Narendra Modi Should be Behind Bars Rather Than Ruling a State

From Hermitude To Holography

This excerpt from a forthcoming ‘authorised-turned-unauthorised’ biography of the BJP’s man of the season, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi by Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay

If there is any phase of Narendra Modi’s life about which there are no definitive accounts, it is from teenage to adulthood.  Existing literature on Modi’s life that has been endorsed or authorised by him is full of glaring contradictions; personal accounts of childhood friends, teachers, immediate kin and acquaintances contain different stories. The years from 1967 to 1971 in  Modi’s life are somewhat “mysterious”, and despite my pointed questions, he chose not to shed any light on it—save one, a confirmation that the out point in his life had been 1967 and the return point was in 1971. Modi told me: “A lot of people ask me, but I do not want to say anything about that period because at some point in my life I would like to write about this period—what I did, where all did I go…. But it started in 1967 and there were variations about the periods when I was away (from home)—at times I was away for about 15 months, then I stayed away for six months and then even lesser—and I came back. I kept coming and going….”

Modi told me that he continued with an annual ritual that he termed “meet myself programme”. When I asked him what he meant by this, he said that he spent time only with himself and went away to remote places without informing anyone about his whereabouts. “I used to go away during Diwali. When people celebrated, I would be somewhere away in a remote place, far away from any person—all by myself. I went alone, and only went to places where I would not find another human being—places like a jungle or some barren or abandoned place. I carried only a little to eat—some snacks to last for three to five days—I just chose a place where I could get water to drink. I carried only a little food—only the bare necessities—so that I did not feel that I had not eaten anything.” I asked Modi about the kind of places he used for his getaways: “Any kind—completely unknown places that I did not know. I never decided my address and did not tell anyone where I was going.” Naturally, I was curious because this was a potential headline-making story: ‘Modi disappears, aides clueless, but assure supporters of his safety’.  I asked him when was the last time he went to meet himself and where was the venue? “That was in 1995-96, I was still in Gujarat (meaning that he had not yet been shunted out from the state unit of the BJP.) I went to the Gir forest and stayed where there were no humans. I went around and found an old temple where I could sleep, where no one could disturb me. No one came.” Perplexing though, it was getting interesting and I could not resist myself. What did he do? “I did nothing. That is what I did—nothing. Just think.” And then came my final question—what about now? “Now it is not in my destiny (naseeb nahi raha.) I do not know why people debate loneliness so much­—I actually enjoy loneliness. People debate outside a lot—that Modi is a loner—I am not a loner in any way. But yes, I do not enjoy too much of a crowd.”

Halfway into my first interview with Modi, I gingerly approached the question which I feared may put an end to the writing of this book. I had played this scene in my mind’s eye several times and owed it to myself to ask the most forbidden question in the context of the man: there were two clear chapters in his political career—pre-Godhra and post-Godhra. Did he agree? He reacted predictably, by now set in his reactions whenever probed on such matters, and insulating himself deftly, cut me short and informed me with more than a hint of gruffness: “All this is available—you would be able to get the complete record. The SIT in its report has documented all this minute-to-minute—everything is available on the net…. And since it is authentic and has been done under the supervision of the Supreme Court, then you should go by that version only—why take my version? Then you may consult the Nanavati Commission report on Godhra.”

My hunch was right on both counts. First, in the way he skirted the issue, and second, in his referring to what was already part of judicial records. Not one to give up, I also asked around. Several sources corroborated my sense on this: Modi did not want to provide any fresh information which could be used against him in courts and also arm his detractors with more ammunition. The two voluminous reports that Modi mentioned have agreed with the claim of Modi and his political clan: that the attack on the Sabarmati Express on the morning of February 27, 2002, was not an accidental fire but a coordinated attack and that Modi was not guilty of any allegations levelled against him either by relatives of those who died in the post-Godhra violence or by groups of “concerned citizens”. One person I spoke to said Modi’s stonewalling tactics owed to the fact that he did not wish anyone a peep into his psyche at that time and also did not wish to add anything which may be used as evidence against him and his associates in any of the several pending legal cases.

For more than a decade since 2002, Modi’s public image has been shaped by two contrasting viewpoints. The first one is one based on belief, hearsay statements and oral assertions of people claiming to be eyewitnesses to events.The second is based on opinions and findings chiselled by inquiry committees and commissions that have reached their conclusions after relatively underplaying information and affirmations not backed by direct evidence. Both opinions have backers who have first taken an ideologically driven position and then gone on to use facts while buttressing their opinion. While the first opinion has led to extreme assessments of Modi being likened to a fascist or a mass murderer, the other school considers that painting Modi’s image in that hue is part of pseudo-secular propaganda and that he is actually a paragon of virtue and dedication.

***

I asked him about the boundaries of existence his political clan has enforced on non-Hindus and the need for them to accept Hindu ideas and ideals as their own. Modi replied: “Yes, that was the basic argument (in the course of the Ayodhya agitation, that Muslims also must accept Lord Ram as the symbol of national identity), the main philosophy—that he also was a mahapurush (great man) of this country. And that everyone in this country should believe in this—those who led this agitation campaigned for this.” At this point of the interview, it becomes evident that Modi strongly believes that if minorities wished to coexist and feel safe in the state governed by him, it was mandatory for them to abide by the beliefs and value systems of the majority community.

Meanwhile, I prodded on as Modi was opening up, and this was my best chance to get to the core of Modi’s understanding of Hindutva and I asked him: “India has a composite culture. There is tremendous social diversity. How do you look at inter-community relationships and the relationship of different social and religious groups with the State?”

Modi did not answer my question explicitly but said: “People can have different forms of puja and rituals can also be different—but that does not mean that the country, the traditions of the land can become different. Look at it this way—who is a Hindu? Those who believe in God are called Hindus and even those who do not believe in God. People also consider those who believe in idol worship as Hindus and even those who campaign against idol worship. Those who deify nature are termed Hindus and those who do not do so are also called Hindus. The truth is that Hindus do not have any real concern with the manner and processes of paying obeisance to God. Hindus have no problems if someone performs the namaz or goes to a church and reads the Bible to reach God. Hindus have no problem with this. We have no problems with the religious practices of people. We have no problems if anyone wants to retain religious identity—but the country, the traditions.”

Modi’s first hurdle after he became chief minister in 2001 was to find a safe seat and become member of the state assembly within the mandatory six-month period. But this was not easy for two reasons: Modi had never contested any election in his political career, and secondly, with the BJP traversing a rough terrain, finding a safe seat was difficult. As we have seen, Modi did not have a political home. He had been mostly Ahmedabad-based since joining the RSS in the early 1970s and ideally wanted to contest from a city seat—where he would personally know party workers—vacated by a party colleague. But an easy entry to the state assembly proved difficult for Modi because Haren Pandya, whose seat Modi wanted, did not oblige.

If such provocation was not enough, Pandya courted further trouble in the aftermath of the 2002 riots when he appeared before the Concerned Citizens Tribunal headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Krishna Iyer in May 2002. The deposition was made on an understanding that he would not be named. However, Modi’s intelligence wing, which an unnamed source says was fine-tuned after he became chief minister because Modi had been inspired by “Shivaji’s spy network” and wanted to develop an intelligence web like that, kept track of Pandya’s movements. Even his mobile phone was tapped—media reports claimed—as a result of which Modi got to know about Pandya’s deposition in almost real-time in May 2002.

Modi, however, was not satisfied at easing Pandya out of his government. In assembly elections, held in November-December 2002, the friend-turned-foe was not nominated by the party even after the intervention of stalwarts such as Advani and Vajpayee. The media reported gleefully that in order to avoid being pressurised into nominating Pandya, Modi checked into a hospital and stopped taking phone calls from New Delhi. After this, Pandya receded from the limelight and lived a quiet life till March 26,  2003, when everything was over for him. On that dreadful morning, an unknown assassin’s gun silenced Pandya when he was returning from a morning walk in the sprawling Law Garden, a public park in Ahmedabad.

The Haren Pandya murder case became the first of the several high-profile non-2002-riots court cases in Gujarat that cast a shadow over Modi’s regime. In police parlance, the Pandya murder case was termed a cut-out murder,  where the chain from the conspirator or instigator to the eventual victim is impossible to establish. A police contact explained it like this: “A wants to murder Z and instructs B to execute the order. B tells C who does not know that A is the instigator. Instructions are passed in this manner from C to D and then to E and it goes down all the way. The final contract killer does not know where the order originated from. If investigations turns nasty, then all A has to do is to make any of the people in the chain a cut-out—take him out by beginning another chain.”

Stereo Type Muslim Roles in Indian Movies

Vishwaroop kickstarts like a comic book. The ditsy slapstick routine in the midst of gory villainy in NY tells you: don’t take this seriously. But only for a brief while. As the scene shifts to bleak Afghan landscapes and Al Qaeda training grounds, the stereotype “Islamic terrorist” emb­edded in our collective consciousness post-9/11 gets reinfor­ced onscreen—the bru­tality, ort­h­odoxy, obduracy, it’s all there. It’s a cruel world where “zubaan koi bhi ho, boli jehadi hi honi chahiye”. Severed limbs, lifeless bodies, spurting blood—you wonder why you are seeing these killing fields images all over again, in yet another film. Meanwhile, our hero Tau­fik finds Buddha-like enlightenment. He is the one good Muslim taking on the many rogues from his community to save New York from the “dirty bomb” even as the rather daft FBI agents ask him, “Jeez man, who are you?” He is the one good Muslim who “redeems” the many who have gone astray.

Cut to Hansal Mehta’s Shahid. Based on the life of activist-lawyer Shahid Azmi, who was allegedly killed for defending Mumbai bombing accused Fahim Ansari, this too begins with protracted seq­uen­ces of Shahid in jehadi camps. But unlike Vishwaroop, it settles down to focus on the dilemmas of a lower middle-class Muslim family. No demonising, exoticising or romanticising. “My atte­mpt was to humanise,” says Mehta. After a few devastating episodes—riots, jeh­a­di camps, jail—Shahid prefers the path of the law, fighting for the accused in court, to going on Taufik-like revenge mode. The gentle Shahid stands on the fringes, and Vishwa­roopshows how the heavy-handed, sweeping Muslim stereotypes dominate our mainstream cinema.

Now one way to rationalise this is by brushing the criticism aside. After all, this is the way we tell our stories. So for every cliched Muslim, we also have flat Christians—Sandras from Bandra, the good Catholic priest. What’s more, it’s endemic to popular cinema the world over. “Ethnic groups, communities get exaggerated eve­rywhere,” says Rachel Dwyer, professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at SOAs, University of London. Witness the unidimensional Chinese or Hispanic in Hollywood. But our filmic Muslim stereotype hasn’t stayed static. You had the historicals and Muslim socials of the ’50s and the ’60s—the refined nawabs, eloquent shayars, elegant tawa­ifs of Mere Mehboob, Chaudhavin Ka Chaand, Mehboob ki Mehndi, Pakeezah.

Then there was the small, significant role. Pran’s loyal Pathan in Zanjeer, A.K. Hangal’s good-hearted Rahim Chacha in Sholay, Mazhar Khan’s trusted informer in Shaan. A token gesture, an ethnic flavour, an integrative desire. The last was significant in Amar Akbar Anthony, says Ravikant, associate fellow, CSDS. “Saibaba became the secular, neutral space where they came together.” Even into the mid-’80s, the integration motif was being underlined in Coolie, where Amitabh Bachchan wears a Billa No. 786.

It was the gradual movement from the Haji Mastan phase (symbolically, gangsterism with the honour code intact) to the Dawood Ibra­him phenomenon, its brash mafiahood bleeding into modern jehadism—with the rest of Indian politics blanked out—that proved decisive. Bolly­wood got a suc­cession of new Muslim villains: Lotia Pathan in Tez­aab, Majid Khan in Angaar, the new-age, cold-as-steel drug-dealing Rashid in Sarkar, the hyper-inflated Rauf Lala in Agneepath. “These cliches have reflected changing mindset and perceptions,” says Hansal.

Of late, the Muslim stories have come uniformly laced with violence. The sha­dowy  terror of Pankaj Kapur in Roja was the first foray into Kas­hmir. With the Kar­gil war, “Pakistan became an absent presence,” says Ravikant. In fact, by Gadar, quite the present presence.

Post-9/11, it’s been all about global Isl­a­mist terror. “The word terrorist has been misused and become exclusively attac­hed to Muslims,” says Shohini Ghosh, of Jamia Millia Islamia. Interestingly, there are hardly any narratives of “Hindu terror”, but for perhaps a Govind Nihalani’sDrohkaal. “Good Muslims proving their loyalty has been a running theme in our cinema. It’s now reached a critical point,” says Ravikant. An offshoot of this: films like Chak De India and My Name Is Khan, secular, modern Muslims again having to prove their allegiance to country. It’s the “terror narratives that don’t understand terrorism” that Shohini finds “complica­ted”. “No one denies the rise in Isl­amist terror, but our films look at it from the standpoint of the terror attack, not what went into its making,” she says.

Old films too have explored interesting layers within the cliches. Dhool Ka Phool had a Muslim bringing up an ‘illegitim­ate’ Hindu child (it had the classic song, “Tu Hindu banega na Musalman banega, insaan ki aulaad hai, insaan banega”.) In Dharmputra, the theme was reversed with a Hindu family bringing up a Muslim child. Author-filmmaker Nasreen Munni Kabir says story-telling works best when Muslim identity is not an issue. “When it becomes the issue, the stereotype gets more acute,” she says. So Nagesh Kukunoor’s Iqbal works because the young hero just happened to be a Muslim who wanted to be a cricketer. “I liked how the intelligence officer in Kahaani was a Muslim,” she says. For Rachel Dwyer, Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara was interesting in the way Farhan Akh­tar’s character wore his Muslim identity lightly. Parallel cinema offers many exa­m­ples—Garam Hawa, Naseem, Saleem Langde Pe Mat Ro, Black Friday or even the recent Gangs of Wasseypur. However, the most interesting of these has been a forgotten but landmark V. Shantaram film, Padosi. The 1941 film about Hindu-Muslim neighbours who squabble but eventually come together pre-empted the Partition and feels relevant even today. But for now, there doesn’t seem to be any let up in the terrorism sagas.

 

Anti Muslim Riots in Dhule, Maharashtra

By Teesta Setalvad

On January 9, 2013, Dr Vipul Bafna of Sahas Critical Care Centre in Dhule, north Maharashtra, received a strange request from Inspector Kohli of the local Azadnagar police station. He wanted Dr Bafna to surrender the bullets removed from the shooting victims brought to the hospital after the recent riots. The good doctor politely declined, demanding a proper medico-legal procedure, including witnesses and forensic experts, to ensure that the evidence is not tampered with.

Ironically, Kohli, one of the policemen accused of indiscriminate firing, made the request just three days after the shooting. At least 10 other policemen were also involved in the incident which left six Muslims dead and 36 people critically injured, all from the Machibazaar locality. On the ground, we found bullet marks at some 10 spots in the bazaar, all aimed at small businesses of the minority community—Aslam Egg Stall, Star Fish Centre, Mohammed Kalim Mohammed Shahbaz Jalebiwala, Haroon Rashid Abdul Aziz Bakriwala and the entrance of the beef market itself. It begs the question: why were so many shots fired here and why did the police specifically target these small establishments?

Another request for the evidence came from the local crime branch two days later, on January 11, which again Dr Bafna firmly declined. Nine of the 11 bullets now lie in sealed plastic packets in his office locker at the hospital. They will be crucial evidence in the judicial inquiry into the police firing on January 6.

