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Minorities under repeated threat

By Humra Quraishi. Dated: 7/1/2016 11:41:00 PM

Saffron footprint from J&K to Kolkatta

There's a sense of disbelief cum outrage at the PDP-BJP alliance for government formation in J&K. Nah, not just a marriage of convenience but I would label it to be a mismatched marriage that wouldn't last long. Perhaps, PDP has dug its own grave! Though there are hundreds of unmarked graves in the Valley but this one will be well marked. With this merger, PDP has taken one of those U- turns that the masses will find difficult to digest. No amount of explanations or those long and short speeches will settle creases or drown rebellious voices, within the PDP folds or out there.
Henceforth, you and I will find it impossible to believe any of those hollow promises laid out by political men and women. After all, till the last autumn, the PDP wallahs were pointing at all possible negatives embedded in those BJP knicker-wallahs, but now starts this partnership. Why this bizarre togetherness ? Perhaps, for funds flow from the Centre and for that supposed State-Centre rapport in the running of the so called governance in that State.
The top brass in the PDP have been short sighted and have bypassed the bigger issues. With that more than bruised the expectations of the electorate. I would call this merger to be a political blunder with long lasting consequences.
THIS LATEST SHOCKER FROM THE RSS -
In this day and age, everyday drags along outrageous utterances. The RSS seems short of ideas and with that their latest target is Mother Teresa. Questioning her selfless service … she had dedicated her entire life to serve the poor, the ailing, the dying.
Let me quote Khushwant Singh, who had interacted with Mother Teresa…
"I was asked by New York Times to do a profile of Mother Teresa for its magazine section.. I wrote to Mother Teresa seeking her permission to call on her. And having got it, spent three days with her, from early hours of the morning to late at night. Nothing in my long journalistic career has remained as sharply etched in my memory as those three days with her in Calcutta. In my little study in my villa in Kasauli, I have only two pictures of the people I admire most - Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa …
Before I met her face to face, I read Malcolm Muggeridge's book on Mother Teresa, Something Beautiful For God. Malcolm was a recent convert to Catholicism and prone to believe in miracles. He had gone to make a film on her for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).They first went to the Nirmal Hriday (Sacred Heart) Home for dying destitutes close to the Kalighat temple. The team took some shots of the building from outside and if its sunlit courtyard The camera crew was of the opinion that the interior was too dark and they had no artificial lights. However, since some footage was left they decided to use it for interior shots. When the film was developed the shots of the dormitories were found to be clearer than those taken in sunlight. The first thing I asked Mother Teresa was if this was true. She replied, ' But of course. Such things happen all the time.' And she added with increasing intensity of voice, 'Every day, every hour, every single minute, God manifests Himself in some miracle.' …She narrated other miracles of the days when her organization was little known and chronically short of cash, ' Money has never been much of a problem.', she told me, ' God gives through His people.' She told me that when she started her first school in the slums, she had no more than five rupees with her. But as soon as people came to know what she was doing, they brought money and other things …The first institution she took me to was Nirmal Hriday. It was in 1952 that the Calcutta Corporation had handed the building over to her. Orthodox Hindus were outraged. Four hundred Brahmin priests attached to the Kali temple demonstrated outside the building. 'One day I went out and spoke to them - if you want to kill me, kill me. But do not disturb the inmates. Let them die in peace. ' That silenced them. Then one of the priests staggered in. He was in an advanced stage of galloping phthisis …The nuns looked after him till he died. That changed the priests' attitude towards Mother Teresa. Later, one day, another priest entered the Home, prostrated himself at Mother Teresa's feet and said ' For thirty years I have served the Goddess Kali in her temple. Now the Goddess stands before me.'
Mother Teresa dropped me at the Dum Dum airport. As I was about to take leave of her she said 'So?' meaning whether I had anything else to ask. 'Tell me how can you touch people with loathsome diseases like leprosy and gangrene. Aren't you revolted by people's filthy with dysentery and cholera vomit? ' She replied, 'I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself: this is hungry Jesus. This one has gangrene, dysentery and cholera. I must wash him and tend to him.' "
THE BASIC TO PREVENTING THE SPREAD OF SWINE FLU
Don't want to write volumes on this but the government of the day can do one basic thing to halt the spread of Swine Flu - make usage of masks compulsory, definitely for those commuting by metros and trains and buses or flying from here to there. After all, the minute the mouth is covered there is a temporary halt in the spread of infections and more along the strain.
No declared emergency in this country but there seems an ongoing attack on the minority population. To scare, if not to kill. In the past one month there have been at least a dozen cases of Muslim men beaten and abused on mere suspicion of carrying or selling cow meat. The latest in this series took place last week in district Faridabad, on the very outskirts of New Delhi. This time the two young men were not just thrashed but forced to eat cow dung and drink cow urine! Mind you, this horrifying incident didn't take place in some jungle land but just kilometres away from the capital city.
