A week with the CRPF in the jungles of Chhattisgarh gives BRIJESH PANDEY  a first hand view of what the forces are fighting in India’s bloodiest internal conflict

THE RAIN is coming down in uneven patterns, making an irregular rhythm in the middle of the jungle. It’s been three hours and we have been walking warily. Looking here, there, waiting for the enemy. Ramesh Kumar Singh, now a veteran with the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), one of the world’s biggest paramilitary forces, hasn’t said a word for three hours. I’ve been trying to get him to talk; I now walk behind him, wondering. Oddly, the rain helps us focus. We are in the heart of Maoist territory in Chhattisgarh, where fierce Maoist squads have been slaughtering CRPF men. A real naxalite problem in india.  There are 16 men in Ramesh’s detail. We have walked 15 km through slush and we head for the shelter of a tree as the rain gets heavy.

Suddenly, Ramesh turns to me. “You can see the terrain for yourself. All of a sudden, a tribal comes before us and we don’t know if he is a Naxal. If we open fire and an innocent is killed, we are doomed and if we don’t open fire and let that person go, he could jolly well turn out to be a big Naxal leader who will plot our death and even then we are doomed. It’s not death per se that we are afraid of, but the ignominy after death, which hurts us. A Naxal’s death is covered properly and people want no Naxals to be killed. But what about us? We are the expendables, like 25 and 50 paise coins. We count for nothing, at least not in Delhi,” he says.

It’s my first moment inside the mind of the CRPF. For days, men like Ramesh have been written about, spoken about, trashed at length, and generally ridiculed for the beating they’ve been taking at the hands of the Maoists. Now it comes. Ramesh says he’s been in Kashmir, a sort of gold standard for the services. He has a wife, a son Shubh and a daughter Janki, barely 18 months old. “She was so soft that I was afraid I might hurt her when I hold her,” he says, breaking into a toothy smile. Many years ago, he applied to serve in the CRPF because his best friend was selected in the Indian Army. Both wanted to serve India.

“It was a very volatile in Kashmir but we knew who we were fighting. Most importantly, we knew that New Delhi was behind us. Here, in Chhattisgarh, it is different. We were dumped here. We are treated as if we are fighting a personal battle with the Naxalites.” Estimates suggest there could be a thousand militants in the Valley. There are several more in the Red Corridor. In Kashmir, the CRPF has 70 units on law and order duty. In Chhattisgarh, the CRPF has about 18 units. That is like 18,000 men to fight the Maoists and 70,000 to keep peace in Kashmir.

Almost always, Ramesh has to walk. Here, a walk can be risky. But using a vehicle could be deadly. The Maoists have been blowing up many CRPF vehicles and the force is wary of driving around its men. So they walk. And they brood. Their enemy hasn’t backed off yet. In the telling and retelling of the stories, the legends of the Maoists get bigger and the CRPF has fewer victories to talk of. “They don’t leave battles halfway. Once the fighting starts, they never back off,” says an officer who doesn’t want to be named.

We have by now got back to a camp because the rain is heavy and won’t allow a long patrol. It is dark. The camp is fortified by Concertina wires, a type of barbed wire. There is a check post at the entrance, manned by four commandos, each armed with an assault rifle and finger on the trigger. A 32-year-old jawan is passing by. He too has served in Kashmir. “We never felt that we are the unwanted children of India. Here, in the jungles of Bastar, we are like destitutes,” he says.

It’s strange. The CRPF has three lakh personnel but it may be allowing the Maoists too much mindspace already. There’s a sense of resentment. The spirit appears to be low, not a good state to fight a war. “You tell me what I should concentrate on. Should I fight for the flag, or worry about food and water? I don’t know when I could be shot. I know that I earn my livelihood from the force and I should not talk like this, but tell me, what should I tell my wife who has become paranoid after the Dantewada massacre? Every time she knows I am going for a patrol or an area domination exercise, she goes hysterical.

“Seventy-six members of the 62nd unit died and all we heard was how incompetent we were. How we were not trained properly, how we didn’t know a thing about road opening drills and how we violated standard operating procedures. Do the higher-ups living in Delhi even know what they are talking about? Are they even remotely aware of the ground reality? The country is not behind us.” By now he is shouting with rage. He says the force doesn’t have enough units to secure a stretch of road once it has been cleared.

The jawans have heard of the report submitted by EN Rammohan, former Director General of the Border Security Force, on the “leadership failure” and “lack of coordination between the CRPF and the state police” that led to the massacre. “We are here to assist the administration, but there is no reciprocity on their part.”

RAKESH CHAUBEY, 27, from Bihar has spent six years in the force and was posted in the Northeast before this. His father died when he was 14 and he has since been responsible for his mother and two younger brothers. He says he would have quit a year ago if he didn’t have to feed his family. A year in the force can mean a lot. Now, the basics are haunting Rakesh. In sorties, it’s like he is in a zone. He has a sharp instinct for danger. His mates say he is like an animal, sensing threat a mile away. Curiously, all that vanishes when he reaches his camp. He can’t get a hang of how pathetic it can be. “Often, we drink water from a pond used by animals. We wouldn’t advise it to anyone. Half the time, our jawans are vomiting.”

