or China during the campaign, clear preferences along party lines emerged in rhetoric and in the minds of voters. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's ruling Nepali Congress party is generally seen to be pro-India, while the recently stitched-together Left Alliance between the country's two main communist parties is seen as pro-China. Left Alliance leader and former Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli also suggested he would renegotiate treaties with India and try to forge closer ties with China if elected. Going forward, the election winner will be able to draw the country closer to India or China through development deals. For example, Dueba's administration recently revoked a contract for a hydroelectricity project held by a Chinese firm, with rumors suggesting it will be awarded to an Indian firm.<br /><br />The elections mark a critical phase in Nepal's transition to democracy, though the country has a long way to go as it embarks on the arduous task of administering a new political system. One thing, however, is certain: The rivalry between India and China for influence in Nepal will only ramp up. <br /><br />https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/nepal-new-elections-mark-new-directionRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-18667087855212328952017-08-17T09:36:09.902-07:002017-08-17T09:36:09.902-07:00In the version of history found in #India's ne...In the version of history found in #India's new textbooks, #China lost 1962 and #Gandhi wasn't murdered. #BJP Quartz<br /><br />https://qz.com/1054692/in-the-version-of-history-found-in-indias-new-textbooks-china-lost-1962-and-gandhi-wasnt-murdered/<br /><br />Long before the terms post-truth and alt-facts gained currency in the west, Indians were getting mass mails and text messages that often mixed myth with half-truths to glorify their past. It could be something as simple and patently false as the United Nations declaring India’s national anthem as the world’s best. Or bizarre achievements of ancient Indians.<br />Over the past few years, such trickery gained political legitimacy as senior leaders indulged in it using photoshopped images and administrative claims.<br />Now, with the full blessings of the powers that be, the phenomenon is seeping into Indian school textbooks, especially those used to teach history. For long a hotly-contested field among ideological rivals of the left, right, and centre of Indian politics, these textbooks have begun to peddle outright lies.<br />It may be still a trickle, but here is a glimpse of the false history that millions of Indian school students will be learning now on.<br />The 1962 war<br /><br />In the second half of 1962, a brief war with China along the Himalayas left India with a bloody nose. Despite individual acts of valour, India lost 4,000 soldiers. Though the country amply regained its military standing in subsequent standoffs with China, 1962 left a deep scar on the national psyche—a scar it has tried to efface ever since.<br />A section of Indians may have finally found a solution: Just lie.<br />A Sanskrit-language textbook meant for Class 8 students in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh (MP) now says India won the war. “What famously came to be known as Sino-India war of 1962 was won by India against China,” The Times of India newspaper quoted the book, Sukritika, volume-3, on Aug. 10.<br />Published by the Lucknow-based Kriti Prakashan, the textbook is being used in several MP schools affiliated to the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) of the government of India. The state itself is ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to which Indian prime minister Narendra Modi belongs.<br />Defeating the great Mughals<br /><br />The Mughals have always been a thorn in the side of India’s Hindu extremists. The dynasty, which ruled a major part of India between 1526 and 1857, is viewed as the symbol of “Hindu slavery” and Islamic overlordship. This despite the fact that most of these monarchs were motivated by temporal interests rather than religious ones.<br />So anything or anyone that stands up to Mughal power naturally becomes a figurehead for Hindutva, or Hindu nationalists. This includes Maratha king Shivaji Bhonsle, better known as Chhatrapati Shivaji, and Lachit Borphukan, a commander of the Assam kings of India’s northeast. The multi-religious nature of their warring armies is but a footnote almost always.<br />One of the most famous symbols of such resistance was Pratap Singh, a Rajput chieftain from the desert region of India’s west. Popularly referred to as Maharana Pratap, this king was a contemporary of the greatest of Mughal emperors, Akbar. The two were at loggerheads as the Pratap refused to become Akbar’s vassal even as other Rajput princes did.<br />Following eight failed diplomatic missions, their two forces met in 1576 at the battle of Haldighati in present day Rajasthan. The superior Mughal military roundly defeated the Rajput forces but the legends of Maharana Pratap and the Haldighati battle lived on.<br />Now for the twist: The Rajasthan government wants us to believe it was Maharana Pratap who won that battle.