A short walk from the terror-struck locality, Sahas hospital, located on an 80-feet road—the self-demarcated ‘border’ between the Muslim Machipura and the Hindu localities of Dhule just behind—was a natural choice for the desperate victims. No one was turned away here. Vipul and his wife, Dr Madhuri, along with other staff members, worked for 40 hours at a stretch to save some of the victims. But even as the first one was arriving in the ER at 5.30 pm, Dr Bafna was getting calls from some in the majority community exhorting him not to admit the injured (the advice leaned on the idea that Muslim mobs would gather and become a threat to the hospital). “I told them nothing would stop me from doing my duty. We worked as a team, the ICU under Dr Ashwini Bhasin provided trauma care and, once stable, we undertook the vital (read life-saving) surgeries. We needed some 90 bottles of blood in the first hours,” says Dr Bafna.

Khalid and Chand, two of the survivors, will have to live with a leg amputated due to the gangrene that had set in. Chand recovers now in a Pune hospital, but Khalid is still admitted in Sahas. Treatment for all the injured, including ongoing care, will be free at Sahas. Dr Madhuri showed me photos from some of the operations—liver ruptures, pelvic wounds, a bullet in the upper cheek which narrowly missed the eye. What hit home in all this was that the narrative of numbers around the Dhule violence would have been radically different if the hospital response had not been what it was. Many more Muslims would have lost their lives that day.

The violence in Dhule is not just about the three brutal communal riots (2008, ’10 and ’13) from the last 6-7 years. Behind the facade is the growing animosity fuelled by the political classes and their accomplices in the illegal drugs, oil pilferage and other mafias. Unemployment is rampant, and a ghettoisation that fuels violence and a separateness of the mind is a lived reality. In 2008, property worth crores was gutted,  but little justice came by way of the townspeople. This time around, vociferous demands for a judicial inquiry (made nationally) forced the state into action. But this is not a problem of Dhule alone. Dhule, Maharashtra and India also have to deal with the fact that behind these selective killings is the consistent allegations of bias in the functioning of our police. It’s another reality we seek to deny. After the 1992-93 Bombay riots, ACP, state intelligence, V.N. Deshmukh had told the Srikrishna Commission of the dangerous levels of communalisation in the Bombay and Maharashtra police. Other senior policemen—be it ex-BSF chief K.F. Rustomjee, former Punjab DIG Padma Rosha or Vibhuti Narain Rai of the UP cadre—have all been upfront in their concerns. Yet nothing in our recruitment procedures equips the man or woman joining the force with the requisite constitutional values of equality and non-discrimination and screens them for caste or communal bias. Communal bias, especially the institutionalised kind, remains the dark underbelly of our system, a cancer eating away which we are loath to confront.

Meanwhile, speculation around the powers of divine justice is rife once again in Dhule after the death of Inspector Kohli’s writer, K. Wagh, a rather sudden death two days ago. Was it a heart attack or suicide brought on by the stress and guilt from the interrogations into police misconduct?

 

Shahrukh Khan in Deep Shit After Writing in an Indian Weekly

I am a Khan. The name itself conjures multiple images in my mind too: a strapping man riding a horse, his reckless hair flowing from beneath a turban tied firm around his head. His ruggedly handsome face marked by weathered lines and a distinctly large nose.

A stereotyped extremist; no dance, no drink, no cigarette tipping off his lips, no monogamy, no blasphemy; a fair, silent face beguiling a violent fury smouldering within. A streak that could even make him blow himself up in his God’s name.

Then there is the image of me being shoved into a backroom of a vast American airport named after an American president (another parallel image: of the president being assassinated by a man named Lee, not a Muslim thankfully, nor Chinese as some might imagine! I urgently shove the image of the room out of my head).

Some stripping, frisking and many questions later, I am given an explanation (of sorts): “Your name pops up on our system, we are sorry”. “So am I,” I think to myself, “Now can I have my underwear back please?”

Then, there is the image I most see, the one of me in my own country: being acclaimed as a megastar, adored and glorified, my fans mobbing me with love and apparent adulation.

I am a Khan.

I could say I fit into each of these images: I could be a strapping six feet something—ok something minus, about three inches at least, though I don’t know much about horse-riding. A horse once galloped off with me flapping helplessly on it and I have had a “no horse-riding” clause embedded in my contracts ever since.

I am extremely muscular between my ears, I am often told by my kids, and I used to be fair too, but now I have a perpetual tan or, as I like to call it, an ‘olive hue’—though deep in the recesses of my armpits I can still find the remains of a fairer day. I am handsome under the right kind of light and I really do have a “distinctly large” nose. It announces my arrival in fact, peeking through the doorway just before I make my megastar entrance. But my nose notwithstanding, my name means nothing to me unless I contextualise it.

Stereotyping and contextualising is the way of the world we live in: a world in which definition has become central to security. We take comfort in defining phenomena, objects and people—with a limited amount of knowledge and along known parameters. The predictability that naturally arises from these definitions makes us feel secure within our own limitations.

We create little image boxes of our own. One such box has begun to draw its lid tighter and tighter at present. It is the box that contains an image of my religion in millions of minds.

I encounter this tightening of definition every time moderation is required to be publicly expressed by the Muslim community in my country. Whenever there is an act of violence in the name of Islam, I am called upon to air my views on it and dispel the notion that by virtue of being a Muslim, I condone such senseless brutality. I am one of the voices chosen to represent my community in order to prevent other communities from reacting to all of us as if we were somehow colluding with or responsible for the crimes committed in the name of a religion that we experience entirely differently from the perpetrators of these crimes.

I sometimes become the inadvertent object of political leaders who choose to make me a symbol of all that they think is wrong and unpatriotic about Muslims in India. There have been occasions when I have been accused of bearing allegiance to our neighbouring nation rather than my own country—this even though I am an Indian whose father fought for the freedom of India. Rallies have been held where leaders have exhorted me to leave my home and return to what they refer to as my “original homeland”.

Of course, I politely decline each time, citing such pressing reasons as sanitation works at my house preventing me from taking the good shower that’s needed before undertaking such an extensive journey. I don’t know how long this excuse will hold though.

I gave my son and daughter names that could pass for generic (pan-Indian and pan-religious) ones: Aryan and Suhana. The Khan has been bequeathed by me so they can’t really escape it. I pronounce it from my epiglottis when asked by Muslims and throw the Aryan as evidence of their race when non-Muslims enquire. I imagine this will prevent my offspring from receiving unwarranted eviction orders and random fatwas in the future. It will also keep my two children completely confused. Sometimes, they ask me what religion they belong to and, like a good Hindi movie hero, I roll my eyes up to the sky and declare philosophically, “You are an Indian first and your religion is humanity”, or sing them an old Hindi film ditty, “Tu Hindu banega na Musalmaan banega—insaan ki aulaad hai insaan banega” set to Gangnam Style.

None of this informs them with any clarity, it just confounds them some more and makes them deeply wary of their father.

In the land of the freed, where I have been invited on several occasions to be honoured, I have bumped into ideas that put me in a particular context. I have had my fair share of airport delays for instance.

I became so sick of being mistaken for some crazed terrorist who coincidentally carries the same last name as mine that I made a film, subtly titled ‘My name is Khan (and I am not a terrorist)’ to prove a point. Ironically, I was interrogated at the airport for hours about my last name when I was going to present the film in America for the first time.

I wonder, at times, whether the same treatment is given to everyone whose last name just happens to be McVeigh (as in infamous Oklahoma city bomber Timothy McVeigh)?

I don’t intend to hurt any sentiments, but truth be told, the aggressor and taker of life follows his or her own mind. It has nothing to do with a name, a place or his/her religion. It is a mind that has its own discipline, its own distinction of right from wrong and its own set of ideologies. In fact, one might say it has its own “religion”. This religion has nothing to do with the ones that have existed for centuries and been taught in mosques or churches. The call of the azaan or the words of the Pope have no bearing on this person’s soul. His soul is driven by the devil. I, for one, refuse to be contextualised by the ignorance of his ilk.

I am a Khan.

I am neither six-feet-tall nor particularly handsome (I am modest though) nor am I a Muslim who looks down on other religions. I have been taught my religion by my six-foot-tall, handsome Pathan ‘Papa’ from Peshawar, where his proud family and mine still resides. He was a member of the non-violent Pathan movement called Khudai Khidmatgaar and a follower of both Gandhiji and Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, who was also known as the Frontier Gandhi.

My first learning of Islam from him was to respect women and children and to uphold the dignity of every human being. I learnt that the property and decency of others, their points of view, their beliefs, their philosophies and their religions were due as much respect as my own and ought to be accepted with an open mind. I learnt to believe in the power and benevolence of Allah, and to be gentle and kind to my fellow human beings, to give of myself to those less privileged than me and to live a life full of happiness, joy, laughter and fun without impinging on anybody else’s freedom to live in the same way.

I have felt the love of millions of Indians for the last 20 years regardless of the fact that my community is a minority within the population of India. I have been showered with love across national and cultural boundaries, from Suriname to Japan and Saudi Arabia to Germany, places where they don’t even understand my language. They appreciate what I do for them as an entertainer—that’s all. My life has led me to understand and imbibe that love is a pure exchange, untempered by definition and unfettered by the narrowness of limiting ideas. If each one of us allowed ourselves the freedom to accept and return love in its purity, we would need no image boxes to hold up the walls of our security.

I believe that I have been blessed with the opportunity to experience the magnitude of such a love, but I also know that ultimately its scale is irrelevant. In our own small ways, simply as human beings, we can appreciate each other for how we touch our lives and not how our different religions or last names define us.

Beneath the guise of my superstardom, I am an ordinary man. My Islamic stock does not conflict with that of my Hindu wife’s. The only disagreements I have with Gauri concern the colour of the walls in our living room and not about the locations of the walls demarcating temples from mosques in India.

We have a daughter who pirouettes in a leotard and choreographs her own ballets. She sings western songs that confound my sensibilities and aspires to be an actress. She also insists on covering her head when in a Muslim nation that practises this really beautiful and much misunderstood tenet of Islam.

Our son’s linear features proclaim his Pathan pedigree although he carries his own, rather gentle mutation of the warrior gene. He spends all day either pushing people aside at rugby, kicking some butt at Tae Kwon Do or eliminating unknown faces behind anonymous online gaming handles around the world with The Call of Duty video game. And yet, he firmly admonishes me for getting into a minor scuffle at the cricket stadium in Mumbai last year because some bigot made unsavoury remarks about me being a Khan.

The four of us make up a motley representation of the extraordinary acceptance and validation that love can foster when exchanged within the exquisiteness of things that are otherwise defined as ordinary.

For I believe, our religion is an extremely personal choice, not a public proclamation of who we are. It’s as personal as the spectacles of my father who passed away some 20 years ago. Spectacles that I hold onto as my most prized and personal possession of his memories, teachings and of being a proud Pathan. I have never compared those with my friends, who have similar possessions of their parents or grandparents. I have never said my father’s spectacles are better than your mother’s saree. So why should we have this comparison in the matter of religion, which is as personal and prized a belief as the memories of your elders. Why should not the love we share be the last word in defining us instead of the last name? It doesn’t take a superstar to be able to give love, it just takes a heart and as far as I know, there isn’t a force on this earth that can deprive anyone of theirs.

I am a Khan, and that’s what it has meant being one, despite the stereotype images that surround me. To be a Khan has been to be loved and to have loved back—that and the promise that virgins wait for me somewhere on the other side.

The above article in the Indian weekly Outlook led to immense controversy in India and Shahrukh Khan himself had to issue the following statement to the media over his controversial article which he had written in Outlook magazine.

According to me, all our lives we are defined by three identities.

Two of which are fortunately acquired by birth and are a matter of unconditional love and acceptance.

The first identity is acquired by where one is born. Our Motherland. That defines us. So foremost all of us here like me are proud Indians.

Second the family name and upbringing that our parents give us. Mine is Khan, like some of us here. I am very proud of my parents, like all of us are here. I love them unconditionally.

The third is the profession we choose that defines us. By some quirk of fate I am a celebrity… a public figure in the fields of art and media. Like most of us are here today.

As I said being an Indian and my parents’ child is an unconditional accepted truth of my life and I am very proud of both.

The third… being a public figure makes me open to any kind of questioning, adjectives good and bad and or sometimes makes me an object of controversy as people use my name and statements to attach any positive or negative sentiment to it. I accept all the above because this is the life I chose and will stand by it. I am what I am, because of the love and admiration that comes with being who I am in my profession… so I thank everyone for making me the star I am.

Now to address this whole issue, with regards to my Article, that has taken an unwarranted twist. I do not even understand the basis of this controversy.

Ironically the article I wrote (yes its written by me) was actually meant to reiterate that on some occasions my being an Indian Muslim film star is misused by bigots and narrow minded people who have misplaced religious ideologies for small gains…. and ironically the same has happened through this article… once again.

The reason for this primarily is…. I think some of the people have not even read it and are reacting to comments of people, who in turn have also not read it. So I implore you all to first read it.

Second if you read it, nowhere does the article state or imply directly or indirectly that I feel unsafe…. troubled or disturbed in India.

It does not even vaguely say that I am ungrateful for the love that I have received in a career spanning 20 years. On the contrary the article only says that in spite of bigoted thoughts of some of the people that surround us…. I am untouched by skepticism because of the love I have received by my countrymen and women.

I will paraphrase the beginning and the end of the article to clarify and substantiate my stand.

“Then, there is the image I most see, the one of me in my own country: being acclaimed as a megastar, adored and glorified, my fans mobbing me with love and apparent adulation.

So I am a Khan, but no stereotyped image is factored into my idea of who I am. Instead, the living of my life has enabled me to be deeply touched by the love of millions of Indians. I have felt this love for the last 20 years regardless of the fact that my community is a minority within the population of India. I have been showered with love across national and cultural boundaries, they appreciate what I do for them as an entertainer – that’s all. My life has led me to understand and imbibe that love is a pure exchange, untempered by definition and unfettered by the narrowness of limiting ideas.

Sometimes, they ask me what religion they belong to and, like a good Hindi movie hero, I roll my eyes up to the sky and declare philosophically, “you are an Indian first and your religion is Humanity”, or sing them an old Hindi film ditty, “tu hindu banega na musalmaan banega – insaan ki aulaad hai insaan banega” set to Gangnam style.

Why should not the love we share be the last word in defining us instead of the last name? It doesn’t take a superstar to be able to give love, it just takes a heart and as far as i know, there isn’t a force on this earth that can deprive anyone of theirs.

I am a Khan, and that’s what it has meant being one, despite the stereotype images that surround me. To be a Khan has been to be loved and love back….”

Please I implore everyone here to read the article and convey through your respective mediums of communications, all the good things that it expresses to youngsters and my fellow Indians. It is a heartfelt and extremely important aspect of my life, an appreciation of love that all of you have bestowed upon me and also a point of view from my being a father of two young children

I would like to tell all those who are offering me unsolicited advice that we in India are extremely safe and happy. We have an amazing democratic, free and secular way of life. In the environs that we live here in my country India, we have no safety issues regarding life or material. As a matter of fact it is irksome for me to clarify this non-existent issue. With respect I would like to say to anyone who is interpreting my views and offering advice regarding them, please read what I have written first.

Also some of the views that I have been made to read are just an extension of soft targeting celebs and creating an atmosphere of emotional outbursts and divisiveness based on religion…in the minds of some. I implore everyone to understand, that my article is against exactly this kind of giving in to propaganda and aggressiveness. Lets not be misled by tools which use religion as an anchor for unrest and a policy of divide and rule.