“Have you ever seen a war being fought like this? We don’t know if we are here to assist the state police on law and order or to flush out Naxals, or merely to oscillate between troubled territories, getting our jawans killed for no fault of theirs. If this is a war, please tell me why the whole of Bastar range has not been declared a war zone? If it is a disturbed zone, please declare so. If the Bastar region is not that, then please stop calling Naxalism the biggest challenge the country faces,” he says.

Fear stalks the CRPF. Small Naxal groups ambush whole CRPF units, using surprise to strike at a vulnerable target and then disappear into the jungle. It’s not as if the CRPF is not aware of the nature of combat: units deployed in Chhattisgarh undergo a two month “preinduction” or “conversion” training. They are taught the topography of the place and situation, jungle warfare, and how to survive in the terrain.

But no amount of training can work without adequate backup. Senior officers are angry that, even though a whole company was wiped out in Dantewada, the DG did not deem it fit to station another unit there. It would have come as a major morale booster and conveyed the message to the lowest rung that future strikes will lead to strong retaliation. But nothing of the sort happened.

Unlike Maoists, who have a precise conception of the political goal of war, the CRPF jawans are supposed to be apolitical, obeying orders without question. But whispers about political games being played and corrupt practices do infiltrate through the concertina wire that surrounds their camps. They know there are factors beyond their control that are not officially acknowledged. Like connivance between the local administration and the Naxals. They cite an incident when an MLA went to a Naxal-dominated area, which was heavily mined in his black Scorpion without security, and returned unscathed. Even when the Naxals declare a complete bandh, vehicles of the forest department move freely because they apparently help in exploitation of forest resources.

“One incident will best define how good our morale is and how powerful we feel while operating on the mined roads of Chattisgarh. We were posted in Chintalnar .There is only one bus which plys once a day. That bus was carrying ration for the whole camp. The bus starts at 6 am. Just 5 km before our camp, the Naxals put up a check post and took away the ration. The whole camp depended on that ration, but we couldn’t do a thing. When we can’t save our food, imagine the kind of morale we will be in, when it comes to saving our life,” Rakesh says.

The feeling is strong that the CRPF is discriminated against. For instance, the CRPF moves directly from one conflict zone to another, meaning that 90 percent jawans have spent entire careers in combat zones. In the army, three years of tough posting entitles one to a family station.

Then, before the army moves into position, proper barracks, mess and other facilities are prepared. Army supply corps move in to make proper arrangements for food and other essentials, which is not the case with the CRPF. A commanding officer of a regiment would identify much more with the welfare of his unit than the IPS officers posted as commandants of CRPF unit for three-year terms. Typically, they keep contact with CRPF jawans to a minimum.

IN A force known for its discipline, speaking your mind can lead you into serious trouble. But Mahesh Prasad, who has seen action in two other war zones, blurts out this is the worst he has seen. “For the last one and a half years, we have been dumped here with bare minimum facilities,” he says bitterly. “Several times, we had to eat rice with tamarind juice. Is this how we fight a war? Would they treat the Army the same way?”

“Even if my father dies today, I will not be able to move out of my camp for several hours and the agonising wait can extend up to four days. Where is morale after that? When you hear about the way the survivors of the Dantewada massacres were treated, you become all the more aware that nobody cares if you live or die. When these kinds of news circulate, it hurts. Even if I have to go on leave, there is no facility that I can be dropped to in Raipur, safe and sound. I am fighting with Naxals but when I go on leave or when I am on my way back from home, I travel that distance at the mercy of God or the Naxals. What morale are you talking about?”

More damningly, CRPF jawans feel expendable because they think Naxals are killing them only to exert the “right amount of pressure.” This is why, goes the thinking, Naxals are not targeting senior officers — no IG, DIG or DM — although they have the firepower and reach. “Even they know that killing us would not warrant a deadly reply. You start killing IPS officers and see what happens.” Such gloomy conclusions are incubated in despair. “By God, the layman reading newspapers or watching television must surely think a bunch of bumbling idiots have been sent to fight highly motivated and efficient Naxals,” says Prasad. The last straw, he says, was a DGP telling the world he can’t teach us how to walk.

“For the last one and a half year, the theatre of war has changed considerably, but no fresh assessment has been done”, says a senior CRPF officer. “Nobody asks how much additional force is required. No concrete plan is on board.” He says they need better communication system and an excellent intelligence network because the Naxals are becoming better armed by the day. It was still raining when I left for Raipur to catch my flight to Delhi. I couldn’t help a last thought: the CRPF might never win a war like this.

[Source: From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 29, Dated July 24, 2010]

Ram Puniyani

Maa Tujhe Salaam: Vande Matram Controversy to the fore again by Ram Puniyani

The level of communalization of society and institutions can be gauzed from the fact that this ‘love-Jihad’ was taken to be something real not only by a section of society but also by the High courts. In its ruling the Karnataka High court, in the case of Sijalraj and Azghar, said that the facts had “national ramifications… concern security, besides the question of unlawful trafficking of women,”! So it ordered the Director-General and Inspector-General of Police to hold a thorough investigation into to ‘love jihad’. Pending that, the girl was asked to stay with her parents. Nothing can be more illegal and influenced by the propaganda prevailing in the society. How can the court ask the adult married girl to separate from her husband just because the disapproving parents have complained against the choice of husband made by her, a citizen of the country?