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-78188769343291117122017-07-03T10:28:26.520-07:002017-07-03T10:28:26.520-07:00#Muslim #Mosque Shown As Noise Pollutant In #India...#Muslim #Mosque Shown As Noise Pollutant In #India's Class 6 Textbook. Class 9 Textbook Refers to Jesus as "Demon".<br /><br />http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/mosque-in-class-6-textbook-shown-as-noise-pollutant-sparks-controversy-1719533?site=full<br /><br />A science textbook prescribed for Class 6 in certain schools under ICSE (Indian Certificate of Secondary Education) board has identified a "mosque" as a source of noise pollution, sparking a row.<br /><br />An illustration on the chapter on pollution shows a train, car, plane and a mosque with symbols depicting loud sound. A man in the foreground is seen grimacing and covering his ears.<br /><br />The ICSE says the board did not publish or prescribe these textbooks, and it is up to the schools to deal with the issue. "If any book with objectionable content is being taught at certain schools, it is for schools and publisher to ensure such a thing does not happen," news agency Press Trust of India quoted Gerry Arathoon, chief executive and secretary of the Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations, as saying.<br /><br />After social media users launched an online petition, demanding the book be withdrawn, the publisher acknowledged the mistake and apologised. He has also assured that the illustration will be removed in subsequent editions.<br /><br /><br />Over the last few months, content considered objectionable made its way to several textbooks, raising concerns about what students are being exposed to. Last month, controversy started after a Class 9 Hindi textbook was found to refer to Jesus Christ as a demon.<br /><br />In April, a Class 12 textbook on physical education suggested feminine proportions of 36-24-36 as being ideal. A Class 4 Environmental Studies textbook, while educating students on the importance of breathing, gave a practical example that shows how children can suffocate a cat to death. Another book said meat-eaters cheat, lie and commit sex crimes.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-5514512959917278892017-06-03T11:17:10.982-07:002017-06-03T11:17:10.982-07:00International publishers forced to re-write approa...International publishers forced to re-write approach in India<br /><br />Copyright infringement and mercurial regulation prove hurdles to lucrative market<br /><br />https://www.ft.com/content/005a968c-4207-11e7-9d56-25f963e998b2<br /><br /><br />Dharam Pal Singh Bisht stoops to pick up a fresh stack of hot paper from the out tray of his photocopy machine and hands it to a student, who gives him Rs50 — less than $1 — for 100 pages of material. <br /><br />With this transaction and hundreds like it every day, Mr Bisht has single-handedly defeated three international publishers, slashed costs for students at Delhi University, and threatened an entire industry.<br /><br />Mr Bisht runs Delhi University’s photocopy shop, a crowded room crammed with photocopiers and computers where students queue to get their entire course material copied for a fraction of what it would cost to buy the books.<br /><br />Following the decision in March of three international publishing companies — Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Taylor & Francis — to drop their legal case against Mr Bisht, his business is functioning with impunity.<br /><br />The trio claimed his photocopying business undermined their intellectual property, but the Delhi high court ruled that it was not in students’ interests to shut him down. The companies appealed but later dropped the case, citing “longer-term interests”. Executives say they had given up hope of winning, but believed they could still make money in the country long term.<br /><br /><br /><br />India is potentially very lucrative for English-language academic publishers. These include privately owned companies such as McGraw Hill Education of the US and Macmillan Education, which is owned by the German company Springer Nature, as well as publicly listed ones such as Informa — through its Taylor & Francis division — and Pearson.<br /><br />The country is the sixth-biggest publishing market in the world, and the second-largest English-language market behind the US.<br /><br />India has 25m students in 3m schools and, as of 2012-13, 700 universities and 35,000 affiliated colleges. That market is growing quickly, with the population increasing at 1.2 per cent per year and economic output by about 7 per cent annually.<br /><br /><br /><br />Though the companies do not declare how much they make in India, figures from Nielsen, the research group show, that overall revenues in the academic publishing sector have rocketed. <br /><br />In 2013-14, about $2.9bn worth of academic books for schoolchildren were sold in India, and $860m worth of higher education books. By 2015-16, these figures had risen to $4.1bn and $1.2bn, respectively.