I would also like to add here, that my profession as an actor makes me, liked beyond the borders of my nation and culture. The hugs and love that I am showered upon by Nationalities all around the world, make me safe all over the globe, and my safety has genuinely never been a matter of concern to me… and so it should not be a matter of concern to anyone else either.

We are all educated and patriotic people. We do not have to prove that time and again because of divisive politics of a few.

My own family and friends, are like a mini India…where all religions, professions and a few wrongs included, all are treated with tolerance and understanding and regard for each other. I only sell love…love that I have got from millions of Indians and non Indians….and stand indebted to my audience in my country and around the world. It is sad that I have to say it to prove it, in my country, which my father fought for, during the Independence struggle.

That’s my piece and having said all this…I would like to request all of you present here….that henceforth ask me questions regarding….my next movie. The songs that I have recorded. The release date of my film. The heroines cast in it. The Toiffa awards in Vancouver, because I am an actor and maybe I should just stick to stuff that all of you expect me to have a viewpoint on. The rest of it…maybe I don’t have the right kind of media atmosphere to comment on. So I will refrain from it.

And please if you can…put all I have said on your channels, or mediums of communication, in the exact same light as I have said it and meant it in. 24 hrs of unrequired controversy is more than enough for all of us I assume. So do not sensationalize and hence trivialize matters of national interest and religion any further and drag a movie actor in the middle of it all…and let me get back to doing what I do best…. making movies.

Ten Shades of Indian Secularism

Time to ponder over the issues

1 ) In India, with 80% Hindu population, and the only homeland of Hindus in the world, the birthdays of great sons of the soil, Shri Ram and Shri Krishna, are not compulsory central government  holidays, while the birthday of Saudi Arabia born prophet Mohammad and both the birth and crucifixion day of Bethlehem born Jesus, are compulsory holidays throughout India.

This seems in sync with the secular hypothesis that Ram and Krishna are imaginary comic characters while Prophet Mohammad and Jesus are actual historical characters.

There are only two Hindu holidays out of compulsory 14, in contrast with four Muslim ones.

2) The Constitution of India enables the government to take control of Hindu temples and trusts and appoint its nominees in their controlling body and even control its funds.

The government does not have this privilege for the mosques or churches. The government cannot interfere in the functioning of the mosques, Madarsas and any minority institutions even if they receive government aid, which is taxpayers’ money.

The minority institutions are not bound to comply with the Right to Education Act either.

3) India does not have uniform civil code.

Indian Muslim males are legally allowed to have up to four wives at a time, and can divorce them by saying ‘Talaaq’ thrice, in compliance with Sharia.

Hindus and Christians have to follow proper court procedures to file for divorce.

The women right activists who organise ‘slut-walks’ to celebrate their ‘rights’ and advocate girls visiting pubs, do not speak on this matter.

Shah Bano case stands as a glaring example of how secularism is a constitutionally prescribed drug meant only for Hindus, not for minorities.

4) Prayagraj, one of the holiest pilgrimages of Hindus, is called Allahabad. Kashi, Ayodhya and Mathura, each of these three holy sites has been desecrated and yet not fully restored.

The signboards of Aurangzeb road in Delhi stand as the testimony to India’s slavery that Indian secularism celebrates so profusely.

In 2007, over 100,000 Indian Muslims paid homage to Aurangzeb’s tomb on his 300th anniversary, that’s when Aurangzeb is known to be the perpetrator of the largest Hindu genocide ever.

Aurangzeb had even got Guru Teg Bahadur beheaded in his court for his refusal to convert to Islam.

5) An instance of Indian secularism is the 1978 directive to NCERT which instructs it to erase all medieval history which paints a picture of clash between native Hindus and invading Muslims in that era. Consequently, we have a chapter each from Akbar to Aurangzeb, but Shivaji and Maharana Pratap are squeezed into a paragraph each in history books.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, discredited Aryan invasion theory is still taught in Indian schools.

The history books do not cover the Mahabharata despite a plethora of archaeological evidence available to conclusively establish its historicity.

6) The Archaeological Survey of India in its annual report of 1924-25 published a long list of Hindu temples demolished during Islamic rule.

Sita Ram Goel, Arun Shourie and others have published a book after conducting research and they have given a 64 page long district-wise list of Islamic monuments which were constructed by demolishing Hindu temples.

This list, in the book, “Hindu temples – what happened to them”, includes around 2000+ temples and gives in most cases, the year of construction of those structures also.

Even in Kashmir, hundreds of temples, small and large have been desecrated over during the exodus of Hindus in early 90s.

This, however, is a non-issue in larger secular polity. It’s continued unabated in whichever time or space, Hindus have become weak.

7) From Ram Mandir to Ram Setu and to Bhagvad Geeta, all have been dragged into Indian courts.

India is the only country in the world where the faith of 100 Crore people is humiliated.

It’d be silly to look for parallels where in a Muslim majority country, Quran or the prophet, or in a Christian majority country, Bible or the Christ, could be dragged into a court of law.

In India, the central government filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court suggesting that Ram never existed. In the same country, Christian missionaries openly preach about Hindus’ false and ‘characterless’ gods, and so do Islamic missionaries like Zakir Naik, but the tag of ‘hate-monger’ has been attributed to Hindu right wing by secular luminaries in media and otherwise.

8) There are numerous government schemes which are run exclusively for the benefit of minorities at the expense of taxpayer money, despite an apparent prohibition to the same in the constitution.

Pashchim Bengal government paying monthly stipend to all the Imams of all the mosques in the state is a glaring example of this.

The same is not extended to Hindu Pujaris.

The Haj subsidy, against which the Supreme Court finally ordered, which had been running since Independence even when no other country, not even Pakistan offers it, is another example.

9) The pious human right activists, known for their love for Jihadi terrorists, those who have been running justiceforafzalguru.org for years now, have not spoken for the inhumane treatment meted out to Sadhvi Pragya, and Swami Aseemanand.

Their love for those displaced in Gujarat riots, their sympathy on Crores of Bangladeshi infiltrators and their disgusting silence and aversion on lakhs of Kashmiri Hindu refugees and Pakistani Hindu refugees is another jewel of the muddled waters of Indian secularism.

10) The practice of Saraswati Vandana has been discontinued from almost all government events with the rise of secular fanaticism.

The TV series Chanakya of 90′s was asked to remove Saffron flags from it; it’s being indispensable to the picturaization of Chanakya’s Akhand Bharat notwithstanding.

Doordarshan’s ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’ had also been removed before being brought back.

Off late, even the practice of lighting a lamp has been criticised as ‘unislamic’.

Litigation was filed in Gujarat High Court for inaugurating a room by breaking a coconut for its being a Hindu (not secular).

A case was lodged in Chennai High Court to prohibit the employees celebrating festivals in office space.

The beast of secular fanaticism has gone wilder over the years, and if not us, posterity will have to bear the brunt of our callous ignorance.

Source: IBTL

We’re becoming 2nd class citizens in our own country.

The likes of Digvijay Singh having the gumption of saying that the riots in Assam were because of ‘Hindu infiltrators’.

Not one word of protest on the racial riots there,

Why? Because it’s a Congress ruled state!

Afzal Guru Hanging: A Perfect Day For Democracy

by Arundhati Roy

What are the political consequences of the secret and sudden hanging of Mohammed Afzal Guru, prime accused in the 2001 Parliament attack, going to be? Does anybody know? The memo, in callous bureaucratese, with every name insultingly misspelt, sent by the Superintendent of Central Jail No. 3, Tihar, New Delhi, to “Mrs Tabassum w/o Sh Afjal Guru” reads:

“The mercy petition of Sh Mohd Afjal Guru s/o Habibillah has been rejected by Hon’ble President of India. Hence the execution of Mohd Afjal Guru s/o Habibillah has been fixed for 09/02/2013 at 8 am in Central Jail No-3.

This is for your information and for further necessary action.”

The mailing of the memo was deliberately timed to get to Tabassum only after the execution, denying her one last legal chanc­e—the right to challenge the rejection of the mercy petition. Both Afzal and his family, separately, had that right. Both were thwarted. Even though it is mandat­ory in law, the memo to Tabassum ascribed no reason for the president’s rejection of the mercy petition. If no reason is given, on what basis do you appeal? All the other prisoners on death row in India have been given that last chance.

Since Tabassum was not allowed to meet her husband before he was hanged, since her son was not allowed to get a few last words of advice from his father, since she was not given his body to bury, and since there can be no funeral, what “further necessary action” does the jail manual prescribe? Anger? Wild, irreparable grief? Unquestioning acc­eptance? Complete integration?

After the hanging, there have been unseemly celebrations. The bereaved wives of the people who were killed in the attack on Parliament were displayed on TV, with M.S. Bitta, chairman of the All-India Anti-Terrorist Front, and his ferocious moustaches playing the CEO of their sad little company. Will anybody tell them that the men who shot their husbands were killed at the same time, in the same place? And that those who planned the attack will never be brought to justice because we still don’t know who they are.

Meanwhile, Kashmir is under curfew, once again. Its people have been locked down like cattle in a pen, once again. They have defied curfew, once again. Three people have already been killed in three days and fifteen more grievou­sly injured. Newspapers have been shut down, but anybody who trawls the internet will see that this time the rage of young Kashmiris is not defiant and exuberant like it was during the mass uprisings in the summers of 2008, 2009 and 2010­—even though 180 people lost their lives on those occasions. This time the anger is cold and corrosive. Unforgiving. Is there any reason why it shouldn’t be?

For more than 20 years, Kashmiris have endured a military occupation. The tens of thousands who lost their lives were killed in prisons, in torture centres, and in ‘encounters’, genuine as well as fake. What sets the execution of Afzal Guru apart is that it has given the young, who have never had any first-hand experience of democracy, a ringside seat to watch the full majesty of Indian democracy at work. They have watched the wheels turning, they have seen all its hoary institutions, the government, police, courts, political parties and yes, the media, collude to hang a man, a Kashmiri, who they do not believe received a fair trial. With good reason.

He went virtually unrepresented in the lower court during the most crucial part of the trial. The court-appointed lawyer never visited him in prison, and actually admitted incriminating evidence against his own client.  (The Supreme Court deliberated on that matter and decided it was okay.) In short, his guilt was by no means established beyond reasonable doubt. They have watched the government pull him out of the death row queue and execute him out of turn. What direction, what form will their new cold, corrosive anger take? Will it lead them to the blessed liberation they so yearn for and have sacrificed a whole generation for, or will it lead to yet another cycle of cataclysmic violence, of being beaten down, and then having ‘normalcy’ imposed on them under soldiers’ boots?

All of us who live in the region know that 2014 is going to be a watershed year. There will be elections in Pakistan, in India and in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. We know that when the US withdraws its troops from Afghanistan, the chaos from an already seriously destabilised Pakistan will spill into Kashmir, as it has done before. By executing Afzal Guru in the way that it did, the government of India has taken a decision to fuel that process of destabilisation, to actually invite it in. (As it did before, by rigging the 1987 elections in Kashmir.) After three consecutive years of mass protests in the Valley ended in 2010, the government invested a great deal in restoring its version of ‘norma­lcy’ (happy tourists, voting Kashmiris). The question is, why was it willing to reverse all its own efforts? Leaving aside issues of the legality, the morality and the venality of executing Afzal Guru in the way that it did, and looking at it just politically, tactically, it is a dangerous and irresponsible thing to have done. But it was done. Clearly, and knowingly. Why?

I used the word ‘irresponsible’ advisedly. Look what happened the last time around.

In 2001, within a week of the Parliament attack (and a few days after Afzal Guru’s arrest), the government recalled its ambassador from Pakistan and dispatched half a million troops to the border. On what basis was that done? The only thing the public was told is that while Afzal Guru was in the custody of the Delhi Police Special Cell, he had admitted to being a member of the Pakistan-based militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). The Supreme Court set aside that ‘confession’ extracted in police custody as inadmissible in law. Does what is inadmissible in law become admissible in war?

In its final judgement on the case, apart from the now famous statements about “satisfying collective conscience” and having no direct evidence, the Supreme Court also said there was “no evidence that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group or organisation”. So what justified that military aggression, that loss of soldiers’ lives, that massive haemorrhaging of public money and the real risk of nuclear war? (Remember foreign embassies issued travel advisories and evacuated their staff?) Was there some intelligence that preceded the Parliament attack and the arrest of Afzal Guru that we had not been told about? If so, how could the attack be allowed to happen? And if the intelligence was accurate, and infallible enough to justify such dangerous military posturing, don’t people in India, Pakistan and Kashmir have the right to know what it was? Why was that evidence not produced in court to establish Afzal Guru’s guilt?

In the endless debates around the Parliament attack case, on this, perhaps the most crucial issue of all, there has been dead silence from all quarters—leftists, rightists, Hindutva-ists, secularists, nationalists, seditionists, cynics, critics. Why?

Maybe the JeM did mastermind the attack. Praveen Swami, perhaps the Indian media’s best known expert on ‘terrorism’, who seems to have enviable sources in the Indian police and intelligence agencies, has recently cited the 2003 testimony of former ISI chief Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi, and the 2004 book by Muhammad Amir Rana, a Pakistani scholar, holding the JeM responsible for the Parliament attack. (It’s touching, this belief in the veracity of the testimony of the chief of an organisation whose mandate it is to destabilise India.) It still doesn’t explain what evidence there was in 2001, when the army mobilisation took place.

For the sake of argument, let’s accept that the JeM carried out the attack. Maybe the ISI was involved too. We needn’t pretend that the government of Pakistan is innocent of carrying out covert activity over Kashmir. (Just as the government of India does in Balochistan and parts of Pakistan. Remember the Indian army trained the Mukti Bahini in East Pakistan in the 1970s, and six different Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups, including the LTTE, in the 1980s.)

It’s a filthy scenario all around. What would a war with Pakistan have achieved then, and what will it achieve now? (Apart from a massive loss of life. And fattening the bank accounts of some arms dealers.) Indian hawks routinely suggest the only way to “root out the problem” is “hot pursuit” and the “taking out” of “terrorist camps” in Pakistan. Really? It would be interesting to research how many of the aggressive strategic experts and defence analysts on our TV screens have an interest in the defence and weapons industry. They don’t even need war. They just need a war-like climate in which military spending remains on an upward graph. This idea of hot pursuit is even stupider and more pathetic than it sounds. What would they bomb? A few individuals? Their barracks and food supplies? Or their ideology? Look how the US government’s “hot pursuit” has ended in Afghanistan. And look how a “security grid” of half-a-million soldiers has not been able to subdue the unarmed, civilian population of Kashmir. And India is going to cross international borders to bomb a country—with nuclear arms—that is rapidly devolving into chaos? India’s professional war-mongers derive a great deal of satisfaction by sneering at what they see as the disintegration of Pakistan. Anyone with a rudimentary, working knowledge of history and geography would know that the breakdown of Pakistan (into a gangland of crazed, nihilistic, religious zealots) is absolutely no reason for anyone to rejoice.

The US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Pakistan’s official role as America’s junior partner in the war on terror, makes that region a much-reported place. The rest of the world is at least aware of the dangers unfolding there. Less understood, and harder to read, is the perilous wind that’s picking up speed in the world’s favourite new superpower. The Indian economy is in considerable trouble. The aggressive, acquisitive ambition that economic liberalisation unleashed in the newly created middle class is quickly turning into an equally aggressive frustration. The aircraft they were sitting in has begun to stall just after takeoff. Exhilaration is turning to panic.