In a similar case earlier the Kerala High court while hearing the appeal from two parents passed a similar order. Two Hindu girls had eloped and got converted to Islam and planned to get married. The court stated that this marriage of girls to Muslims smacks of a systematic plan, related to trafficking of Hindu women. Kerala court also ordered the Police authorities to investigate this phenomenon. The police investigation showed that there is no such phenomenon as Love Jihad. The Karnataka state PUCL enraged by the decision of the court to send the girl to her parents is planning to knock the doors of Supreme Court.

The propaganda began by organizations like Shri Ram Sene etc. They spread the word that over 4000 Hindu girls have been lured into conversions. The propaganda was that the Muslim youth are receiving money to lure Hindu-Christian girls to convert them to Islam. As per this propaganda the Muslim youth are given a brief to lure the girls for which, they are provided with a lakh of rupees to buy mobile and a two wheeler. They are made to pretend to fall in love, to elope, to convert the girl to marry and to produce four children. This concoction has been aggressively propagated through various mechanisms.

This laughable, figment of imagination spread like wild fire and frightened the parents. Shri Ram Sene associates helped couple of girl’s parents to go to court. In one such case the girl was made to stay with her parents by the court order. The trajectory of many of these girls who initially state about their love for the boy and voluntary conversion, changes after they are forced to stay with here parents. Under a sort of emotional blackmail, some girls give in and later say that they were brain washed, shown a Jihadi CD and what not.

We have witnessed such inhuman acts in the form of propaganda in Gujarat in the wake of carnage, that Muslim boys are luring Adivasi girls. There Babu Bajarangi, who was also a major participant in carnage, formed a goon-gang. This gang attacked couples and forced them to separate if they belonged to different religions. All this is presented as defense of religion! We have the case of Rijwan Ur Rehman where Priyanka Todi, daughter of an affluent and powerful business magnate also turned around under emotional blackmail from parents and relatives. Later Rijwan Ur Rehman was forced to commit suicide. In all such cases the role of police, state machinery, has been totally against the spirit and provisions of law, the protectors of law acting to support the things totally against the law.

Such campaigns against inter-religion, inter-caste marriages are not only against the spirit of national integration they also aim to control the lives of girls in the patriarchal mode. In addition the bogey against a minority is whipped up to aid the divisive politics. It is a double bonus for divisive politics. Since in patriarchal norms women are regarded as property of man and are made to live in the control structure defined by men, such an issue rouses high emotions. Communal politics targets to subjugate Muslims and to promote patriarchal norms.  And for achieving this they have succeeded in roping in another victim minority to ally in the communal project. It kills so many birds in one stone.

The committed social organizations have a long list of issues related to women. In Kerala in particular the psychological problems of women are immense. Women all around are victims of gender discrimination. The social organizations falling under the trap in the name of Love Jihad need to wake up and address the real issues of women rather than becoming an ally in a communal project.

It is a pity that the courts rather than clamping on Khap Panchayats, which are taking arbitrary decisions to separate the couples marrying in the same gotra, rather than clamping on Shri Ram Sene’s and Babu Bajrangis, they are snubbing the girls for their choices and letting the anti Muslim tirade grow through another of a make believe myth, a falsity with dangerous portents.

One recalls that it was during the freedom movement, that different communities started interacting more and inter-religion, inter-caste, inter-region marriages started taking place. These are the cement for Indian nationalism. The propagators of Religion based nationalism, any way are against the Secular Indian Nation so this one more fabrication to intimidate the society!

[Author: Ram Puniyani, check his profile]

Swamis, Celibacy and Sex Scandals by Ram Puniyani

Many a sex scandals related to Holy men have come to surface during last few weeks (March 2010). Its not that these are the first one’s to have been brought to social attention, such incidents have been coming to social notice time and over again. The present ones’ about Swami Nityanand and Ichhchadhari Baba (Bhimanand) have highlighted the same in a very intense fashion as these scandals are very blatant.

One recalls in recent history many such cases have startled the media and society, the allegation of a foreign writer about Satya Sai Baba, then allegations against Gurmeet Ram Rahim, Santosh Madhavan, happenings of the Kamkoti Peetham Shakarachrya are quite well known. From other religious traditions, one recalls the recent book by Sister Jesme (Story of a Nun) and the news that the Roman Catholic Church has sacked a priest accused of pedophilia as large number of complaints were coming forth in Germany from people who were abused as children. At another level the RSS pracharak (RSS pracharaks are to remain bachelors for political reasons) Sanjay Joshi had also to give up his political responsibility when a CD related to his sexual exploits came to surface.

In all these cases the underlying mechanisms are different. In Catholic establishment, to remain unmarried is the norm and many cases have come to light, which have shamed the establishment. The Hindu God-men are all ‘stand alone’ systems, not an organized Church. While comparing these may not be easy, what is common in these is that the organizations where members remain celibate to discharge their religiously or politically ordained duties, many of them do get tainted by the fall out of such acts.