<br /><br />“Every publisher wants to come to India; there is a huge opportunity here,” says Vikrant Mathur, director at Nielsen. <br /><br />But while the opportunities are significant, so are the hurdles — none more so than the perception of weak intellectual property protection.<br /><br />----<br />“Access to knowledge will be reduced if this ceases to happen, which we believe is detrimental to the interests of India’s knowledge economy.”<br /><br />Suprahmanian Seshadri, managing partner at the publishing consultancy Overleaf and a former executive at Oxford University Press, says: “For the publishers, this is already a low-margin market, and it is going to become increasingly difficult for them to make money.”<br /><br /><br />According to Mr Seshadri, international publishers can expect to make 45 to 50 per cent gross profit margins in India, which translates into 10 per cent earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. That compares with gross margins of 65 to 75 per cent and ebitda of 15 to 20 per cent in more developed markets such as the UK.<br /><br />Copyright infringement is not the only hurdle in India. Academic publishers saw their market abruptly shrink by about 18,000 schools in February when the government decided all schools affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education should use only state-published textbooks.<br /><br />Meanwhile, ministers have also decided to impose a 12 per cent tax on paper as part of the new national goods and services tax due to come into force on July 1.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-36182239578628593392017-02-10T21:29:05.745-08:002017-02-10T21:29:05.745-08:00This #Indian #textbook taught children how to suff...This #Indian #textbook taught children how to suffocate kittens. #India #BJP #Modi<br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/02/10/this-indian-textbook-taught-children-how-to-suffocate-kittens/?utm_term=.11f49ed6dd3e<br /><br />The experiment that was described in the Indian textbook was apparently supposed to help schoolchildren learn that living, breathing things need air.<br /><br />“No living thing can live without air for more than a few minutes,” it reads, according to a photo of the page, which was posted to Twitter and published by news outlets in India. “You can do an experiment. Take two wooden boxes. Make holes on the lid of one box. Put a small kitten in each box. Close the boxes. After some time open the boxes. What do you see? The kitten inside the box without the holes has died.”<br /><br />Distribution of the environmental science book, titled “Our Green World,” has stopped, according to Indian Express.<br /><br />“A parent had called us a couple of months ago and asked us to remove the text from the book because it was harmful for children,” Parvesh Gupta of PP Publications, the publisher, told the news outlet. “We recalled books from our distribution channel and will come out with a revised book next year.”<br /><br />Arpan Sharma, director of the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations, a collective of animal rights groups in India, said in a statement provided to The Washington Post that the group was “shocked” when it learned of the matter and “swiftly” took it up with the publisher.<br /><br />“We reached out to them and asked them to remove the illegal (and unethical) content advocating the cruel experiment on kittens, along with a few other points,” Sharma said in the statement. “The publisher has responded back, committing to withdrawal of the book from all the distributors and refraining for selling the existing stock.”<br /><br />The publisher also told the organization that it wouldn’t reprint the content in any of their books and would “be mindful of things being published about animals,” the statement said.<br /><br />“The issue is not only that the book advocated a cruel act, it is also to underline that animals are not ‘things’ for us to use,” the statement noted. “Instead, they are thinking, feeling individuals just like you and me and the children reading the textbook.”<br /><br />The text was being used for fourth grade.<br /><br />In its report on the controversial description of the experiment, the Associated Press provided a little background on how textbooks are approved in India, writing:<br /><br />Although India’s education ministry has advisory panels and institutes that approve of middle and high school textbooks, elementary schools can choose and prescribe their own textbooks.<br /><br />FIAPO spokesperson Vidhi Malla told The Post in an email that it is hard to locate the schools that might be using the book, but said the organization did know that about 1,100 copies of it had been sold since April 2016. The issue, Malla noted, isn’t whether the experiment was actually carried out.<br /><br />“We are concerned that the message this sends out is very negative — that it is okay for animals to be treated as objects, including for them to be killed for testing a theory etc.,” Malla said in an email. “As the voice of the animal rights movement in India, it is our duty to ensure that animals are viewed as sentient individuals and not as things.”