The general election is due in 2014. Even without an exit poll I can tell you what the results will be. Though it may not be obvious to the naked eye, once again we will have a Congress-BJP coalition. (Two parties, each with a mass murder of thousands of people belonging to minority communities under their belts.) The CPI(M) will give support from outside, even though it hasn’t been asked to. Oh, and it will be a strong state. (On the hanging front, the gloves are already off. Could the next in line be Balwant Singh Rajoana, on death row for the assassination of Punjab’s chief minister Beant Singh? His execution could revive Khalistani sentiment in Punjab and put the Akali Dal on the mat. Perfect old-style Congress politics.)

But that old-style politics is in some difficulty. In the last few turbulent months, it is not just the image of major political parties, but politics itself, the idea of politics as we know it, that has taken a battering. Again and again, whether it’s corruption, rising prices, or rape and the rising violence against women, the new middle class is at the barricades. They can be water-cannoned or lathicharged, but can’t be shot or impriso­ned in their thousands, in the way the poor can, the way Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, Kashmiris, Nagas and Manipuris can—and have been. The old political parties know that if there is not to be a complete meltdown, this aggression has to be headed off, redirected. They know that they must work together to bring politics back to what it used to be. What better way than a communal conflagration? (How else can the secular play at being secular and the communal be communal?) Maybe even a little war, so that we can play Hawks & Doves all over again.

What better solution than to aim a kick at that tried and trusted old political football—Kashmir? The hanging of Afzal Guru, its brazenness and its timing, is deliberate. It has brought politics and anger back onto Kashmir’s streets.

India hopes to manage it with the usual combination of brute force and poisonous, Machiavellian manipulation, des­igned to pit people against one another. The war in Kashmir is presented to the world as a battle between an inclusive, secular democracy and radical Islamists. What then should we make of the fact that Mufti Bashiruddin, the so-called Grand Mufti of Kashmir (a completely phantom post)—who has made most abominable hate speeches and issued fatwa after fatwa, intended to present Kashmir as a demonic, monolithic, Wahabi society—is actually a government-anointed cleric? Kids on Facebook will be arrested, never him. What should we make of the fact that the Indian government looks away while money from Saudi Arabia (that most steadfast partner of the US) is pouring into Kashmir’s madrassas? How different is this from what the CIA did in Afghanistan all those years ago? That whole, sorry business is what created Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It has decimated Afghanistan and Pakistan. What sort of incubus will this unleash?

The trouble is that the old political football may not be all that easy to control any more. And it’s radioactive. Maybe it is not a coincidence that a few days ago Pakistan tested a short-range battlefield nuclear missile to protect itself against threats from “evolving scenarios”. Two weeks ago, the Kashmir police published “survival tips” for nuclear war. Apart from advising people to build toilet-equipped bombproof basements large enough to house their entire families for two weeks, it said: “During a nuclear attack, motorists should dive out of their cars toward the blast to save themselves from being crushed by their soon-to-be tumbling vehicles.” And to “expect some initial disorientation as the blast wave may blow down and carry away many prominent and familiar features”.

Prominent and familiar features may already have been blown down. Perhaps we should all jump out of our soon-to-be-tumbling vehicles.

Spring announced itself in Delhi. The sun was out, and the Law took its Course. Just before breakfast, Afzal Guru, prime accused in the 2001 Parliament Attack was secretly hanged, and his body was interred in Tihar Jail. Was he buried next to Maqbool Butt? (The other Kashmiri who was hanged in Tihar in 1984. Kashmiris will mark that anniversary tomorrow.) Afzal’s wife and son were not informed. “The Authorities intimated the family through Speed Post and Registered Post,” the Home Secretary told the press, “the Director General of J&K Police has been told to check whether they got it or not.” No big deal, they’re only the family of a Kashmiri terrorist.

In a moment of rare unity the Nation, or at least its major political parties, the Congress, the BJP and the CPM came together as one (barring a few squabbles about ‘delay’ and ‘timing’) to celebrate the triumph of the Rule of Law. The Conscience of the Nation, which broadcasts live from TV studios these days, unleashed its collective intellect on us — the usual cocktail of papal passion and a delicate grip on facts. Even though the man was dead and gone, like cowards that hunt in packs, they seemed to need each other to keep their courage up. Perhaps because deep inside themselves they know that they all colluded to do something terribly wrong.

What are the facts?

On the 13th of December 2001 five armed men drove through the gates of the Parliament House in a white Ambassador fitted out with an Improvised Explosive Device. When they were challenged they jumped out of the car and opened fire. They killed eight security personnel and a gardener. In the gun battle that followed, all five attackers were killed. In one of the many versions of confessions he made in police custody, Afzal Guru identified the men as Mohammed, Rana, Raja, Hamza and Haider. That’s all we know about them even today. L.K. Advani, the then Home Minister, said they ‘looked like Pakistanis.’ (He should know what Pakistanis look like right? Being a Sindhi himself.) Based only on Afzal’s confession (which the Supreme Court subsequently set aside citing ‘lapses’ and ‘violations of procedural safeguards’) the Government of India recalled its Ambassador from Pakistan and mobilised half a million soldiers to the Pakistan border. There was talk of nuclear war. Foreign embassies issued Travel Advisories and evacuated their staff from Delhi. The standoff lasted for months and cost India thousands of crores.

On the 14th of December 2001 the Delhi Police Special Cell claimed it had cracked the case. On the 15th of December it arrested the ‘master mind’ Professor S.A.R Geelani in Delhi and Showkat Guru and Afzal Guru in a fruit market in Srinagar. Subsequently they arrested Afsan Guru, Showkat’s wife. The media enthusiastically disseminated the Special Cell’s version. These were some of the headlines: ‘DU Lecturer was Terror Plan Hub’, ‘Varsity Don Guided Fidayeen’, ‘Don Lectured on Terror in Free Time.’ Zee TV broadcast a ‘docudrama’ called December 13th , a recreation that claimed to be the ‘Truth Based on the Police Charge Sheet.’ (If the police version is the truth, then why have courts?) Then Prime Minister Vajpayee and L.K. Advani publicly appreciated the film. The Supreme Court refused to stay the screening saying that the media would not influence judges. The film was broadcast only a few days before the fast track court sentenced Afzal, Showkat and Geelani to death. Subsequently the High Court acquitted the ‘mastermind’, Professor S.A.R Geelani, and Afsan Guru. The Supreme Court upheld the acquittal. But in its 5th August 2005 judgment it gave Mohammed Afzal three life sentences and a double death sentence.

Contrary to the lies that have been put about by some senior journalists who would have known better, Afzal Guru was not one of “the terrorists who stormed Parliament House on December 13th 2001” nor was he among those who “opened fire on security personnel, apparently killing three of the six who died.” (That was the BJP Rajya Sabha MP, Chandan Mitra, in The Pioneer, October 7th 2006). Even the police charge sheet does not accuse him of that. The Supreme Court judgment says the evidence is circumstantial: “As is the case with most conspiracies, there is and could be no direct evidence amounting to criminal conspiracy.” But then it goes on to say: “The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties had shaken the entire nation, and the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender.”

Who crafted our collective conscience on the Parliament Attack case? Could it have been the facts we gleaned from the papers? The films we saw on TV?

There are those who will argue that the very fact that the courts acquitted S.A.R Geelani and convicted Afzal proves that the trial was free and fair. Was it?

The trial in the fast-track court began in May 2002. The world was still convulsed by post 9/11 frenzy. The US government was gloating prematurely over its ‘victory’ in Afghanistan. The Gujarat pogrom was ongoing. And in the Parliament Attack case, the Law was indeed taking its own course. At the most crucial stage of a criminal case, when evidence is presented, when witnesses are cross-examined, when the foundations of the argument are laid — in the High Court and the Supreme Court you can only argue points of law, you cannot introduce new evidence — Afzal Guru, locked in a high security solitary cell, had no lawyer. The court-appointed junior lawyer did not visit his client even once in jail, he did not summon any witnesses in Afzal’s defence and did not cross examine the prosecution witnesses. The judge expressed his inability to do anything about the situation.

Even still, from the word go, the case fell apart. A few examples out of many:

How did the police get to Afzal? They said that S.A.R Geelani led them to him. But the court records show that the message to arrest Afzal went out before they picked up Geelani. The High Court called this a ‘material contradiction’ but left it at that.

The two most incriminating pieces of evidence against Afzal were a cellphone and a laptop confiscated at the time of arrest. The Arrest Memos were signed by Bismillah, Geelani’s brother, in Delhi. The Seizure Memos were signed by two men of the J&K Police, one of them an old tormentor from Afzal’s past as a surrendered ‘militant’. The computer and cellphone were not sealed, as evidence is required to be. During the trial it emerged that the hard disc of the laptop had been accessed after the arrest. It only contained the fake home ministry passes and the fake identity cards that the terrorists used to access Parliament. And a Zee TV video clip of Parliament House. So according to the police, Afzal had deleted all the information except the most incriminating bits, and he was speeding off to hand it over to Ghazi Baba, who the charge sheet described as the Chief of Operations.

A witness for the prosecution, Kamal Kishore, identified Afzal and told the court he had sold him the crucial SIM card that connected all the accused in the case to each other on the 4th of December 2001. But the prosecution’s own call records showed that the SIM was actually operational from November 6th 2001.

It goes on and on, this pile up of lies and fabricated evidence. The courts note them, but for their pains the police get no more than a gentle rap on their knuckles. Nothing more.

Then there’s the back story. Like most surrendered militants Afzal was easy meat in Kashmir — a victim of torture, blackmail, extortion. In the larger scheme of things he was a nobody. Anyone who was really interested in solving the mystery of the Parliament Attack would have followed the dense trail of evidence that was on offer. No one did, thereby ensuring that the real authors of conspiracy will remain unidentified and uninvestigated.

But now that Afzal Guru has been hanged, I hope our collective conscience has been satisfied. Or is our cup of blood still only half full?

Hanging of Afzal Guru: India Provided Another Martyr to Kashmiris

The hanging of Afzal Guru, a local Kashmiri, has convinced many youngsters in J&K that the Indian state is ready to trample on their rights. There is open talk of rebellion on the internet. “Guru is martyred. Welcome to another 30 years of war,” says a Facebook post.

This is especi­ally because of the perception that Afzal  was not given a fair trial and executed by the Congress to appeal to Hindutva votes in 2014.

Scores of Kashmiris are in jails or in hiding after the 2010 ‘street intifada’. Silence over 125 civilian deaths due to police and CRPF action hasn’t helped. Police has filed FIRs in only 20 cases, while even minors have been punished in stone-pelting incidents.

At the political level, things are not moving forward. The New Delhi-Srinagar dialogue remains stalled for the past many years. Afzal’s hanging now ensures Hurriyat will stay away from talks at least for a couple of years. Polls due in Kashmir late next year.

Despite statements and promises, AFSPA continues to remain in force across the Valley and there seems little hope that the army will agree to any withdrawal, even partial. A complete withdrawal would have been a big confidence-booster.

The rise of Hindu terrorism and Hindutva across the country makes many Kashmiris sceptical about a safe future with and in India.

Kashmir has now got its second empty martyr’s grave. And somehow, the mere fact of it being empty gives it more resonance—as if an echo chamber has been added to that other one lying vacant, that of Maqbool Bhat. The one reason why Mohammed Afzal Guru’s body was not handed to his family was the fear that his grave would become a rallying point for anti-India sentiments in the Valley. That effect is all the more palpable in absentia—with his body lying secured and quarantined in a grave in Delhi’s Tihar jail. The hasty, early morning hanging of Afzal Guru has become a new inflection point in the Kashmir story—its violent history of estrangement and anger.

A little over a year away from assembly elections in the state, Kashmiris are glorifying Afzal as “a martyr of the nation”. Three days after his execution, they have dug him a grave next to Bhat’s at the Martyrs’ Graveyard Eidgah in Srinagar. And placed an epitaph similar to the one on Bhat’s: “Shaheed-e-Watan Mohammed Afzal Guru: His remains are lying with the Indian government as a trust of Kashmiri nation, and we await its return.” The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front founder too had been executed in Tihar—on February 11, 1984—and it’s next to him that Afzal now lies buried. Bhat’s hanging had marked a watershed in the history of Kashmir as a full-blown insurgency had broken out in the region five years later, with thousands of youth idolising him.

In Srinagar, so paranoid was the state machinery of history repeating itself that it tried to forestall it. The police removed his epitaph on Tuesday night, only to replace it a day later, fearing wider protests. On February 9, the day of the hanging, funeral prayers were held for Afzal across the Valley despite a strict curfew. Anti-India protests have not dimmed even five days after the event—a grim remin­der of the 2010 agitation. An indefinite curfew in place since Afzal’s hanging has not quelled it. Three young men have already lost their lives.

How this climate of anger will play out is a big question for the state government. In the long run, it’s the spectre of a spurt in militancy that will haunt J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah and most Kashmiris. Many are apprehensive that Afzal’s controversial hanging will reinforce the feeling of alienation among Kashmiris, with another generation turning towards militancy and pushing the Valley back into its recurrent nightmare.

Even Omar, despite his patchy record in handling mass psychology in Kashmir, seems to instinctively sense something is horribly wrong this time. “Like it or not, this has reinforced the point that there is no justice,” Omar had said in the aftermath of the hanging. “We will have to deal with how we can change that sort of alienation.” And then, also, that the immediate fallout was security-related and “far less challenging than the long-term effects”.

The nervy state’s worst-ever three-day censorship on local media hasn’t helped things either. Newspapers (about 50 hit the stands in Srinagar every day) suspended publication, citing orders from the authorities despite no written order being produced. And a population of seven million, cooped up indoors, remained virtually disconnected, with cable as well as mobile network and internet blocked.

It didn’t stop social networking sites from being flooded with talk of rebellion. At the forefront are young, educated, tech-savvy Kashmiris who have grown up amidst conflict, nurse a deep sense of alienation and bear a grudge against the Indian State.

“Afzal Guru is martyred. Welcome to another 30 years of war,” said Omar, a young doctor, in his Facebook post. “It was February then (when Bhat was hanged). It is February now. This is not the time to whip up passions, because the seeds for a fresh revolution have perhaps been sown by the oppressor itself,” said another post. These youngsters have replaced their profile pictures with slogans like ‘I am Afzal, hang me’, the background black, as a mark of protest.

Mohammed Altaf Khan, 63-year-old former schoolteacher and one of Bhat’s close aides, better known by his nom de guerre Azam Inqilabi (the great revolutionary), says he has “not even an iota of doubt” that Afzal’s hanging would incite a new generation of Kashmiris to pick up arms.

“Thousands of young Kashmiris came out on the streets during the 2008 and 2010 agitations,” he says. “They were convinced that non-violence would force India to find a permanent solution for Kashmir. But by hanging Afzal, Indians have sent a clear message that they are rash and brash in their decisions when it comes to Kashmir. India has literally instigated one more of our generations to become mujahideen. It will not happen tomorrow, but I can say without any fear of contradiction that Afzal’s hanging has sown the seeds of another armed revolution.”

For many in Delhi, Inqilabi’s statement may appear as rhetoric, an exaggeration, but there are plenty of signs on the ground that evoke a sense of foreboding. For instance, scores of Kashmiris, in their teens and 20s, are either in jails, or in hiding or making rounds of police stations after the 2010 ‘street intifada’. Fuelling the anger is the Omar Abdullah government’s inexplicable silence over the cases of 125 civilian deaths in police and crpf action during the agitation. The police has till date filed firs only in 20 cases despite court intervention, while even minors have been punished for participating in stone-pelting. Since the new year, the government has also been reopening old cases against former militants in its bid to control the dissent.