What is different about the case of these God-men in particular is a deliberate misuse of their ‘spiritual attainments’ to indulge in carnal pleasures, under the guise of spirituality, to the extent of running sex rackets in association with those in power. Here is the case of gross abuse of faith to the extent of deliberately setting up a situation to exploit the women devotees. The methods used by the swamis are diverse. This should come under a serious crime not only at legal but also at social level to ensure that such gross abuse of faith is brought under serious scanner.

As such the concept of celibacy in many a religious orders had a spiritual base in the noble idea of renunciations and transcending of the physical pleasures to attain the higher spiritual platform. The religious Gurus have been of different types as for as celibacy is concerned. In early India there were renouncers as well as those who led a family life. Patanjali stated “swa-ang jugupsa, parai asansargah’, meaning that with increasing spiritual insights, with mind achieving higher truth, apathy for physical body comes in. This is what is supposed to have made celibacy the path to sanyas. Celibacy, Brahmcharya has been highly respectable in sections of society.

After 8th century celibacy was taken to exalted levels into Hindu tradition by Shankara, while he was leading the battle of Hinduism against Buddhism. To attack Buddhism he adopted various concepts from Buddhism itself, e.g. the concept of renunciation of material wants, celibacy included. Today the idea of celibacy is prevalent mainly in Buddhism, sects of Hinduism and amongst Catholic priests. These three have base in religious traditions. For much different reasons, mainly political one’s, organization like RSS has also brought this in for its propagators.

Patanjali’s argument is repeated by modern God-man, Sri Sri Ravishaker. According to him as you go to higher levels, body becomes insignificant and interest in sex is reduced to nothing. There have been dissenting note from within the stable of God-men itself. The major such voice was that of Osho, Bhagwan Rajneesh. He argued that sex could be transcended only through experience; this was what he preached and penned down in his book, Sambhog se Samadhi (From Sex to Superconciousness).

These semi philosophical outpourings apart, the biological compulsions have always accompanied the celibates and the scandals have kept popping out from such institutions and individuals, telling us that these sexual escapades are a rule than an exception. It may be in the form of child abuse, same sex relationships to downright cunning methods indulged by God-men to trap the women on the pretext of their ‘spiritual’ pursuits. Different philosophical sounding arguments are dished out to the unsuspecting laity.

From last few decades these incidents are coming more to the surface as the phenomenon of God-men has mushroomed all around. This phenomenon is an accompaniment of the existential anxieties of the globalized world, the razor edge competitive era, where cut throat competition at work place, heightened consumerism and moving upward in the scale of financial earning is the only index of one’s success. The need for emotional succor is leading to the rise of the industry of God-men.

The God-men, belong to many categories, each having his-her own entrepreneurial skills. God-men put out their brand of spirituality, which apparently gives solace to the aggrieved middle and lower middle classes in particular amongst others. God-men have set up institutions which cater to vastly expanding market. Meera Nanda in her book, the ‘God Market’ argues that there is an increased religiosity, collusion with the corporate World and the state. In India in particular, a subtle Hindusization is going on as such and this has been aided by the private sector. There is an active promotion of religious tourism. Higher education has been handed over to private sector, some of whom use religious trusts to run these institutions to impart ‘value education’. State has been generous in giving away land at highly subsidized rates to the Gurus and God-men.

One can also see the rise of religious Right here and in different countries during this period. RSS is having a field day in culturally Hinduizing the social space, and God-men are the major players in the game. One can say that these swamis of the ilk of Nityanad and Ichchhadhari are just the visible part of a larger phenomenon. These two cases also show the range of activities, from the spiritual façade to downright sex racket.

The broader picture of the phenomenon is much more disturbing. Last three decades have been one of the most tragic periods of human history for different reasons. It is this period when the global political and social phenomenon has adopted the language of the religion. This language has created multiple problems. On one hand, one major religious community has been demonized, and on the other there is a big set back to the rational thinking and progressive values. When the language of religion is used with great aplomb, the reason is forced on the back-foot and the suppression of human rights takes the garb of religion. Since religion is accompanied by faith, which in turn can create hysteria, the latter ensures that blind religiosity and blind faith rule the roost. The beneficiaries of these arrangements are the entrenched social, economic powers.

Globally, US took on Russian forces by promoting the conservative versions of Islam, used the religious language to train Al Qaeda, and laced its ambitions for oil in the language of religion. Here in India those who were opposed to social transformation of caste and gender, used Ram Temple type issues, created mass hysteria around identity issues and have tried to push back the process of social transformation. The increased social presence of God-men is an accompaniment of this process. They have duel function. On one hand they aid in creating conservative values, refurbished caste and gender norms from Manusmiriti are propagated, and on the other they exploit this situation for their material enhancement, sexual exploitation included. Interestingly the God men who talk of renunciation and going to higher levels themselves are the biggest beneficiaries of material riches. Society has to learn the lessons from the sprawling wealth and sexual exploitation done by section of God-men and to understand as to what is really taking place in the garb of holy clothes is a mere misuse of faith for crass purposes. Nityanand and Icchadhari Baba is a sort of barometer of the phenomenon which has gripped our society.