<br /><br />PP Publications did not immediately respond to an email from The Post, but FIAPO did provide a copy of a letter from the company, which laid out some of its assurances in the wake of the experiment.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-26437415981381925732017-02-09T19:23:40.352-08:002017-02-09T19:23:40.352-08:00Analysis: #India, #Pakistan in race to destroy you...Analysis: #India, #Pakistan in race to destroy young minds with false #history #textbooks<br />http://www.dawn.com/news/1313938/analysis-india-pakistan-in-race-to-destroy-young-minds<br /><br />Consider the latest attempt at subversion from India. According to reports on Thursday, ministers in the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled (BJP) Rajasthan state have proposed that the outcome should be rewritten in the mediaeval battle of Haldighati that was fought between the forces of Mughal emperor Akbar and Rajput chieftain Rana Pratap.<br /><br />It ended in a stalemate with the latter retreating deeper into Mewar, but Hindutva historians are determined to show him as the clear victor.<br /><br />It is less widely admitted that his Rajput General Mansingh led Akbar’s 1576 campaign.<br /><br />If Hindutva historians have their way they would project even Alexander of Macedonia as an anti-India Muslim marauder.<br /><br />Cinematic versions of Alexander’s war with King Porus have already attempted this in a way, showing the foreigner speaking in Urdu, implying a Muslim language, while the vanquished Indian ruler spoke chaste Hindi, erroneously projected as a Hindu language.<br /><br />It would be equally embarrassing for Hindutva historians to admit that Maratha king Shivaji communicated with his arch-foe Emperor Aurangzeb in Persian while conducting his Maratha empire’s administration in Modhi, a less discussed precursor of Marathi.<br /><br />It is routine among Hindutva historians to claim mediaeval monuments as Hindu structures grabbed by Muslims. According to P.N. Oak, an early myth-maker in this genre, Taj Mahal was a Hindu palace as was the Asafi Imambarha of Lucknow.<br /><br />According to Oak, Christianity is Chrisn-nity, an ascription to Lord Krishna. “Christianity is in fact a popular variation of the Hindu, Sanscrit [sic] term Chrisn-neety, i.e. the way of life preached, advocated or exemplified by the Hindu incarnation Lord Chrisn, spelled variously as Crsn, Krsn, Krishn, Chrisn, Crisna or Krisna also,” Mr Oak wrote.<br /><br />To keep the spirit from flagging, even Wagner’s theory of continental drift was harnessed to claim that light-skinned Indians originally came from the border of Bihar and Orissa.<br /><br />Later, the border drifted away to form the North Pole, thus implying that Caucasian and Central Asian genes travelled from India to their current abode, not the other way round.<br /><br />As in India, rigging the chronology of history has been honed into a craft in Pakistan too, and it is difficult to say who between the two is better in conjuring myths that exhort young minds to violence.<br /><br />A recent study in Pakistan found that the country’s public school textbooks negatively portrayed religious minorities, including Hindus, Christians and Ahmadis, as “untrustworthy, religiously inferior, and ideologically scheming”.<br /><br />The report, “Teaching Intolerance in Pakistan: Religious Bias in Public School Textbooks”, analysed 78 textbooks from all four provinces covering grades five through 10.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-85845191757143920762017-01-16T10:16:13.369-08:002017-01-16T10:16:13.369-08:00#American Scholar Debunks Myth of #India’s Medieva...#American Scholar Debunks Myth of #India’s Medieval #Muslim 'Villains' like Aurangzeb. #BJP #Modi https://thewire.in/18919/high-time-discarded-pernicious-myth-indias-medieval-muslim-villains/ … via @thewire_in<br /><br /><br />by Audrey Truschke<br /><br />Going back more than a millennium earlier, Hindu rulers were the first to come up with the idea of sacking one another’s temples, before Muslims even entered the Indian subcontinent. But one hears little about these “historical wrongs”<br /><br /><br />Whatever happened in the past, religious-based violence is real in modern India, and Muslims are frequent targets. It is thus disingenuous to single out Indian Muslim rulers for condemnation without owning up to the modern valences of that focus.<br /><br /><br />The idea that medieval Muslim rulers wreaked havoc on Indian culture and society – deliberately and due to religious bigotry – is a ubiquitous notion in 21st century India. Few people seem to realise that the historical basis for such claims is shaky to non-existent. Fewer openly recognise the threat that such a misreading of the past poses for modern India.<br /><br />Aurangzeb, the sixth Mughal Emperor (r. 1658-1707), is perhaps the most despised of India’s medieval Muslim rulers. People cite various alleged “facts” about Aurangzeb’s reign to support their contemporary condemnation, few of which are true. For instance, contrary to widespread belief, Aurangzeb did not destroy thousands of Hindu temples. He did not perpetrate anything approximating a genocide of Hindus. He did not instigate a large-scale conversion program that offered millions of Hindu the choice of Islam or the sword.