Police sources say that after the 2010 agitation, at least two dozen young men joined militant groups, particularly the Lashkar-e-Toiba. The actual number could be much more. Unlike the ’90s, things are shrouded in secrecy. At times, even the families are caught unawares. Militancy may no longer be an option with the new generation of Kashmiris, but yes, Afzal’s hanging is likely to heighten the Kashmiri alienation. The implications would not be immediate, as some tend to believe, but they will be there. We can only keep our fingers crossed.

Kashmir’s former director-general of tourism and prominent political commentator Mohammed Ashraf too says a Kashmiri “takes his own time to react”. “Maqbool Bhat was hanged in 1984. Kashmiri boys started crossing LoC for arms and training from 1987 onwards, and we then had 1990. Similarly, this hanging too will have a long-term impact and we may see another eruption after a couple of years.”

Indeed, PDP chief spokesperson Naeem Akhtar thinks the very fact that Kashmir hasn’t erupted on expected lines is wor­rying: “Kashmir has been a place which would erupt even on minor issues. Afzal’s hanging has delivered a sense of defeat among Kashmiris, more dangerous in the long run.”

Back in Afzal’s native village Seer Jagir in Sopore, soldiers of 22 Rashtriya Rifles guard the only entrance—a wide steel gate. Near the gate, an instruction board lists the dos and don’ts of passing through the small village. Some years ago, on the roof of the Sadbhavana school built by the army in the village, soldiers had written in bold letters: “We love humanity.” A few metres ahead, though, another had this chilling warning: “One bullet, one terrorist.” So much for goodwill.

Born into an affluent family of apple merchants, Afzal would have been a doctor by this time, perhaps living comfortably and in prosperous obscurity somewhere in West Asia, like many Kashmiri doctors, rather than making it to the headlines if things hadn’t gone awry. As someone who once crossed over the LoC to fight the Indian State but who later also surrendered, it proved difficult for authorities to believe he had come entirely clean.

“Afzal wanted to live quietly with his family, but the STF (the notorious counter-insurgency wing of the Kashmir police) would not allow him,” his wife Tabassum wrote in her appeal to the Indian government in 2004. “Afzal was to leave his home, family and settle in Delhi again. He struggled hard to earn a living and he had decided to bring me and Ghalib to Delhi. Like any other family, we dreamed of living together peacefully and bringing up our children, giving them a good education and seeing them grow up to be good human beings. That dream was cut short when (Afzal was arrested in the Parliament attack case).” This dream will now never be. It was cut short in a way Tabassum, like many others, could never have imagined—coming to know of her husband’s exe­cution on television news, being denied even the grace of a last meeting.

The family had been persecuted even after Afzal’s arrest and subsequent conviction. Police and army raided their home countless times, forcing them to abandon it for almost one year. “For one year we were not allowed to see Afzal. We handed over his surrender certificate given by the BSF to a Supreme Court lawyer who later denied receiving it,” Tabassum had said. “Will you speak out at the injustice my husband has faced? Will you speak out on my behalf? I am, of course, fighting for my husband’s life, for the life of my son’s father. But I also speak as a Kashmiri woman who is losing faith in Indian democracy and its ability to be fair to Kashmiri Muslims.”

Tabassum had visited Afzal in Tihar in November 2012. “The meeting was a routine one. Afzal gave no indication that his days were numbered. His only worry was the future of (his 14-year-old son) Ghalib whom he wan­ted to become a writer,” Afzal’s cousin Yasin Guru said. He pours scorn on Union home minister Sushil­kumar Shinde’s statement that Afzal’s family was info­r­med about his execution via  speed post­—the missive reaching them two days after the hanging. “I wonder how a country that boasts about its democratic credentials can be so stone-hearted,” says Yasin.

There’s across-the-board sympathy for Afzal largely because of the belief that his conviction rested solely on circumstantial evidence. Says Lalit Magazine, a Jaipur-based Kashmiri Pandit, “Whatever little faith I had in India’s justice, I have lost it completely (after Afzal’s hanging). I am sad and shocked. Votebank politics has prevailed over justice and fair play.”

There are lots of other voices questioning the timing of Afzal’s execution. The timing is symbolic—it took place two days before Bhat’s death anniversary. The choice of date of Afzal’s hanging was deliberate, many Kashmiris say. Like every year, pro-freedom groups had already called for a black day on Bhat’s anniversary. The Indian government could not have been ignorant of it. They think Indians wanted to send a clear message to Kash­miris: ‘We don’t care for your sensitivities. You are a helpless people, unwilling to accept your defeat.’” Afzal’s family, meanwhile, is asking only one question: “Didn’t he deserve the right to see his family before his execution?”

It has been eleven days since Afzal Guru was hanged, and Sopore is in mourning. The apple orchards encircling the town stand bare in the winter freeze, the temperatures at shivering point even during the day. The town itself is crawling with the CRPF and the army, as always. They are everywhere: in the alleys, on the streets, around the main square. As we go past the only entrance to the village Afzal Guru is from, Seer Jagir, scores of local policemen and riot-control vehicles can be seen camped out at the only playground the town has. It looks like an island of sorts, with the army at the centre and the river Jhelum around it.

We park our car outside Afzal’s anc­estral house. A black banner, alongside another bearing the face and legend ‘Shaheed-e-Watan Afzal Guru’, flutters in the icy wind on an otherwise sunny February day.

A young boy appe­ars on the terrace of the double-storey house. But Ghalib, Afzal’s only child, disappears just as soon. Not wanting to intrude on his grief, we decide to leave him alone. But before we can move any further, we hear an angry voice scream out: “What more do you want? You have all killed my husband. You hanged an honest man to fulfil the conscience of your people. You have taken away everything I had. Leave us alone….”

It’s Tabassum, wife of Afzal Guru. It hasn’t been long since the news of her husband’s hanging on February 9­­—after having spent seven years on death row—filtered in through television channels. The same ones showing ministers and politicians congratulating themsel­ves on television cameras for sending a terrorist to the gallows. The Gover­n­ment of India letter bearing the news arrived two days later, well after the execution. The hanging was a secret, but the grief is public. And Tabassum is inconsolable: “You are all butchers,” she continues to scream at us. “You killed him without any evidence and reason. You killed him for your politics and your games. Why have you done this to me?” The question hangs in the empty air; we do not have an answer.

Surely even a terrorist deserves the benefits of a legal system till the very end? The state had made its decision, but Tabassum, like many others, was left wondering whether Afzal was given a fair trial. As she speculates a future without her husband, Kashmir speculates about its future in the aftermath of the hanging.

People have gathered in the upstairs drawing room. Cousins, brothers, uncles, other relatives, they are all here, talking in groups. Just the, there is a call from the local PDP leader and an animated conversation breaks out. The party, a family member informs us, has been making overtures to Tabassum.

Aijaz Guru, Afzal’s elder brother, is angry. “No one supported him,” he says, “be it Kashmir’s politicians, separatists or anyone else. They all abandoned him. Now everyone is playing politics in his name, drawing mileage out of his death. Everyone is gaining at the cost of a poor Kashmiri’s life.”

A thin man joins the gathering at this point, quietly listening to the discussion around him. Afzal’s younger brother Hillal is less concerned about the politics outside, he thinks there is more that is being played inside. “No one used to come here,” he says. “Tabas­sum has been living with her parents for the last few years. Now they have gathered here for the mourning of my brother, but all that is going on in here is politics.” People have already started making money in Afzal’s name, Hillal says. Local politicians have started dividing the family on political lines. “No one is telling the real story. It was only Tabassum who fought for her husband. Even I am not in a position to help her. I am a poor man and it is hard to survive here.”

Afzal and his brothers have led completely different lives. Elder brother Aijaz is a prosperous timber merchant, his prosperity evident in his impeccable attire. Hillal looks, and is, less prosperous. They had not kept in touch much over the last few years, but Afzal’s death has brought them together. “People are planning a rally,” says Aijaz. “Thousands will gather for it and march in protest. I hope the situation doesn’t get out of control.” He’s willing to fight for justice for his brother but at the same time maintain a safe distance from the politics. “I am an Indian,” Aijaz is quick to emphasise. “I am a businessman who has nothing to do with separatism and I have been living separa­tely from the family for the last 15 years.”

Meanwhile, the drawing-room discussion veers towards the JKLF from whom Afzal had disengaged but which ex-miltant badge he had to wear the rest of his life. The JKLF, family members say, should not be allowed to get any mileage out of the hanging. The PDP has approached them, but the family is confused by the direction they should take. The National Conference too has approa­ched Afzal’s wife, but there are no takers for them in this house of mourners. Chief minister Omar Abdullah may cry himself hoarse saying he was kept in the dark, but no one’s willing to grant him benefit of the doubt.

A group of villagers has gathered outside. “He (Afzal) was different from the others in his family,” they tell us. “He was a good student, a kind person and an honest man. He was influenced by the idea of an Azad Kashmir.” Younger brother Hillal could not agree more: “He was not like us. He believed in Islam and humanity. He used to read a lot and think about the future of Kashmir, our people and culture.”

Her anger dissipated for the moment, Tabassum too offers a few glimpses into their married life. She says Afzal was a gentle man who wanted to lead a simple life. “I will always be proud of being his wife, nobody can change my belief,” she says. She also declares that all the letters Afzal is said to have written to the separatists are actually fake. “He never wrote to them. All that has surfaced in his name is nothing but a gimmick created by separatist leaders for their political gains.” In one such letter to Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Afzal is said to have claimed that he was ashamed that his family had asked for a mercy petition as he wanted to die a martyr. Tabassum claims Afzal never wrote such a letter. “He never apologised for the mercy petition,” she insists. The family categorically maintains that most of the news about Afzal is simply not true and has been planted by different political agencies. “But there is no point in talking about it now,” says Tabassum resignedly. “Why are these questions being raised only after my husband’s death? How many people know about the kind of torture he had to endure in Delhi? Will we ever know under what circumstances he was forced to make a statement in front of the media?”

The family insists we avoid talking to Ghalib, Afzal’s teenage son. He was robbed of the simple pleasures of growing up on his father’s lap, listening to him tell stories, or even poems. “My son will follow the same path as his father. Become a good, kind and honest man like him. His father is now a hero, he too will become one,” says Tabassum, determination momentarily overshadowing the grief in her voice. Ghalib may be young but perhaps he’s not entirely unaware of how his father’s death marks an important chapter in the Kashmir saga.

Prof S.A.R. Geelani, who was accused with Afzal Guru and Shaukat Hussain in the Dec 13, 2001, Parliament attack case, was acquitted by the Supreme Court in 2003. He tells Panini Anand why he’s shocked by the Afzal hanging.

Do you think that by hanging Afzal, the government has made him a hero for Kashmir?

The way the government has dealt with him; he is the hero for everyone in Kashmir. He is our martyr, our hero.

Two hangings in three months. Some people put Kasab and Afzal on the same level.

How can anybody do this? What kind of perverted mind equates the two?

What do you think about the timing of his hanging?

I feel it was nothing but a political decision. Look at the way in which the Supreme Court worded its judgement. The sentence the court used is: “to satisfy the collective conscience of the society…”  This is a political language, not a legal language. It’s clear that law doesn’t want him to be punished; there are political considerations which want this man to be hanged.

When you say, it was a political decision, are you hinting at the hardline stance of the ruling Congress party?

There has always been a Hindutva lobby within the Congress party. It’s nothing new. Look at the recent  Gujarat elections. Ahmed Patel was nowhere to be seen. Wasn’t it the Congress party that opened the gates of the Babri Masjid for worship by the Hindus? For the last couple of years, innocent Muslim youth across the country have been jailed. Had they not facilitated, the Babri Masjid would have not fallen. The Congress is misusing the UAPA and AFSPA. There are many shades of Congress party which come out from time to time as and when required for political benefits. I don’t see any difference between Congress and BJP. They are two sides of the same coin.

What about the state leadership? The day Afzal was hanged, many Kashmiri leaders were in Delhi. Don’t you think that the state’s political leaders and the government were taken into confidence before hanging Afzal?

The Jammu & Kashmir government is like a puppet. Remember the day when Kasab was hanged? The  secrecy was maintained. Go and see what Omar Abdullah tweeted then. He said that if this can be done in secrecy, others could be done as well. He was hinting at Afzal Guru. There is no reason not to believe that he was not aware about it or rather, knew about it.

In 2006, Farooq Abdullah warned of serious consequences in the valley if Afzal was to be hanged. My feeling is, Omar Abdullah was taken into confidence on the matter. Why didn’t Omar fly a chopper for the family of Afzal, so that they could meet him for one last time? Seeing the unrest in the valley, Omar is singing a different tune now. I believe other mainstream parties were also taken into confidence on the Afzal issue.

You were one of the co-accused in this case. How do you see this punishment?

The Supreme Court acquitted me, otherwise I too would have faced the same punishment as Afzal Guru. It is completely inhuman what they have done to Afzal. This country prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy but today they have shown not even the basic human values. They have disregarded the basic human values; forget about the larger issues of a democratic system. The family was not informed. A small son was not allowed to see his father for the last time. My stand on Afzal’s case is very clear from very beginning that he never got a fair trial; never ever. People say that there was a trial process. Of course, there was— from trial court to high court and then the Supreme Court— but it was completely flawed and a farce. The judgment is presumptuous. He gave requests at least five times, seeking legal aid. He gave the names of the lawyers. Neeraj Bansal was made his counsel. If you see the records, you will find that Neeraj Bansal gave an application to the court saying that he doesn’t want to be Afzal’s advocate. The court asked him to do the job for assisting the court. So, he was not fighting the case for Afzal, he was assisting the court. It is completely a case of justice denied and today I can say that an innocent man was hanged.

How do you think the media has handled the issue?

Hitler had one Goebbels; today governments have many Goebbels in the form of the electronic and print media. They go on lying to the people till they are convinced that what they hear is the truth. They say that we should have respect for the courts, but do they have? The Supreme Court has declared the confession by Afzal illegal but they are showing it repeatedly even after his death. I mean, they are like vultures who want their pound of flesh from a dead man. Even the so-called security and other experts—I mean what kind of society do they want?

What is happening in Kashmir now?

In Kashmir, the message from the government is hard and harsh. The youth will get a message that there is no option; you can be heard only if you have a gun in your hand. No institution is going to help you. It’s only possible when you snatch your rights by using power. And it will bring disaster, not only to Kashmir but to the entire country. There was a different generation when Maqbool Bhat was hanged in 1984. Now, the Kashmiri youth is more informed, aware and literate. They are not like us; they are listening to the bullet fire and blasts since they were in the wombs, day and night. They are born under the shadow of the guns.

Will it affect the peace process and confidence building in Kashmir?

I pity the politicians for their narrow vision. They can’t see beyond the 2014 elections. They couldn’t see the disaster the hanging would bring to the people of Kashmir and this country. Today, it has been confirmed that Kashmir will never get justice from the Indian system.

While Afzal was innocent, you were acquitted. who are the perpetrators of the Parliament attack? Who are the culprits?

That is the question I have been raising since my release. If you see Afzal’s statement in the court, he has pointed a finger at the agencies. Everyone is talking about national security but nobody has bothered to look into those areas, role of agencies. I am shocked to see this. I was the first person to demand a white paper on this issue; the governments have never come up with it.

After Home Ministry’s offer to handover Afzal’s belongings to the family, will the family collect his belongings from Tihar and offer prayers at his grave?