Issues in Secular Politics

II March 2010
www.pluralindia.com
Response only to ram.puniyani@gmail.com

Incredible life of Shahid Azmi went from insurgent to rights lawyer, studying law to serve the poor.

SHAHID AZMI: 1977 - 2010

HAD SHAHID Azmi been gunned down in Russia, China or Iran, his news would have been all over The New York Times the next morning. Working on the principle that the enemy’s enemy is a friend, the western media offer spectacular support to internal dissent against regimes that appear in eternal conflict with western governments and businesses. But Azmi lived and was assassinated in India, fighting the brutal police State that the Indian democracy has become in its dubious war against terrorism. Because the Indian State is hand-in-glove with the western powers, and because India’s dominant middle classes solidly back that relationship, the western or Indian media are unlikely to hail Azmi, who was killed in Mumbai on February 11, as a martyr to the cause of bringing justice to hundreds of the poor, mostly Muslims, falsely accused of terrorism.

But martyr Azmi is, no less than Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist and human rights activist who had already become a western icon for her courageous campaign against Vladimir Putin himself when she was shot dead at her Moscow apartment three years ago. Indeed, Russian, Chinese and Iranian dissidents take much heart from the western might backing them. Azmi’s campaign was, therefore, more courageous, for his work was doubly tainted as he defended “terrorists” allegedly once removed from anti-US terror groups, Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

We need to directly ask just who benefits from Azmi’s killing. The answer is a Who’s Who of Indian security: the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, RAW and the Intelligence Bureau, whose grand constructs on terrorism Azmi demolished each time he won a case. Maharashtra Police despised Azmi, for he represented, mostly successfully, many accused in a string of blast cases. Azmi had been preparing for the defence of dozens arrested since 2008 as members of Indian Mujahideen, which has been linked with last Saturday’s blast in Pune that killed 10 people. Azmi was also actively involved in organising legal defence for many arrested in Gujarat on charges of masterminding and carrying out terror attacks.

Last July, Azmi made enemies at Mumbai’s Central Prison winning a historic ruling from the Bombay High Court against jail warders who had assaulted several terror accused. “I grew up seeing the police barge in night and day in our slum, terrorising and kidnapping people,” Azmi told me on December 11 as we sat chatting after office hours, he on his chair, where he was shot dead exactly two months later. “It bred in me a hatred — nafrat — for the police.”

I first met Azmi in July 2008 while researching a story on the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), the shadowy outfit blamed for many terror acts. After stonewalling for days, Azmi allowed me an hour’s cab ride with him to the courts downtown. Eventually, he would provide me with facts that comprehensively nailed the fraudulence of the police in framing innocent Muslim men. The state has never challenged my SIMI report that TEHELKA published a month later.

It was Azmi who pressed me to probe the abuse of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), an exposé that my colleague, Rana Ayyub, and I published in TEHELKA last month. I was to return to Azmi this month to work on three cases of 2006, including the train blasts in Mumbai that killed 187 people and the blasts in Malegaon in which 37 people died. Nearly all the accused whom he represented are held on false or forced confessions and zero evidence. Azmi had launched a challenge in the Supreme Court to MCOCA, under which these cases are being tried, claiming that the law is illegal as only Parliament can write anti-terror laws. That judgement is now awaited.

The Home Ministry, Intelligence Bureau, RAW and police all stand to gain from Azmi’s killing
By any account, Azmi led an incredible life: he was only 32 when he was killed. The third of five brothers, Azmi’s life turned the day sword-wielding Hindu fanatics rushed at him as he walked home from school just days after mobs razed the disputed Babri mosque in Uttar Pradesh in 1992. A Hindu neighbour saved him. “Shahid was never the same again,” his oldest brother, Arif, said as I sat with him last week at Azmi’s house a block away from his office. One day, at age 16, Azmi upped and left, ending up first in the Kashmir valley, and then across the border, with a gun on his shoulder. But he soon came back, disillusioned with the insurgency.

NONETHELESS, POLICE arrested him from home in 1994 for conspiring to kill India’s top politicians. The only evidence was a confession he never made. Yet, he was given five years. While at New Delhi’s Tihar Jail, Azmi enrolled for graduation and began writing legal documents for other inmates. Freed in 2001, he came home and joined journalism and law schools. Three years later, he quit a paying sub-editor’s job to join defence lawyer Majeed Memon as a junior at Rs 2,000 a month. “I want to work for the poor,” Azmi told his brother, Arif. It was widely known that Azmi wouldn’t charge any fees from a majority of his clients.

But his past never left him. Some years ago, in a heated moment, Azmi argued in court that even Lord Ram had waged violence to secure justice. The media screamed blue murder. A police case was launched. The judge called in Azmi for a chat. “But it’s true,” Azmi said when the judge cautioned that there were rumours he had been convicted for terrorism. “I wear that conviction as a badge of honour.” The judge told the police he never heard Azmi speak of Lord Ram. The case collapsed. On Monday this week, another judge wept in court. People stood around in silence. Outside that court, Azmi’s long-time lawyer-partner, Saba Qureshi, hung out listless, trying to talk to clients, some beyond grief. “I see him everywhere,” she said, looking out from the balcony. “What will I do?”