<br /><br />In short, Aurangzeb was not the Hindu-hating, Islamist tyrant that many today imagine him to have been. And yet the myth of malevolent Aurangzeb is seemingly irresistible and has captured politicians, everyday people, and even scholars in its net. The damage that this idea has done is significant. It is time to break this mythologized caricature of the past wide open and lay bare the modern biases, politics, and interests that have fuelled such a misguided interpretation of India’s Islamic history.<br /><br />Aurangzeb, for instance, acted in ways that are rarely adequately explained by religious bigotry. For example, he ordered the destruction of select Hindu temples (perhaps a few dozen, at most, over his 49-year reign) but not because he despised Hindus. Rather, Aurangzeb generally ordered temples demolished in the aftermath of political rebellions or to forestall future uprisings. Highlighting this causality does not serve to vindicate Aurangzeb or justify his actions but rather to explain why he targeted select temples while leaving most untouched. Moreover, Aurangzeb also issued numerous orders protecting Hindu temples and communities from harassment, and he incorporated more Hindus into his imperial administration than any Mughal ruler before him by a fair margin. These actions collectively make sense if we understand Aurangzeb’s actions within the context of state interests, rather than by ascribing suspiciously modern-sounding religious biases to him.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-64500971352447810482016-12-29T22:59:54.066-08:002016-12-29T22:59:54.066-08:00Aurangzeb as never seen or believed!
Title: Shahen...Aurangzeb as never seen or believed!<br />Title: Shahenshah- The Life of Aurangzeb<br />♦ Author: N.S. Inamdar/Vikrant Pande (translator)<br /><br />http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/books/features/aurangzeb-as-never-seen-or-believed/articleshow/52952504.cms<br /><br /><br />He tells us his interest in Aurangzeb arose when, while touring Maharashtra, he "wondered how the Mughal Emperor could spend twenty-five years of his life in tents, camps and and living a life of hardship along with thousands of soldiers.... it triggered in me a sense of curiousity to explore the subject further".<br />And then Inamdar came across a prominent temple whose priest told him that it had come down in his family that not only had Aurangzeb left it intact, but also sanctioned an annual donation for its upkeep. Further diminishing the idea of a puritanical figure, he found old manuscripts with love sonnets penned by the emperor.<br />Consequently, his account presents Aurangzeb in all his colours - some never seen or even believed possible. While it begins with him as a prince smarting over snubs by his father, family and court, and worse by secretly traitorous aides (and patiently biding his time), it also shows him so besotted by a concubine that he exercises his imperial prerogative to get her for himself and neglects his work, wives and even prayers in her company.<br />There is, as mentioned, the doting husband and father but stern and principled ruler, a man of strict faith but canny and pragmatic statesman and effective diplomat, who had no qualms in ordering executions of 'heretics' like Sarmad and 'rebels' like Guru Tegh Bahadur but also capable of gauging the real intentions of his own religious hardliners.<br />Though a considerable part is devoted to Aurangzeb's own eventful family life, the account gives due emphasis to relations with the Rajputs and the Marathas - the ceaseless pursuit of Shivaji but then an indication of arriving at some modus vivendi, the torture and killing of Sambhaji after some initial patronage, but also careful and considerate guardianship of his widow and son Shahu.<br /><br />Detractors say he overthrew his father Shah Jahan and imprisoned him till death. But, leaving alone his father and grandfather who unsuccessfully attempted the same, so did Ajatashatru of Magadh. He killed his brothers in his path to the throne - so did Ashoka. He destroyed other religions' places of worship - so did the Chalukyas, and the Gaud and the Sena dynasties in Bengal.<br />What Inamdar's work shows us that we cannot - must not - assess historical figures by norms of our own times, and selective approaches. Aurangzeb was the product of his time and its circumstances and should be viewed in this perspective.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-33703349772081882732016-10-22T19:40:06.643-07:002016-10-22T19:40:06.643-07:00#Burma faces ethnic violence. Has Aung San Suu Kyi...#Burma faces ethnic violence. Has Aung San Suu Kyi ignored the plight of her people? #Rohingya #Myanmar #Muslims<br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/burmas-aung-san-suu-kyi-insists-she-needs-time-to-deal-with-worsening-ethnic-violence/2016/10/19/980f9210-956a-11e6-9cae-2a3574e296a6_story.html?postshare=6981477185433407&tid=ss_fb<br /><br /><br />More than 120,000 are still living in fetid camps in Rakhine state after violent clashes with their Buddhist neighbors in 2012. They have little access to health care and 30,000 of their children do not have proper schools, according to a U.N. report in June.