This incident has also brought to the fore a strategy used by this establishment - appoint Muslim officers to portray that Muslims are not bypassed but quite obviously these officers are made to follow the dictates of the day. Writing this in the backdrop of the fact that the DIG of Faridabad district is a Muslim police officer - Hanif Qureshi.
WHY SHOULD PUBLICATIONS GET HOUNDED!
Today there are more than subtle moves to shut publications which dare publish harsh truths. In fact, this is what Zafarul Islam Khan, editor of the Delhi based English fortnightly, The Milli Gazette, has to say vis -a - vis the harassment he is facing. "During the 17 years of our existence, The Milli Gazette has faced many threats and challenges. I myself have received numerous death threats. MG's continued losses, dwindling subscriptions due to our own website and a disinterest by the community too have been our problems which forced us twice to think of closing down MG though on second and third thoughts we refrained from taking such a drastic step knowing very well that, however feeble, our community needs this voice in English more than at any time in the past and this voice mattered not only in India but across the world…Now, since March 12 this year, we are facing an existential threat from the Modi government following our publication of a report on discrimination against Muslims in the Ayush ministry recruitments based on an RTI reply which the said ministry denied. It could have sent a rejoinder or, at worst, could have complained to the concerned regulatory authority, the Press Council of India in case we refused to publish its rejoinder. We were all-along ready to publish a rejoinder, statement or clarification should the ministry send it to us. Instead, it chose to file a police complaint. As a result, the journalist (Pushp Sharma), who wrote that story, was mercilessly interrogated for days and later arrested and jailed for around two weeks. Now he is out on bail while the case takes its normal slow course in courts. Soon, on 21st April, the Press Council of India took suo motu cognizance and opened a case against The Milli Gazette. This action was unprecedented as an authority supposedly created to protect the freedom of Press, was in fact throttling that same cherished freedom. We have replied to PCI's letter and the case continues. Our next hearing at the PCI is on 12 July…A third bolt came from the Delhi Police (directly controlled by the Union Home Ministry) when DCP Licensing wrote to us on 30 May as to why our newspaper declaration should not be cancelled. Cancellation of the declaration means the newspaper will become illegal. We replied without fail to this show-cause notice and are still waiting for further clarifications from the DCP Licensing despite the passage of over three weeks on our hand-delivered reply…This three-pronged attack on MG simply shows the desperation of the Modi government to silence this little nagging bird. We are fighting and will continue to fight against this injustice through all legal venues open to us. But should the Modi Govt succeed in silencing this feeble voice, we will call it a day and will leave it to history to remember this as yet another colossal injustice to the freedom of Press the like of which was inflicted by the colonial rulers on Maulana Azad's Al-Balagh and Muhammad Ali's Hamdard and Comrade."
THIS TIME A DIFFERENT STRATEGY
After the pogrom of 2002 when there was a blatantly open attack on the minority community, this time Modi led government has adopted a different strategy. To kill and dent the very spirt cum identity of the community and do so rather discreetly and over a period of time.
In fact, whilst reading this recently published book 'Gujarat Behind the Curtain" ( Manas ) by the whistle blower cop of Gujarat cadre, RB Sreekumar, it gets amply clear that in 2002 the attacks on the minority community were far from discreet. There were blatant orders to do so.
This book is laced with instance after instance to pinpoint the direct role of the government. - I quote from the book - " On 28 June 2002, after a review meeting regarding the Ahmedabad Rath Yatra, the chief secretary suggested to me that incase someone was trying to disturb the Rath Yatra or planning to spoil it, those people should be eliminated if necessary …"
Another of those ' behind the curtain' scenes - I quote - "In the afternoon ( of 28 February 2002 ) I met DGP K Chakravarti in his chamber. I found him to be quite perturbed, helpless and stress - ridden about widespread mass violence in the cities of Ahmedabad, Vadodara and many rural areas. He lamented that things were taking a bad shape and activists of VHP, Bajrang Dal and BJP were leading armed crowds and police officers, at the decisive level on the ground, and were not intervening effectively as they were keen avoiding crossing swords with supporters of the ruling party. He hinted that the chief minister had convened a meeting of senior officers at his residence after his return from Godhra in the evening of 27 February 2002. The DGP said that the CM told officers in the meeting that ' in communal riots police normally takes action against Hindus and Muslims on one-to-one proportion, this will not do now, allow Hindus to give vent to their anger …'"
In fact, this book carries several behind-the-curtain scenes …potent enough to nail several of the who's who on the political and bureaucratic circuit of the day.