But I know what I will do and what Saba should, too. I had just arrived in Chennai on February 11 when I heard that Shahidbhai, as I had come to call him, was dead. Alone in my hotel room, I broke down and wept. My mind went back to the killing in 1991 of Shankar Guha Niyogi, the trade union legend who had organised the tribals in Chhattisgarh and who I had met days before he was shot dead. In the last 18 months, Shahid had come to signify for me a revival of purpose in my life I had rendered barren with years of aimless journalism. That I was hanging out with Shahid meant I was finally moving on my mandate to align with the struggles for justice and empowerment.

My tears ran dry as I roamed the windswept streets of Chennai that night thinking of Shahid. Then Ataur Rahman, the ageing father of two of the accused in the 2006 train blast case, called me from Mumbai. “Ajitsaheb,” Rahman whispered, his voice rock bottom with resignation. “What will happen to us now?” I told him, and I have been telling everyone: Shahid isn’t dead and will never be. I, for one, am far more determined to pursue the path he has shown. Just what bullet can take away the invaluable lesson in courage he has taught me?

WRITER’S EMAIL
ajit@tehelka.com

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 08, Dated February 27, 2010

IN A stable political environment, these young boys would perhaps have started a music band or a fan club of some kind to expend their youthful energy. However, in the congested old town area of Srinagar — witness to intense protests in recent weeks — throwing stones at government forces is what occupies the waking hours of groups of young boys. A transition is taking place in the resistance to security forces in Kashmir — from militancy to stone-throwing. Locally, it is referred to as Intifada, the Palestinian mass movement that first began in 1988 and still employs stone-throwing as a method of popular resistance. It is a movement that is giving India’s security establishment sleepless nights.

These days, the slightest provocation — say an alleged human rights violation by the security forces somewhere in the Valley, triggers a stone-throwing protest in urban areas, and increasingly in provincial towns and villages across Kashmir.

For these young people, angered by the status-quo in the Valley which they find unbearable, even their ‘nights out’ are not fun. Rather, it is a precaution against getting picked up by the police, who might have identified them during the protests.

TEHELKA caught up with one such band of youngsters on a chilly evening near the Jamia Masjid, Srinagar. A few of them were students; others work in small private businesses. From the surrounding darkness, they emerged silently in ones and twos to make sure that it was not a police trap. With the typical belligerence of youth, one of them shot off: “We know what journalists are all about. We still came thinking that at least one person should know how we think and feel.” Extremely cynical and skeptical of political leaders — separatist and mainstream — they appear to have divorced hope of any change or a normal life.

This is a generation that grew up amid turmoil in the wake of the armed insurgency, and the crushing military response to it. “Kashmir mein izzat se zinda rehna hai to India se ladtey rehna hai (To live with honor in Kashmir, you have to keep fighting India all the time),” said one of them. In his twenties now, he alleges that as a kid he saw an Indian soldier slit his brother’s throat and kill him. Another brother, he says, was killed when an unknown attacker hit his head with a shovel.

Each of them narrates a different story of brutality they have witnessed from close. Angrily, they talk about experiences, when police and paramilitary forces enter and ransack their homes and “misbehave” with men and women alike. They believe that the only way to keep the security forces away from their area is to turn “themselves into weapons”. “If they catch one of us, ten others will emerge. How many can they catch?” asks one of the youngsters, undeterred.

Security officials feel these protests have become more difficult to deal with than the armed militancy. “It’s part of a combined effort to keep the pot boiling,” says Kuldeep Khoda, the state police chief. As if in response, one of the youths said that the government wants to “brand us terrorists” to justify arrests and killings, and discourage others. “On most occasions, a few of us would throw the first stones. The hundreds who would then follow, did so on their own,” he says.

In an effort to quell the dissent last year, a Senior Superintendent of Police, Srinagar, invoked Islam to discourage stone throwers. A hadith (instance from the Prophet’s life) quoted by him, triggered an intense media debate on the issue. However, it didn’t achieve any results. “Our clerics and some leaders tell us that stone-pelting is not good. But they don’t tell us how else we can change our situation,” says one of the stone throwers, who appeared from an educated and economically well-off family.

LAST MONDAY, the death of 11-dayold Irfan, amid protests near Baramulla, spread anger, condemnation and gloom across Kashmir. The vehicle in which the family was taking the baby to hospital was stopped and surrounded by “protestors in two vehicles”, police said. “While they were being dragged out, the infant fell from the mother’s lap and was injured,” said AQ Manhas, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police, Baramulla. The baby died before the family could reach the hospital. Police have registered a case of murder but it is unclear who were there in the two vehicles. For the first time, ‘unusually’ according to the police, the protesters used cars.

Meanwhile, the police enquiry on the January 31 tear gas shelling that had killed Wamiq Farooq, a 13-year-old in Srinagar, has raised the temperature even further. The authorities had initially suspended the Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) responsible for the firing. But now it has emerged that the dead boy is also going to be charge sheeted. “It is not that we hold the police officer prima facie guilty. The boy had attempted to attack and murder other policeman earlier — in response to which more tear gas shells were fired. We have submitted a report on this to the court of law,” said Hemant Lohia, DIG, Kashmir.