<br /><br />The report cited a “pattern of gross human rights violations” against the Rohingya, acts that it said could rise to the level of “crimes against humanity” in a court of law.<br /><br />The government restarted a process of citizenship verification for the Rohingya in June, but many of the Rohingya refused to participate, Suu Kyi said. Human rights activists say they were suspicious that some kind of new card would mean a further erosion of their rights.<br /><br />“Things take time,” she said. “The situation in the Rakhine is a legacy of many, many decades of problems. It is not something that happened overnight. We’re not going to be able to resolve it overnight. It goes back even to the last century.”<br /><br />Suu Kyi told the U.N. investigator that the government would avoid using the term “Rohingya,” which many Burmese consider incendiary. Many Burmese call the Rohingya “Bengali,” a reference to the fact that some migrated from Bangladesh years earlier.<br /><br />“This is inflammatory,” Suu Kyi said. “We simply say Muslims of Rakhine state. Because this is just a factual description which nobody should object to. But of course, everybody objects because they want their old emotive terms to be used.”<br /><br />Suu Kyi brushed aside the frequent criticism that, as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, she has not done enough to speak out about the Rohingyas’ plight. She did not go near the camps on a campaign swing through the state last fall and spoke of the conflict only in the vaguest terms.<br /><br />“Well, I have spoken about it, but people don’t like the way I talk about it because I don’t take sides,” she said. “Nobody takes any account of that because that is not what they want to hear. They want me to make, you know, incendiary remarks, which I am not going to do. I’ve made it very clear that our work is not to condemn but to achieve reconciliation.”<br /><br />Richard Horsey, a longtime Burma analyst and adviser to the International Crisis Group, said that Suu Kyi had made strides in addressing the issue after her government took over, including the appointment of Annan. But the spate of violence may change that, he said.<br /><br />“These recent attacks have completely changed the landscape here and what’s possible to do right now,” Horsey said. “It has a huge potential to make the situation much, much worse and much harder to fix.”<br /><br />Suu Kyi, whose official title is state counselor, spoke at Burma’s embassy while on a trip to India this week. The country is familiar terrain for her, as she spent part of her high school and college years living in New Delhi while her mother was ambassador here.<br /><br />Suu Kyi, now 71, spent decades campaigning against the military dictatorship in her country, including a total of more than 15 years under house arrest. For her efforts, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.<br /><br />She was freed in 2010 shortly before the military generals began economic reforms that were supported by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration.<br /><br />Despite the resounding victory of her National League for Democracy in last November’s elections, Burma’s generals retain a tight grip on power, reserving 25 percent of the seats in the country’s parliament, which gives them veto power over any constitutional amendment. The military also appoints the key ministers in home affairs, border affairs and defense.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-15866022081772299852016-05-08T18:04:56.908-07:002016-05-08T18:04:56.908-07:00Cartographers beware: #India warns of $15 million ...Cartographers beware: #India warns of $15 million fine for maps it doesn't like. #Kashmir #Pakistan #China #Modi<br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/05/06/cartographers-beware-india-warns-of-15-million-fine-for-maps-it-doesnt-like/<br /><br />Let's start with a basic fact: India claims much more land than it controls.<br /><br />Thus, any map of India and its neighbors makes an inherently political statement based on how it depicts their borders. The issue is particularly thorny because the border disputes are with India's great rivals: Pakistan and China.<br /><br />On Thursday, a draft law reflecting India's sensitivity over maps was uploaded by the government online before being swiftly removed for reasons unknown. The draft law would define how India's international borders are drawn once and for all, and punish offenders with up to seven years in jail or fines ranging from $150,000 to $15 million. It would also require all individuals and companies producing maps in India, and all Indian citizens doing so globally, to procure a license from the government.<br /><br />Pakistan and India both claim jurisdiction over the entirety of Jammu and Kashmir, an area that spans fertile plains, lush foothills, towering Himalayan mountains and the alpine barrens of the Tibetan Plateau. It is also the theater of India and Pakistan's defining conflict, which has led to three wars and once brought the subcontinent surprisingly close to the verge of mutual nuclear annihilation. Both nations occupy parts of Kashmir and station hundreds of thousands of troops there, mostly along the incredibly tense Line of Control (LoC) that serves as the de facto border.