The family’s demand is that Afzal’s body should be handed to them—to enable them to conduct the last rites. Prayers can be offered from anywhere; sitting in Kashmir or any other place. As far as his belongings are concerned, they belong not only to his family but to Kashmir. They are a treasure now.

by Dr Shabir Choudhry

On the morning of Saturday 9th February 2913, Mohammed Afzal Guru was hanged in Tihar Jail of New Delhi and buried inside the Jail. This undesirable action was carried out only two days before 29th death anniversary of Maqbool Butt, who was also hanged in the same jail on 11 February 1984.

It was not the first time a Kashmiri leader was executed in unsatisfactory manner and buried without handing the body to the relatives. Afzal Guru, whether guilty or innocent is no more with us, and let us pray that Almighty bless his soul.

Afzal Guru was accused of masterminding the attack on the Indian Parliament on 13 December 2001, in which 14 people lost their lives. All five attackers were killed on spot. India accused the Jaish-e-Mohammed militant group for this attack which has links with some officials of the Pakistani establishment. Afzal Guru and Shaukat Hussain Guru were sentenced to death in December 2002 for planning and providing logistic support for the attack. On appeal the sentence of Shaukat Hussain Guru was reduced to 10 years; and he was released on 30th December 2010.

In the same case, two other people, Delhi University Lecturer, SAR Geelani and Afshan Guru, wife of Shaukat Hussain Guru were acquitted due to a lack of evidence. What that suggests is that there must be some evidence against Afzal Guru and Shaukat Hussain Guru. Afzal Guru was to be executed on 20 October 2006, but after his wife’s clemency appeal to the President of India, it was put on hold. On 3 February 2013, the present President of India Pranab Mukherjee rejected the appeal, hence the execution of the accused.

It is not common in India to hang people for murder. Since 2004, only two people have been executed. Mohammed Ajmal Kasab was executed in November 2012 for his involvement in the 2008 Bombay attacks; and Afzal Guru for his involvement on the attacks on the Indian Parliament.

One may not say that Afzal guru was completely innocent man; but he certainly did not deserve a death sentence. In one TV interview he acknowledged his role in the incident, which was limited to providing logistic support and weapons. He also acknowledged that he went to Pakistani administered Kashmir as a JKLF man for training; and he later on established links with Jaish E Mohammed. One Important point here is that Afzal Guru was not part of the team that attacked the Parliament. He did not kill anyone, although he had some supportive role in the incident. People who are directly involved in murders, at times, do not get death sentence, and question arises why Afzal Guru had to be hanged? Why his sentence could not have been changed to life imprisonment?

Timing of the hanging and the way it was carried out, and what they did to his body speaks volumes about callousness of the authorities. If he had to be sentenced to death, why he had to be hanged two days before the death anniversary of Maqbool Butt, when feeling are running very high; and anti India feeling are at its peak? Why his family was not allowed to meet him before executing him? Above all, why his death body was not given to his family?

Is that not clear breach of fundamental human rights, and against ethics and morality? Is this not to rub salt in wounds of the suffering people? Is this not a message to angry and frustrated people of Kashmir that their sentiments, dignity and honour were not important to the authorities?

What that indicates is that some people don’t want any kind of peace or normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir, as Kashmir dispute has become a big business and a valuable source for winning public support or diverting attention from other important issues. One Kashmiri journalist today phoned me and asked my views about this incident. I expressed my serious anger, concern and strongly opposed this action; and called it a breach of fundamental human rights.

He agreed with me, but added that Afzal Guru was not innocent, as he had some role in the incident – he provided weapons which were used to kill people; but he should not have been hanged. He also agreed that his body must have been given to his family. He said: ‘Choudhry Sahib the Kashmir dispute will never be resolved. One condition for a plebiscite is normal situation; and those who are in position of power always ensure that the normal situation does not prevail in Jammu and Kashmir State’.

Commenting on the incident General secretary of CPI(ML) Liberation, Dipankar Bhattacharya said: “Faced with growing popular opposition and resistance one very front, the Congress party and the UPA government are desperately trying to appease the BJP and the communal-fascist brigade.” ²

Arun Dhati Roy writes: ‘Like most surrendered militants Afzal was easy meat in Kashmir — a victim of torture, blackmail, extortion. In the larger scheme of things he was a nobody. Anyone who was really interested in solving the mystery of the Parliament Attack would have followed the dense trail of evidence that was on offer.

No one did, thereby ensuring that the real authors of conspiracy will remain unidentified and uninvestigated. But now that Afzal Guru has been hanged, I hope our collective conscience has been satisfied. Or is our cup of blood still only half full?’ ³

The Supreme Court judgment says the evidence is circumstantial: “As is the case with most conspiracies, there is and could be no direct evidence amounting to criminal conspiracy.” But then it goes on to say: “The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties had shaken the entire nation, and the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender.”

Already demonstrations on both parts of the divided State have started. Whereas, demonstrations on the Indian side of Jammu and Kashmir have become violent; demonstrations on the Pakistani side were peaceful and despite government support numbers were limited to few hundred people. Fearing demonstrations as a result of Afzal Guru’s hanging the authorities in Jammu and Kashmir imposed a curfew, but hundreds of people still came out resulting in some injuries.

The big test will be on 11 February. Despite the curfew, people will come out in thousands; and that could result in serious clashes resulting in loss of valuable lives and damage to property. I hope common sense prevails and the authorities do not show heavy handedness; and let angry people protest peacefully and express their sentiments.

This incident will remain controversial, as some will claim he was innocent, others will say he was part of the terror project and was rightly executed. Some will say he had some role in it but did not deserve death sentence. Whether innocent or not, but by hanging Afzal Guru India has provided another prominent martyr to the Kashmiri Muslims. Afzal Guru is dead, but he will live as a martyr, and will boost anti India sentiments. My fear is that some groups will claim that they have no hope for justice; and that will provide new recruits for violence and terrorism.

References:
1. http://www.jammukashmir.tv/player/News-Update/Afzal-Guru-a-terrorist-or-freedom-fighter-Afzal-Guru%5C%5C%5C%5C%5C%5Cs-interview-after-2001-Parliament-attack-.html
2. http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/Afzal-Guru-hanging-who-said-what/Article1-1009265.aspx
3. http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/a-perfect-day-for-democracy/article4397705.ece
4. ibid

Democracy’s Noose kept Afzal Guru hanging, till death

by Avinash Pandey

He had to die. Die, because a nation wanted him to, or so were we told by the Supreme Court of the nation. He had to die to satisfy the collective conscience of the nation, the court added for a good measure. So, he did die, nay, hanged till death. His body was left hanging for a full thirty minutes after the levers were pulled, we were told by a media that was less reporting on the incident and more speculating on it.

The media had turned this somber occasion of a death into cannibalistic carnival reminiscent of a 20-20 cricket match on the anvil. They told us everything about the last moments of the one condemned to death. Most of it was later found to be completely false. They told us how uneasy the convict on the death row was on the eve of his hanging only to be rebuffed by the jail officials next morning who told us how calm and composed he, in fact, was.

Whether the collective conscience of the nation was satisfied or not was the only question they did not bother to find answers for. They paraded the family members of the victims of the attack the death-convict had allegedly masterminded and they interviewed political leaders asserting that India would not take an attack on its very heart lying down. They looked around for visuals of those celebrating the hanging, almost all of them clad in saffron scarves while waving the Indian tricolour and inflicted the same on the nation that has started to express itself through the likes of Arnab Goswamis screaming on the television sets.

They did, still, not try to find out where, and in whom, the conscience of the nation resides , forget making efforts to know if it was finally satisfied or not. They did not need to bother to, for they had delivered their judgement far ahead of the courts and were now merely getting disgusted with delay in hanging the convict. The delay, for them, was symptomatic of all that was wrong with India, their India to be precise. They had been questioning the delay incessantly. Their ‘nation’ wanted to know when the convict would be hanged.

The convict, by the way, had a name. His name was Afzal Guru. He was a citizen of India. Yes, in case we forgot, as the mainstream media wanted us to, he was a citizen of India. He was entitled to all the rights a citizen, any citizen of India has. None of his rights, including the right to life with dignity unless taken out by due process of law, were respected by the nation. He was denied a fair trial as many of the legal stalwarts of the country believe.

Now, he was robbed of his dignity even in death. He was hanged in utter secrecy, a secrecy that baffled even the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. Let’s make no mistakes though. Mr. Singh was not upset at “the hanging” but at the “circumvention of basic human parameters”. Basic human parameters, for the uninitiated, mean nothing more than the fact that his family was not informed about his hanging and was not given a chance to meet him ‘one last time’.

The fact that Manmohan Singh is known for being upset after the illegalities have been committed and the benefits reaped by those under his immediate supervision is beside the point. Remember his stand on stone pelting in Kashmir, the very same state Afzal came from. He was upset then too and demanded maximum restraint from the security forces who showered bullets on those who pelted stones. He talked of humane policing. He told all and sundry how much he valued the lives of Indian citizens, even the Kashmiris. P Chidambaram, his subordinate who was directly in command of the security forces, ordered maximum crackdown on the protesters meanwhile without upsetting the Prime Minister anymore. He had already exhausted his quota of being upset about the issue.

Afzal Guru’s case, however, was a different one. Here was a man hanged not for absolute legal reasons but to satisfy the ‘collective conscience of the nation’. The evidence against him was circumstantial at best, not enough for hanging someone even for those with an absolute belief in capital punishment, forget those like us who oppose the death sentence as a residual barbarity in modern times. He was given death sentence nonetheless.

The conscience of the nation was not satisfied. It did not want him just to be given a death sentence. It wanted the death warrant signed and executed as soon as possible. Afzal Guru, the man, had been converted into an issue, an emotive one on top of that. The nation, read Bharatiya Janata Party was baying for his blood. They had to, for everything about the wretched fellow served the BJP’s purpose. He was a Muslim and a Kashmiri. He was accused of being involved in the conspiracy (we cannot write conspiring as there is no concrete evidence for that till date) to attack Indian parliament.

What better stick could they, and tens of other amoebic heads the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh clan have, to beat Congress and its politics of ‘minority appeasement.’ Afzal was no more a person languishing in jail for a crime he committed, as per the political doctrine of collective conscience, if not legally as per his own assertion. BJP has converted him into a devil whose dead body would be the hinge on which would turn the discourse of national security.

It was not about national security though, not for the BJP at least. After all it remains the same party which had sent the then Union Minister Jaswant Singh to Kandahar as an escort to the known terrorist Masood Azhar and two others in return for the passengers of ill fated Air India flight IC 814. It was also the same party which had unceremoniously returned the army after keeping it in a forward attack position for almost two years without achieving a single stated objective of the misadventure. The cost of the catastrophic buildup on the borders was astronomical. BJP led NDA had successfully managed to get more than 1500 Indian soldiers killed without fighting a war.

Neither had it anything to do either with minority appeasement or BJP’s newly found love about democratic institutions. It has kept its mouth tightly shut on the case of Balwant Singh Rajoana, convicted for the assassination of Beant Singh, the then Chief Minister of Punjab. Rajoana, unlike Afzal Guru, has neither sought any clemency nor shown any remorse for the notorious killing even while admitting his role in the same.

Unlike Afzal Guru, further, Rajoana was not hanged even after death warrant being signed as the jail officials returned the same under, allegedly, instructions of Akali Dal-BJP government ruling the state. Parkash Singh Badal, the Chief Minister of Punjab, had himself approached the home ministry asking for putting the decision on hold. The reasons he gave for the demand were simple. He wanted the ministry to respect the sentiments of the people; the sentiments that reflected in Akal Takht, supreme religious body of the Sikhs, declaring Rajoana as ‘Zinda Shaheed’.

The case of Afzal Guru was no different. There were a lot of sentiments attached to him. The Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, as in Rajoana’s case, had warned the central government about the law and order problems that would have ensued following his hanging. The centre did take notice of all that as it was evidenced from the secret hanging and the immediate clampdown on Kashmiris’ right to protest. The state was put under unrelenting curfew. All channels of communication, including social media were stopped.

No, I am not asking for Rajoana’s hanging. No one with a firm belief in humanity can ask for anyone’s killing, that is a foray of the thousands of murderous Bajarangis of the BJP stable. It is not about Rajoana at all in fact.

It is about BJP and its double speak. And of Congress’ abject surrender to this politics of homicidal hate. Afzal Guru was not convicted for legal reasons. Neither was he hanged for the same. He was sacrificed on the altar of petty electoral gains BJP wanted to make out of his death. And on the altar of the growing desperation of the Congress ridden by a battery of scams and bad governance. It is about the difference between Kashmir and Punjab. And the people living in the states.

It is about the very future of the nation and Congress in it, as well. Congress might succeed, for a while, in puncturing BJP’s Hindutva balloon and emerge victorious in 2014. It is going to lose the battle nonetheless. It is not the first time it is flirting with soft Hindutva politics. It has done that in 1989 by allowing the juggernaut of rathyatras and Shilanyas. It did never come back anywhere close to power in most of north India ever again. It did the same in Gujarat while trying to fight Modi’s Hindutva with Shankarsingh Baghela’s Hindutva. The results are for everyone to see.

If only Congress knew that people prefer originals over photocopies, even when it is all about banality of evil.

I did not know Afzal Guru personally. Neither did I know his wife and son. Today I know them all and my heart goes out to them. With ample help from the BJP, the Indian state has successfully made a hero out of a surrendered militant. With the new vacant grave it has dug in Kashmir for him, it has ensured immortality befitting a martyr on Afzal Guru.

None of it can offer any solace to the bereaved family whose only crime was to be related to Afzal Guru. Nor can it offer any solace to the democracy that has been demeaned by the act. I think of all those Pakistani friends telling me how lucky we are to be a democracy. I had never missed that half-jealous and half-desirous tone of those comments. I don’t know if I would believe them anymore.

Mr. Pandey, alias Samar is Programme Coordinator, Right to Food Programme, AHRC. He could be contacted at samar@ahrc.asia

India Appoints First Muslim as its Intelligence Bureau Chief

Hardcore operations man. Soft-spoken and genteel in the Lakhnavi mould. Team leader. And curiously, chain-smoker of India Kings cigarettes. These are some of the appellations colleagues use for Sayed Asif Ibrahim, an IPS officer of the 1977 batch who takes over on December 31 as chief of the Intelligence Bureau.

He’s the first Muslim to head an agency that’s at the centre of India’s security establishment. It fills a gap that has been long felt. It comes, however, at a politically loaded juncture—the UPA-II is going into election mode, with less than 18 months left for its normal schedule to play out. The appointment is being seen as a counter to the impression that Muslims don’t make it to key posts in intelligence. But it cannot subtract from Ibrahim’s track record, during which he handled key responsibilities like the Kashmir desk and the cyber security cell.

Ibrahim has had direct experience in anti-terror operations. He had zeroed in on jehadi leaders like Maulana Masood Azhar, who founded Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Omar Sheikh, of Daniel Pearl infamy—even playing a role in the latter’s arrest. Much before Azhar’s arrest and the exchange drama that followed, Ibrahim is said to have written to his seniors that Azhar “was the key to crucial anti-India developments in Pakistan”. And an officer of Delhi police’s special cell says, “At a time none of us were aware of the Indian Mujahideen, I remember Ibrahim telling us, ‘Don’t look to Pakistan after every terror attack. Look within too.’”

Another area of Ibrahim’s expertise, say colleagues, is psy-ops. One close associate says, “In Kashmir, he gradually started supplying editing and publishing software like QuarkXPress to Urdu newspapers with an anti-India stance. He even organised training sessions for their journalists and design staff. Slowly but surely, these publications ended up softening their anti-India stance. He turned the tables on them in one masterstroke.”