In response, the government plans to decongest Srinagar’s old city. Sources say, a “package is seriously being worked out”, to resettle multiple families living under a single roof to new areas and provide modern housing. If the plan materialses, it could take away some of the immediate motivations of the stone-throwers in Srinagar. But it will take time. For the moment, the concerns remain. “I also want to do normal things. Why should I have to worry about my folks and they about me all the time,” says one of the stone throwers, reflecting the complexity of their myriad insecurities.

[Source: From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 09, Dated March 06, 2010]

Traumatised ‘I will never travel anywhere in India again,’ says Gulzar Ganai, second from left

“I WILL NEVER travel anywhere in India again,” Gulzar Ahmed Ganai, 23, declares. And well he might for his only trip outside Kashmir — to Delhi in 2006 — completely changed his life and that of his cousin Mohammad Amin Hajam, 32, a junior assistant in the Jammu and Kashmir Revenue Department in Pattan. Ganai, a BA student at the time, arrived in Delhi on November 23, 2006 with Hajam, who wanted to buy gold ornaments for his elder sister’s marriage and get his camcorder repaired.

Instead, the cousins were paraded publicly by the Special Cell of Delhi Police on December 10, 2006, as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) members from whom 1.5 kg of RDX and Rs 6 lakh had been recovered. Police claimed they had intercepted a call from Mohammad Akmal alias Abu Tahir, a LeT divisional commander in Kashmir, saying that he was sending two men to collect a consignment of explosives, arms and hawala money meant for terrorist activities. On the basis of this intercept, a police team led by the late Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma claimed to have arrested Ganai and Hajam as they alighted from a Delhi bus on route No 729 from Dhaula Kuan to Mahipalpur on December 10. The police even produced a photograph of the accused from the arrest site.

But Ganai has a different story, which Additional Sessions Judge Dharmesh Sharma of the Patiala House Court agreed with, while setting the cousins free on November 12 last year. Justice Sharma was critical of “the way proceedings and documentation work was done at the spot”, saying “it smacks of a very unprofessional attitude”. He added, “… I wonder if it is a human mistake [by the Special Cell] or something else”, and asked “if the mistakes are bonafide or mistakes committed while attempting to cook up the entire story”.

Ganai says Hajam and he had been in Delhi for four days and were about to return to Kashmir when “about 30 armed men in civilian dress stopped and encircled the auto-rickshaw we were travelling by Kashmiri Gate [near Red Fort]. We were pushed into a white Santro and then blindfolded and handcuffed. We were then taken to what we later found was the office of Special Cell in Lodhi Colony. We were tortured and abused and electric shocks were followed by 12 days of relentless questioning.” ‘You’re from Lashkar. You have come here to carry out bomb blasts’, they were repeatedly told.

Around 9.30 pm on December 10, 2006 Ganai and Hajam were told: “Come, we have to take you somewhere.” “We thought they were going to kill us,” Ganai recalls. The cousins were handcuffed, made to board a white jeep that had small “windows covered with thick gauze” and driven to “some market place near a flyover”. Their handcuffs were opened there and they were told to step down and sit on the road “in front of a few shops”, he says. “They put my bag in front of me and opened it. It had a lot of money and something else in it. None of it was mine.”

One of the armed men who was in the vehicle with them, carrying “AK-type guns and pistols” took some photographs. Ganai says police told passers-by “we have caught terrorists with money and RDX”. The “terrorists” were then driven back to the “same place [the Special Cell office]”. The next day, they were produced in the Tees Hazari court where the “judge didn’t ask” them anything, remanding them to five days’ police custody. “During those five days they made me sign on many sheets of blank paper,” says Ganai. What followed was three years in Tihar Jail.

However, the evidence the Special Cell had so triumphantly produced before the media was shown up to be fabricated. When Sonu Dahiya and Thati Ram, the conductor and driver respectively of the bus on which police claimed the cousins were traveling appeared in court, the case fell apart. On being questioned by lawyer MS Khan, Dahiya and Ram said the last trip of the bus had been canceled on December 10, 2006 and no vehicle was plying at 9.15 pm — the time at which police claimed to have arrested the cousins as they alighted at Mahipalpur. “What stunned all of us was the brazenness with which the whole thing was planted on Ganani and Hajam. The police did not even bother to check whether the bus ran on that day or not,” Khan says. But this was not all. After looking at the “site” photographs, the court said it was “astonishing” that “the background of the place” was not visible. “This is a grave lapse in investigation; the photo should have been taken from a better angle,” it added. The Special Cell never produced the camera memory card to authenticate its claim.

Worse still, ACP (Special Cell) Sanjeev Yadav, under whose supervision the case was handled, admitted in court that the form accompanying the RDX that was sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory for testing was wrongly prepared. Contradicting its own case, the form that the Special Cell filled showed that the RDX had been recovered from Hajam and the detonator and money from Ganai; the police had claimed the opposite in public. “There is no explanation about the error in filling up the CFSL form and the contradiction in the statements of ACP Sanjeev Yadav,” Justice Sharma said.

They may have been released but such has been their trauma that Hajam does not even want to talk about the episode and Ganai refuses to be photographed. “Not even my house,” he says. As we leave his house, a village elder walks up to Ganai. “My son is also in jail for the last one year. He was picked up outside the village while going to work. Can you help?”