<br /><br />China also claims — and controls — a sizable chunk of (what was once) Kashmir known as Aksai Chin, which it subsumed after handily defeating India in a 1962 war. The border there is slightly more definitive, which is reflected in the name India uses for it: the Line of Actual Control (LAC). China also claims almost all of another Indian state called Arunachal Pradesh, which stretches between Bhutan and Myanmar. China refers to it as "South Tibet." India administers the state, and Chinese incursions are very rare.<br /><br /><br />The map that India wants the world to see, of course, bestows it all these disputed regions. If it actually becomes law, it would certainly complicate the operations of technology companies that rely on maps, such as Google and Uber. Already, Google shows different borders to users in different countries. From the United States, India's disputed borders are shown on the website as dotted lines.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-5744340402145680312016-05-07T12:34:48.250-07:002016-05-07T12:34:48.250-07:00#Nepal cancels President visit as #India-#Nepal ti...#Nepal cancels President visit as #India-#Nepal ties sour. #Nepal recalls its Ambassador in #Delhi https://shar.es/1eKnY2 via @sharethis<br /><br /><br />In a move without parallel, the Nepal government had cancelled the trip of President Bidhya Devi Bhandari to India barely 72 hours before her departure for Delhi, without giving any reason. This was coupled by another act of vengeance, the recall of its ambassador, Deep Kumar Upadhyay in Delhi.<br />Both these acts came barely 24 hours after Prime Minister K P Oli defeated a move to unseat him from the post, under an initiative taken by the main opposition party, the Nepali Congress. The move was to have seen Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Chairman of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists and the second largest constituent in the cabinet, lead the new government.<br /><br />The move collapsed at the last minute after Dahal entered into a fresh deal extracting promises from Oli that he will withdraw all politically motivated cases pending against Maoist leaders and cadres during the decade-long insurgency dating back to 1996.<br />Oli reportedly believes that India was behind the move to topple him. The decision to scrap president’s visit to Delhi, along with the recall of Ambassador Upadhyay, clearly indicate that Oli is upset with India.<br />A seasoned Nepali diplomat, someone not enamoured of India and its role in Nepal, went to the extent of calling it an ‘unfriendly act’. Bhandari who became President a week after Oli, Chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), took over as the prime minister in October, belonged to the same faction of party, and apparently do not differ much in her views on India.<br />Bhandari’s proposed visit was being viewed as a move to explore traditional cordiality in bilateral relations that suffered a series of setbacks especially after India supported the Madhesi groups anti-constitution protests and the subsequent blockade for months beginning in September, csusing Nepal an acute shortage of essential goods and fuel.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-53201022360430719702016-05-06T09:44:49.168-07:002016-05-06T09:44:49.168-07:00If incorrect depictions of #India’s borders are a ...If incorrect depictions of #India’s borders are a crime, will #RSS be prosecuted for ‘Akhand Bharat’? http://scroll.in/article/807700/if-incorrect-depictions-of-indias-borders-are-a-crime-will-rss-be-prosecuted-for-akhand-bharat … via @scroll_in<br /><br />Comically muscular jingoism has been the one of things the Bharatiya Janata Party has delivered on strongly. Since it came to power, the party has targetted students from Hyderabad and Delhi, suggested that citizenship should be made contingent on sloganeering abilities and misinterpreted the history of freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. Friday morning bought the latest installment of the saga: a proposed law to punish incorrect depictions of India’s borders on a map with seven years in jail and a fine that must be equal to the annual income of a small Indian city: Rs 100 crore.<br /><br />The nub of the issue is that the government of India claims a lot more land than it actually holds. The Jammu and Kashmir that you see on India maps is a fine thing – but it doesn’t really exist on the ground. Pakistan controls large parts of the western half of Jammu and Kashmir and China, the Aksai Chin region in the north-east. If you actually show this ground situation on a map, though, you can be prosecuted by the government under a 1961 act that now carries a jail term of six months. If Narendra Modi has his way, that will become seven years.<br /><br />What about Akhand Bharat?