Ibrahim began as a police officer in Madhya Pradesh, where he served from 1977 to 1986 in the Ratlam, Morena and Gwalior districts. He had his share of encounters with the dacoits of the Chambal ravines. “In fact, on the very day he took charge as SP in Morena district, he neutralised the Ramesh Sikarwar gang, rescuing seven hostages after a fierce battle,” says V.K. Panwar, his batchmate and Madhya Pradesh’s D-G for community policing. Ibrahim was known to lead from the front. “He was involved in several encounters and killed several dreaded dacoits. Not only that, he shared his success with SPs of neighbouring districts. One of them even went on the head the CBI,” says a policeman who served under him.

Ibrahim has seen rough times too: as police chief of Gwalior district, he came under scrutiny when a rival gang attacked a police convoy and killed Munna Singh, a dacoit it was ferrying. Perhaps the only other awkward blip on his career scan occurred in 1993, after the Mumbai blasts: it turned out that convicted film star Sanjay Dutt had procured his general arms licence from Gwalior during the time Ibrahim was the police chief of the district. A few years ago, he was still attending court hearings related to that case.

It is said the late Madhavrao Scindia, Congress leader and from the former ruling family of Gwalior—with whom Ibrahim was close during his time in the district—gave him a leg up by choosing him as OSD when he became a Union minister. He then became OSD to Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, and went on to join the Intelligence Bureau. There was no coming back to Madhya Pradesh. As one of his IPS batchmates from the state puts it, “He left Gwalior in 1986 and has never looked back. In any case, if you spend seven or more years with the Intelligence Bureau, you generally become part of that system.”

Are Muslims Better-Off After the Indian Partition?

By Riaz Haq

www.riazhaq.com

There are some who question the founder’s wisdom in seeking partition of India to carve out Pakistan as an independent nation.  The doubters justifiably point to the rising tide of intolerance and increasing violence and  a whole range of problems and crises Pakistan is facing. They wonder aloud if it was a mistake to demand a separate country for Muslims of undivided India.

Are the critics correct in their assessment when they suggest that Muslims in Pakistan would have been better off without participation? To answer this question, let us look at the following facts and data:

Muslims, the New Untouchables in India:

While India maintains its facade of  religious tolerance, democracy and secularism through a few high-profile Muslim tokens among its high officials and celebrities, the ground reality for the vast majority of ordinary Muslims is much harsher.

An Indian government commission headed by former India Chief Justice Rajendar Sachar confirms that Muslims are the new untouchables in caste-ridden and communal India. Indian Muslims suffer heavy discrimination in almost every field from  education and housing to jobs.  Their incarceration rates are also much higher than their Hindu counterparts.

According to Sachar Commission report, Muslims are now worse off than the Dalit caste, or those called untouchables. Some 52% of Muslim men are unemployed, compared with 47% of Dalit men.  Among Muslim women, 91% are unemployed, compared with 77% of Dalit women. Almost half of Muslims over the age of 46 ca not read or write. While making up 11% of the population, Muslims account for 40% of India’s prison population. Meanwhile, they hold less than 5% of government jobs.

Upward Economic Mobility in Pakistan:

In spite of all of its problems, Pakistan has continued to offer  higher upward economic and social mobility to its citizens over the last two decades than India. Since 1990, Pakistan’s middle class had expanded by 36.5% and India’s by only 12.8%, according to an ADB report titled “Asia’s Emerging Middle Class: Past, Present And Future”.

Miles Corak of University of Ottawa calculates that the intergenerational earnings elasticity in Pakistan is 0.46, the same as in Switzerland. It means that a difference of 100%  between the incomes of a rich father and a poor father is reduced to 46% difference between their sons’ incomes. Among the 22 countries studied, Peru, China and Brazil have the lowest economic mobility with inter-generational elasticity of 0.67, 0.60 and 0.58 respectively. The highest economic mobility is offered by Denmark (0.15), Norway (0.17) and Finland (0.18).

The author also looked at Gini coefficient of each country and found reasonably good correlation between Gini and intergenerational income elasticity.

More evidence of upward mobility is offered by recent Euromonitor market research indicating that Pakistanis are seeing rising disposable incomes. It says that there were 1.8 million Pakistani households (7.55% of all households) and 7.9  million Indian households (3.61% of all households) in 2009 with disposable incomes of $10,001 or more. This translates into 282% increase (vs 232% in India) from 1995-2009 in households with disposable incomes of $10,001 or more. Consumer spending in Pakistan has increased at a 26 percent average pace the past three years, compared with 7.7 percent for Asia, according to Bloomberg.

East Pakistan Debacle:

Critics love to point out Pakistan’s break-up in 1971 as evidence of failure of Jinnah’s Pakistan.
They lavish praise on Bangladesh and scold Pakistan as part of the annual ritual a few days before Quaid-e-Azam’s every year.

Economic gap between East and West Pakistan in 1960s is often cited as a key reason for the secessionist movement led by Shaikh Mujib’s Awami League and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. This disparity has grown over the last 40 years, and the per capita income in Pakistan now stands at more than twice Bangladesh’s in 2012 in nominal dollar terms,  higher than 1.6 in 1971.

Here are some figures from Economist magazine’s EIU 2013:

Bangladesh GDP per head: $695 (PPP: $1,830)

Pakistan GDP per head: $1,410 (PPP: $2,960)

Pakistan-Bangladesh GDP per head Ratio: 2.03 ( PPP: 1.62)

Poverty, Hunger, Other Socioeconomic Indicators:

Pakistan’s employment growth has been the highest in South Asia region since 2000, followed by Nepal, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka in that order, according to a recent World Bank report titled “More and Better Jobs in South Asia”.

Total employment in South Asia (excluding Afghanistan and Bhutan) rose from 473 million in 2000 to 568 million in 2010, creating an average of just under 800,000 new jobs a month. In all countries except Maldives and Sri Lanka, the largest share of the employed are the low‐end self-employed.

Pakistanis have higher graduation rates in education and suffer lower levels of hunger and poverty than Indians and Bangladeshis.

Pakistanis spend more time in schools and colleges and graduate at a higher rate than their Indian counterparts in 15+ age group, according to a report on educational achievement by Harvard University researchersRobert Barro and Jong-Wha Lee.

Here is a summary of Barro-Lee’s 2010 data in percentage of 15+ age group students who have enrolled in and-or completed primary, secondary and tertiary education:

Education Level…….India……..

Pakistan

Primary (Total)……..20.9……….21.8

Primary (Completed)….18.9……….19.3

Secondary(Total)…….40.7……….34.6

Secondary(Completed)…0.9………..22.5

College(Total)………5.8………..5.5

College(Completed)…..3.1………..3.9

According to the latest world hunger index rankings, Pakistan ranks 57 while India and Bangladesh are worse at 65 and 68 among 79 countries ranked by International Food Policy Research Institute in 2012.

The latest World Bank data shows that India’s poverty rate of 27.5%, based on India’s current poverty line of $1.03 per person per day, is more than 10 percentage points higher than Pakistan’s 17.2%. Assam (urban), Punjab and Himachal Pradesh are the only three Indian  states with similar or lower poverty rates than Pakistan’s.

Clearly, Pakistanis have not lived up to Quaid-e-Azam’s vision of a tolerant and democratic Pakistan where the basic rights of all of its citizens, including religious and ethnic minorities, are fully respected. Popular Pakistani columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee put it well when he wrote: “Fortunately for him, Jinnah did not live long enough to see his dream betrayed by men unworthy even to utter his name. He died before total disillusionment could set in (though he had his suspicions that it was on its way) and broke his heart. From what we know of him, he was that rare being, an incorruptible man in all the many varied meanings of the word corruption, purchasable by no other, swayed by no other, perverted by no other; a man of honor, integrity and high ideals. That the majority of his countrymen have been found wanting in these qualities is this country’s tragedy.”

I do think, however, that all of the available and credible data and indicators confirm the fact that Muslims in Pakistan are not only much better off than they are elsewhere in South Asia, they also enjoy higher economic and social mobility than their counterparts in India and Bangladesh.

Ramachandra Guha Crusades Against the Hindu Right

I was born in a home of broad-minded Hindus. My father, though by caste a Brahmin, never wore a thread. His own father’s brother was a lifelong opponent of the caste system; a hostel he opened for Dalit students still functions in Bangalore city. My mother went from time to time to a temple, but was happy to eat with or make food for humans of any background or creed. Two of her brothers had married out of caste; a third had married a German.

When, in 1984, I got my first job, at the Centre for Social Studies in Calcutta, I had to fill in a questionnaire which, among other things, asked me to denote my religion. I wrote ‘Hindu’, immediately attracting the ire of a friend who worked at the same centre. He felt that a secular state had no business asking for a person’s religion, and thus I should have left the answer blank. This friend was a Marxist, so (although he would not then recognise or admit it) he actually subscribed to a faith of his own.

As I saw it, I was brought up, if loosely, in the Hindu tradition. One could still be a Hindu and not believe in—indeed, militantly oppose—caste discrimination and the subjection of women. One could be a Hindu and still be respectful of other faiths and traditions. That is what my reading of Gandhi had taught me. And if Gandhi, who in adult life did not enter a temple, and who was vilified by sants and sankaracharyas, could yet call himself a Hindu, so—when pushed—could I.

Five years after this debate with a Marxist, I encountered a rather more direct challenge to my Hindu faith. I had been with a team of scholars to investigate a communal conflict in and around the town of Bhagalpur, in Bihar. The riot was sparked off by the brick worship ceremonies connected with the plans to build a Ram temple on the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. The ceremonies clashed with a Muslim festival, and violence broke out between young men of the two religions. The conflict spread outwards from the town into the countryside.

Nearly 2,000 people died in the Bhagalpur riots. Many more were rendered homeless. Although Muslims were less than 20 per cent of the population, they constituted more than 70 per cent of those who had been killed or displaced. We visited a once-flourishing village of Muslim weavers, or julahas, whose homes and looms had been totally destroyed by a mob of Hindus. The survivors were being taken care of by a prosperous Muslim weaver in Bhagalpur town, who had laid out tents in his garden. Other refugees were being provided food and shelter by a Muslim religious organisation. Of government work in the resettlement and rehabilitation of the refugees there was not a sign.

I was shaken to see that my fellow Hindus would willingly partake of such savagery, and that my government would take no responsibility for the victims. Till then, the politics of religion had no place in my scholarly work or writing. My principal field of research was the environment. I had just published a book on the social history of the Himalayan forests, and had written scholarly essays on environmental conflicts in Asia and North America. However, I was now provoked to write an essay on the Bhagalpur riots for the Sunday Observer. That newspaper collapsed soon afterwards, but I remain grateful to it for publishing the first article I wrote on the bloody crossroads where religion and politics meet in modern India.

II

In the 1990s and beyond, as the religious right gained in strength and importance across the country, I was making the move from academics to becoming a full-time writer. I now published fortnightly columns in two different newspapers. My brief, in each case, was very broad; I could, and did, write on history and sport apart from politics. But since these were the years in which the Sangh parivar moved from the margins to the centre of public life in India, naturally I wrote about their activities as well.

In the past two decades, I must have published some 40 articles that have dealt with the politics or policies of the BJP and the RSS, or of state and central governments led or directed by them. This constitutes somewhat less than 10 per cent of my total output—that is to say, at least nine in ten of my articles have dealt with other subjects. However, it is always articles that touch on the philosophy and practice of Hindutva that attract the most attention (and anger). They have brought me into contact with a certain kind of Indian who gets up before dawn, has a glass of cow’s milk, prays to the sun god, and begins scanning cyberspace for that day’s secular heresies. If a column I write touches in any way on faith, Hinduism, Hindutva, Guru Golwalkar, Gujarat, or Ayodhya, by breakfast I have had deposited, in my inbox—or perhaps in the ‘Comments’ section of the newspaper’s own website—mails which are hurt, complaining, angry, or downright abusive. A representative sample follows:

I think you are living on other planet. As historian, if India’s integrity is at stake from terrorist Islamic Shaitan Pakistan you are quiblling on small matters. …so called pseudo historians like you besmirch India in Western media from whom you get sinecures and royalty.

Ramachandra is very much a Hindu name. Please dont insult that name, and show your secularism by changing your name to rahim or rehaman. anyway… sanatana dharma does not want cowards like you!!! especially cowards who rape their own mother(land)!

It would be to your advantage if you get mentally treated  before it is too late if you are suffering from a mental problem of distortions and if it is treatable and can be cured. Good luck. When muslims got a land to live out of the land that belongs to hindus of india since 2000 BC where is the need for muslims to continue to live in India and if they cannot go to there to the land given to them they should keep quiet and vote in Pakisthan elections not in India. You too can go with them to pakisthan and live there…I will be the most happiest man if a poison like you is not exist in this world. If so our country will be more safe with less one enemy.

Sometimes the mails are sent as letters to the editor of the journals where I write, with a copy mailed to me. These ostensibly impersonal rejoinders tend to be rather forceful as well. Consider these examples, where the historian is characterised as, respectively, a Naxalite sympathiser (but simultaneously a Nehru-Gandhi family loyalist), a newspaper sales agent, a covert Christian missionary, and as akin to a Swiss bank:

India has been one country not in the westophilian sense but in a dharmic sense for the last thousands of years. He might not have heard about Adi Sankara who was born in Kaladi but established Mutts in the four corners of India. For him Indian spiritual unity does not exist. Guha who is a Naxalite sympathiser has got permission from Sonia (Gandhi) to use the archives at Nehru Museum to write his book and so sing the songs of the Sonia Dynasty.

What your news paper want cheap publicity I can understand. Actually you want to increase sell of news paper that’s why you published this type of anti India and anti RSS article because at least RSS people will buy your newspaper. I vow not to buy your news paper and will try to convince more and more people. The egoist people like Guha will be punished by masses along with you.

Any criminal in India can get his stupid views on every thing under the son published in any so called secular publication and even earn a very comfortable living provided he invariably starts his piece with a lamentation about the untold suffering the Christians have been undergoing in India since independence. But still, how could somewhat decent people like Mr Vinod Mehta (then editor of Outlook magazine) tolerate these fake intellectuals? It is advertisement income, stupid. The controlling share of almost all multinationals are held by church groups.

Mr Guha was one of the historical cartels in India who brainwashed the young and impressionable students in India about how worthless ancient Indian heritage was…. I think Ramachandra’s assets are liable to be proceeded against in a Class Action law suit either in India or the USA like the Swiss Banks’ role in profiting from the Holocaust victims under Hitler by laundering the sufferings of Hitler’s Jewish victims. The Swiss Banks received the gold from Hitler’s Germany including those melted from the tooth fillings of his Jewish victims. I believe the Colonial victims of India and their descendants including those victimised by Guha censorship of ancient Indian Heritage for ideological reasons are on a similar standing to the Holocaust victims and their descendants!

Not all letters are angry or abusive. Some are written in a civil tone, yet reflect the same anxieties and (dare one say) paranoias of a certain kind of modern Hindu. A letter I received from an elderly gentleman now based in El Cerrito, California, feared that India was becoming a Muslim nation. In the 1940s, the leaders of what this man called a ‘rogue religion’ had intrigued with the British to create Pakistan; now, they sought by demographic means to convert the already balkanised motherland into another Islamic state. “Afghanistan,” wrote my Californian correspondent, “was once a 100 per cent Bodth (Buddhist) Country and entire poplation was converted to Islam by the terroristic tactics in the past many centuries. Now, the Madaras of India are too churning out terrorists like Pakistan at the expense of Hindu taxpayers. …Soon the population explosion of Muslims will make them in Majority and the fate of Indian Temples will be the same as Bamyan Budha had faced…. You may not be able to give such thoughts to the Indian Press because of certain reasons but these fears are real and felt thousands of miles away by Hindus who are living in United States….”