<br /><br />The interesting thing here is that there is one rather powerful group for which incorrectly depicting India’s borders is almost at article of faith. The Sangh Parivar believes in what is know as Akhand Bharat or undivided India. At its smallest, Akhand Bharat includes present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh: basically, the dominions of the British Raj. Other versions also have Afghanistan, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and sometimes even Tibet sidling into the map.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-26757160957033251602016-04-04T08:10:05.261-07:002016-04-04T08:10:05.261-07:00Nobody wants to erase #India from textbooks. Yet a...Nobody wants to erase #India from textbooks. Yet another #California textbook controversy by #Hindutuva groups http://fw.to/gEgxj8O <br /><br />Is India being "erased" from California's history books? No, it's not.<br /><br />But some 22,000 people have signed a petition to prevent the state from changing "India" to "South Asia" in its social studies curricula. A group of academics from schools including the University of San Francisco and Columbia University, and Hindu groups like the Hindu American Foundation, have signed on.<br /><br />The State Board of Education is currently updating California's history and social science curriculum, and the petition is reacting to submissions in the public comment process that would replace some instances of "India" with "South Asia" and address Hinduism differently.<br /><br />That request spurred a backlash from Hindu academics, leading to the petition that reads: "School students in California will be forced to learn that there was never an 'India' unless you act!"<br /><br />This is not what is happening. The group that originally suggested the changes calls itself the South Asia Faculty Textbook Committee and includes South Asian scholars from Stanford, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University and UCLA, among others.<br /><br />They do suggest that in some places "India" be replaced with "South Asia" because some of the area discussed currently belongs to Pakistan.<br /><br />April 2, 8:52 a.m.: An earlier version of this article indicated the letter was also a response to the petition. It was not; the petition began after the letter was written.<br /><br />------------<br /><br />"We wish to clarify that while 'Ancient India' is the accepted usage among Indologists, in other fields, pre-modern South Asia is the common term of reference. Since there is no standardized usage across fields, it is difficult for us to recommend a single standard term for use in the curriculum framework. After careful review, we have settled on a context dependent approach for the use of the terms, 'Ancient India,’ ‘India,’ ‘Indian subcontinent’ and ‘South Asia,’ as we explain in the edits. The use of terms like 'Ancient India' and 'India' in the current version of the draft framework, particularly for grades 6 and 7 is at times misleading. Although 'Ancient India' is common in the source material, when discussing the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC), we believe it will cause less confusion to students to refer to the “Early Civilization of South Asia or “Ancient South Asia” because much of the Indus Valley is now in modern Pakistan. Conflating “Ancient India” with the modern nation-state of India deprives students from learning about the shared civilizational heritage of India and Pakistan."<br /><br />The California History-Social Science Project takes public comment into account as it amends the framework and presents it to the state Board of Education. The group did adopt many of the faculty textbook committee's recommendations, and the Board of Education is scheduled to review the changes in May.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-15495789313562683602016-03-02T08:24:48.302-08:002016-03-02T08:24:48.302-08:00Akhand bharat is the modernised name of ancient Bh...Akhand bharat is the modernised name of ancient Bharat ie jumboodweep comparing todays 13 nations which was divided furthur into 5 sub States. Jumboodweep was part of Aaryavart whose actual map is still unknown but clues from sanaatan dharma granths indicates it's expansions till today's Germany. Regarding Hindus, if you think that people where Hindus lived were said to be bharats part then you are wrong. There is no word like Hindu in any granths across the globe. It was given by foreigners on account of sindhu river heard wrongly by them as Hindu. There were no religions during integrated prospered Aaryavart empire. Only Aaryans and dravids existed. Later on as societies emerged leaders from different regions of Aaryavart considered their territories as separate nation and developed their own culture and way of worship to create theirs unique identity in Aaryavart which Islamist and Christians started calling as religion. Thus religions, cultures, languages and borders were born. This is what we sanaatis want back, vasudev kutumbakam, the world is my family, we want this Aaryavart back not in name religion but in name of unity and humanity as our holy culture.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14047355116253497299noreply@blogger.com