Sometimes, the chastisement is gentle, offered in sorrow rather than anger, and outlining the hope that, despite my past errors and misdemeanours, I might yet come to respect and even represent the cause of the vulnerable and aggrieved Hindu. A correspondent with whom I had an extended exchange, asked:

I beg,  please do a favour. Do not use every single opportunity to offend those who speak for Hindus. We have no where to go. This is our fatherland/motherland our spiritual land. The land of our gods. And we have only welcomed every persecuted race on earth and given space here. Helped them to flourish and now we are paying the price. There are bigger monsters to fight. Please use your energy there. We need bright intellectuals like you there, sir. For our great nation and its great civilisation. And like it or not, the Hindu Civiilsation is the only glue that keeps our great nation together. And if it dies we have no identity and India would not exist.

III

This was a selective but not unrepresentative sample of the mails I have received over the years from the intensely chauvinistic tribe of Internet Hindus. I have replied, as courteously as I possibly could, to each e-mail I received (a practice I still maintain), but discontinued the correspondence if (as was often the case) the mailer proved incapable of reasoned discussion or debate.

I have withheld the names of my correspondents. Notably, they were all male. I do have one Hindutva-oriented mailer who is a woman—but she is an exception, the only one I have encountered in some fifteen years of such correspondence. Along with the gender bias is a caste bias. Sharma, Shukla, Rao, Iyer, Gupta—these kinds of surnames recur with regularity in my inbox. These are typically dwija names, denoting ‘twice-born’ castes who, according to the tenets of orthodox Hinduism, can wear the sacred thread. (My experience in this regard tends to confirm the characterisation of the BJP as a ‘Brahmin-Bania’ party.) Other names I recognise are of Kayasth or Rajput origin, that is to say, also upper-caste. The age profile is harder to construct. It appears that a large proportion of my mailers are in their twenties and thirties, but there is a significant sprinkling of senior citizens as well. The former tend to be impatient, seeking to overcome India’s manifest weakness as a nation and a state with an infusion of the right kind of dharmic energy. The latter tend to be anguished or bitter, believing that India threw away its chances of becoming a great and powerful nation because of the reliance of its leaders on the pernicious Western ideology of secularism. Had India followed the example of Israel, they argue, and based its national unity on a shared religion, language and sacred text (Hinduism, Sanskrit and the Vedas, in this case), it would have stood tall among its neighbours, and in the world. For these despairing, defeatist nationalists, the one true moment of national pride was when India defeated Pakistan in the war of 1971, for them both revenge and consolation for centuries of humiliation at the hands of Muslim and Christian invaders. The young profess to detest the West too. But for all this love of the motherland and the ancestral faith, it is striking how, while this particular heretic lives in India, so many of his orthodox opponents are based overseas, in the prosperous and decidedly un-Hindu nations of Europe and North America. One of my regular mailers writes from his home in 1650 Voyager Avenue, Simi Valley, CA, USA. A second, who chooses rather to address the editors of the journals I write for, signs his name and then adds, by way of further identification, ‘Out West, USA’. A third (the only woman in the pile) writes from Canada and always reminds me that she is a ‘Ph D, Western Ontario’. A fourth, who likewise combines an admiration of indigenous culture with an almost unreasoning hatred of the modern West, nonetheless never fails to mention that he is the possessor of those very Western certifications, ‘M. D., Ph D’. A fifth ended a long and very angry mail with these oddly defensive sentences: “I risk of being dismissed as a unemployed ‘Hindu fundamentalist’ and would not be surprised at all if this mail is put in trash can. Hence I think it is appropriate that I introduce to you that I am a experienced Senior Management professional working with a MNC in India’s sunshine industry.” A sixth first asked: “Who cares about your opinion, man? You speak as if you are representing a billion plus Hindus! Dimwits and slaves like you sit in a corner of your dimly lit houses and pontificate to others”; and then offered his own, rather, better qualifications for speaking about the subject at hand: “I am educated, young, well read (with 3 masters degrees) and residing in the west. Yet I have great pride and respect for my country, its culture, my Hindu religion, its Heroes, God a The sociological background of the Hindutva hate-mailer can be partially reconstructed from his name and background. His ideology is more directly manifested in his mails. This rests on a deep suspicion of and hostility towards those Indians who are not Hindus by religious background. Christians and especially Muslims come in for special animosity. And yet, as the historian Dharma Kumar once pointed out, the philosophy of Hindutva only mimics and reproduces the ideology of its major adversary. Its unacknowledged model is the Islamic state, where those who do not belong to the ruling faith are tolerated if they are obedient and subservient, but attacked if they seek to assert the rights of equal citizenship.

Hindutvawadis thus want to construct what Dharma Kumar described as ‘an Islamic state for Hindus’. In medieval Muslim states, there was a category known as dhimmi, consisting of Jews and Christians, who, as people of the book, were treated somewhat more leniently than the kafirs, the unbelievers. The dhimmi were barred from the top positions in the state and in the army. However, so long as they paid their taxes and did not challenge the ruler, they could live in peace and security. The kafirs, on the other hand, were seen always and invariably as adversaries. In the same manner, if the RSS were to get its way, Muslims and Christians in modern India would live undisturbed, so long as they acknowledged their theological and political inferiority to the dominant Hindus. But if they sought equal rights of citizenship they would be punished as the kafirs had once been.

Like all fanatics, the Hindutva hate-mailer thinks in black-and-white. Although I am a liberal who has consistently stood against left-wing as well as right-wing extremism, the default reaction to my criticisms of Hindutva is that I must be a communist. The mail that follows is characteristic:

If the communist journalists thinking they can distroy an organization by writing few words against them, you are wrong sir. There was a time people forced to belive what you wrote. But today there is mass Communication between people. Unlike earlier there are people now to respond against communist journalists immediately.

Today even your own media can not survive without supporting Hindutva. You see today your CPM channel in Kerala is live coverage (though it was sponsored) of a Mahayagam at Thirivananthapuram. 90% of the participants are Sangh Parivar leaders. I pity your CPM channel, they have no other alternative but to telecast the live coverage. Remember that our work is already spreads each and every corner of the country. Now we are engaged to increase our activitis more powerful. It is our challange we will dismantle Communist party in India. You wait and see what is going to happen in the coming time.

The extremist only recognises other extremists. Since I carry a Hindu name, yet have distanced myself from the bigotry and chauvinism of the Hindutvawadi, I must be a crypto-communist.

Apart from thinking in black-and-white, the fundamentalist is convinced that he will, in the end, be victorious. This triumphalist rhetoric, however, is actually a product of paranoia and insecurity. Like the Marxist, like the evangelical Christian, like the Islamic fanatic, the Hindutvawadi needs constantly to reassure himself that he will win in the end. This mail I received from a young man of Gujarati extraction is both typical as well as rather sad:

Narendra Modi is the Chief Minster of my great state Gujarat. He is without doubt the greatest Chief Minster in the history of India. One day in the near future he may become the Prime Minster of India. You all third rate parasitical dhimmi toads who do nothing all your lives except lecture others and contribute not an ioata to the Indian economy can then take a permenant sabbitical to your natural abode Paki Stan. You can bark you can rant and you can use every conceviable weapon to villify and demonise Narendra Modi and us Gujaratis and every time we will show you envious scums of the earth two fingers and treat you like one treats sewage. We Gujus are no 1 and will always remain no 1 whether you like it or not and continue to contribute the highest to the Indian economy. …You third rate filth we Gujus have nothing but contempt and disdain for your types. you can continue barking and ranting against my State, its Chief Minster and her people and everytime we will say Up yours!

To this deep suspicion of diversity and pluralism, this tendency to think in black-and-white, this insistent (if ultimately unconvincing) claim that they are history’s inevitable winners, let me add one final characteristic of the Hindutva hate- mailer—an utter lack of humour. The mails already quoted illustrate this in abundance, but consider also some responses to an essay I wrote criticising the Ministry for Human Resources Development for proposing that the wife of the richest man in India be made a ‘brand ambassador’ for their adult literacy campaigns. I had pointed out that “if one is thinking of a name to motivate poor women or men to learn their letters, no name could be more spectacularly inappropriate than Nita Ambani’s. She is soon to be the resident of a 4,00,000 square feet house; she is already the recipient of a Boeing aircraft as a birthday gift. If this exhibitionism does not run contrary to our constitutional commitment to socialism and equality, I don’t know what does. As for our other national commitment to secularism and the scientific temper—which I presume the HRD ministry shares—how does one square that with Mrs Ambani’s periodic visits to a Southern hill-top to pray for, of all things, a cricket team?”

The article was published in a paper that does not have an edition in Bangalore. Downloading it the morning it appeared, I noticed that the boys weaned on cow’s milk had come sniffing already. One mailer complained that “the ‘Southern Hilltop’ the journalist so callously refers to here is the much revered Lord Balaji’s temple. Where do these people get the nerve?? Will he say ‘People running to middle eastern desert’ for Haj pilgrimage?? This is called ‘Proving one’s secular credentials’ by putting down the most revered Lord in India.” Another angrily asked: “Would Mr. Guha have taken a swipe at a Muslim person, worthy or worthless in her own right, for praying five times a day or for doing Haz? Why this step-motherly treatment for visiting temples?”

Fortunately, these mailers had been put in their place by an Indian with a sense of proportion, who responded to their screeds as follows: “There we go again, just drag religious sentiments into it, and finish off with a Hindu-Muslim comparison to highlight a perceived bias. (Guha) was commenting on (Nita Ambani’s) visits to pray ‘for, of all things, a cricket team’… The point being she was praying not for literacy, not for end of poverty, not for benefit of fellow man, country or world but her commercial interests in a cricket franchise.”

IV

The number and intensity of Hindutva hate mails in my inbox has varied over the past two decades. They have increased and become more abusive at particular moments—after the Gujarat riots of 2002, for example, or after the terror attack in Mumbai of 2008. Before the general elections of 1999, 2004 and 2009 I also got a flood of mails warning me that I would be put in my place once the party of the faithful would be elected or re-elected to power. The mails fly thick and fast in times of political controversy, but they by no means dry up in quieter periods in-between. For the hard-core fundamentalist, the hunt for heretics is a full-time business.

I shall end this essay by quoting five very special mails that, in their individual and distinctive ways, illustrate the peculiarities and pathologies of the Homo Indicus Hindutvawadi.

The first mail offers this apparently careful and close definition of Hinduism:

A Hindu is someone who believes in the native and natural traditions of India. These traditions include a lifestyle that is compatible with the natural bounties and limits of India. A belief in the multiple facets of spirituality and tolerance of diverse concepts of god(s) (incl. that it is Man who created god(s) – not the other way around!). By this token some Moslems or Christians may be better Hindus than those who were born Hindus. But in general Hindus are the backbone of India and give it its true character. Minority communities, no matter how large, are the unfortunate remnants of past invasions. Westernized seculars like Ramachandra Guha are mere third rate stool pigeons who could not move to the richer West on their own but would say anything to harm the core of India for a few dollars as baksheesh!

The definition was however undermined by the address of the writer (‘out west, United States’)—although, as a patriotic Hindu, perhaps he had demanded of his employer that he be paid in (saffron-coloured and lotus-shaped?) rupees.

My second example, coming also from a non-resident Indian, is notable for its capacious demonology, which included Muslims and Englishmen but privileged above all the Muslim-loving and English-loving renegade Hindu, Jawaharlal Nehru:

Dear Mr Guha,

I have read some of your articles, the headings of your articles have nothing to do with body of your articles, every article is BJP/RSS and Hindu bashing.

But if you care to answer two questions which are asked by large number of Indians, the questions are:

1. After British left India, all British invaders had left India, why Muslim invaders were not evicted? What right Nehru and Gandhi had to keep tens of millions of Muslims after giving them “homeland” (read Hindu land)?

2. If there are 150 million Muslims in India then why Pakistan was created and if Pakistan was created then why there are 150 million Muslims in India ?

Are you denying that before British took over Hindus were not fighting to get rid of Muslims? It seems all the “historians” are on Saudi pay roll.

When I come to India I talk to rickshaw wallas, rail coolies, waiters and other real Indians, all ask the same questions. They talk to me because they know I live overseas and I am not a danger to them like journalists and people like you who immediately declare Hindus “anti-Muslim”, “anti-secular”, “chauvinists” etc and also let police and Congress goons let on them….

Nehru was a loafer, thug and a ruffian, he was only interested in Lady Mountbatten, can’t you see the damage done by Nehru? Kashmir, Tibet, Aksai Chin and decimation of Hindu society? About Gandhi, less said the better.

But coming back to my two question, do you have the courage, guts, IQ to detach yourself from white skinned lady and answer truthfully, not your general doble-de-gook….

The third example illustrates the hectoring and bullying typical of a certain strain of Hindutva. It was written from Maharashtra, after I had published an article in The Telegraph of Calcutta on the Maoist threat to Indian democracy. I here recalled a similar threat from the extreme right in the early days of Indian independence, and mentioned in passing that Gandhi’s murderer, Nathuram Godse, had once been a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. An angry mailer claimed that my article “has nothing to do with facts and history also equating RSS with Maoist is sheer lie and hence court suit is inevitable against you if you doesn’t tenders straightaway apology to RSS.

We have successfully countered such type of blasphemous propaganda against RSS through court battle…. So I am hereby demanding immediate apology from you and The Telegraph for the report or be prepared for legal battle, In case legal battle starts it is sure that your career as journalist would end abruptly, so it is not in your personal interest hence better to tender apology and end the matter here before reaching to the Court premises.”

No apology was offered either by myself or The Telegraph—a libel suit is yet awaited.

My fourth example illustrates the streak of paranoid triumphalism I spoke of earlier. After I had published a long essay explaining why, given the social and political fault-lines within, India would not and should not become a superpower, a reader wrote in to say that “India is bound 2 be worldpower. Take my words. People like Mr Guha are agents of China and they also go to temple (though in the dark of night)”.

Of all the hate mails that, over the years, have popped into my inbox, my personal favourite came from a man (with a resoundingly Brahmin name, as it happens), living in the town of Ghaziabad, in Uttar Pradesh. This, in one single sentence, encapsulated the sentiments of his fellow fanatics and ideologues. “It is suspected,” said my correspondent, “that you are getting money through Hawala (the black market) from antiIndia forces or your mindset is communist or you are psychologically weak requiring treatment or modern time ‘Asura’ (demon) wishing to destroy motherland.” I think of myself as a patriot, who loves his country, and lives and works in it. I also think of myself as a moderate, middle-of-the-road, liberal democrat. But by the definitions of right-wing Hindus I was something else altogether. Since I found flaws in Hindutva thought, it was self-evident that I could not be a patriot. Since I criticised the practice of Hindu fundamentalist groups, I must be an extremist on the other side, that is to say, a communist. Since I made these criticisms repeatedly, it was overwhelmingly likely that I was in the pay of foreign powers. And since I was published in a well-circulated Indian newspaper I was probably a demon in disguise, too. To be fair, the criticisms also allowed for a more benign interpretation of the words that appeared under my name—namely, that I was suffering from some kind of mental illness. If only I could see the right doctor, who would then prescribe me the correct medicines, the motherland would be saved.

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Excerpted from Patriots and Partisans by Ramachandra Guha. Publishing date: November 20, 2012.