[Source: From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 09, Dated March 06, 2010]

In the picturesque coastal regions of Karnataka, fear has become a dominant motif of everyday life. A full year has passed since the attack on women in a pub in Mangalore on January 24, 2009 briefly attracted national outrage. A range of self-styled vigilante groups, with tacit support of the police and state administration, continue to dominate social life in the region, as they peremptorily dictate and enforce what they regard to be permissible social conduct. They oppose, often with open violence, the meeting of young people of different religious identities. They combat women who drink, dance or enter beauty pageants, but are incensed also by the burqa and hijaab. They assault Christian places of worship, priests and nuns, to ‘save’ the Hindu faith from conversions. Teams of young men ‘rescue’ cows which are sold for slaughter.

Local newspapers regularly carry glowing reports of how the alert intervention of activists of these vigilante groups — which include the Sri Ram Sene, Bajrang Dal, Hindu Rashtra Sena, Hindu Jagaran Vedike — have succeeded in preventing young Muslim men from enticing and ‘trapping’ Hindu girls. The propaganda is that Muslim boys are trained to wage a ‘love jihad’, by luring Hindu girls into relationships of ‘love’ and marriage, so as to convert them to Islam. More extravagant versions are that the Hindu women are later trafficked for sex work in the countries of the Gulf, or used for terrorist attacks.

Volunteers in key places

Across coastal Karnataka, these vigilante groups have recruited an impressive army of volunteers, which include bus conductors, waiters in way-side eateries and cinema ushers. If a Hindu girl meets with or talks to Muslim boy — in a cinema auditorium, tea stall or bus — the usher, waiter or bus conductor informs the nearest local unit of one of these Hindutva groups by his cell phone. Typically, even before the film ends, or the bill is paid in the restaurant, or the bus reaches its destination, activists arrive with sticks and rods. They thrash the Muslim young men, slap the women, and drag the couples to the nearest police station. The district head of the Bajrang Dal, Sudarshan Moodabidri, boasts that his boys ‘solved’ over 200 such ‘cases’ in just the last two months: “Sometimes it becomes necessary to use force. Fear of such action should deter such misadventures. Girls reform themselves once they are thrashed and humiliated in public, but boys are tougher to control.”

The police are usually supportive of their exertions, and they detain and beat up the Muslim men, and also call to the police station the parents of the Hindu girls. The police further humiliate and chastise the parents, and warn them to keep their girls ‘in check’. A 15-year-old girl sat next to the brother of a Muslim girlfriend whom she encountered by chance in a bus, and the boy was thrashed and her father summoned to the police station. The humiliated girl hung herself. The police registered a case of abetment of suicide against the Muslim boy.

Vigilantes prevent Hindu friends, both boys and girls, from going for a Ramzan lunch to the home of a Muslim friend. Mixed religious groups of young friends are attacked for going for picnics or films, organising parties in their homes, travelling collectively to college, or drinking juice or beer in each other’s company. Both police and local news reports often refer darkly to the ‘crime’ of these young people of ‘having fun’ together. Matters are, of course, even far grimmer if any wish to marry across religious boundaries. The People’s Union of Civil Liberties, Karnataka, in a report ‘Cultural Policing in Dakshina Kannada: Vigilante Attacks on Women and Minorities” has compiled tens of such reported incidents in just a single year. The authors, Ramdas Rao, Shakun Mohini, B.N. Usha and Arvind Narrain, warn against this frightening level of social surveillance and daily vigilantism, by which ‘everyday acts of living in a multi-religious society’ are being ‘rigorously policed and ordered by vigilante Hindu groups’. The aim is ‘social apartheid where the various communities become self-enclosed structures with inter-community social interaction being actively discouraged’.

There are other butts of the ire of these vigilante groups as well. They oppose women drinking in public, and wearing what they regard as immodest clothing. They attack dance classes as well as beauty contests, on the grounds that young women wear ‘skimpy’ attire. But they also oppose women wearing burqas to college.

Easy targets

Another potent source of hate attacks on Muslims is their trade in cows for slaughter. Most cattle traders in the region are Muslims, but the irony is that almost all the ageing cows that they purchase for the butcher’s knife are from Hindus. They have to pay local Bajrang Dal activists, as well as the police, regular bribes to keep their traditional business going. But even these are not guaranteed to protect them. Nasir was buying old cows one night from Hindu farmers, when he was attacked with iron rods. The police was called, but they registered cases only against Nasir for ‘stealing and illegally transporting cattle’. This, he told me, had become the pattern of their now high-risk vocation. A father and son were brutally assaulted, stripped for several hours and paraded near Udupi by a mob for the same ‘crime’. The incident was watched by a large crowd, as if it was a circus.

Deep divide

Professional and educational organisations are also split on communal lines. As in Gujarat, it is today rare for a Hindu lawyer to accept the brief of a Muslim client in a criminal case. Reporters Sudipto Mandal of The Hindu and Naveen Soorinje of Karavali Aley, who bravely report ways by which hate and fear is fostered among minorities, were openly threatened with their lives in a press meet recently, for being ‘anti-Hindu’. A year earlier, Samvartha Sahil was similarly threatened. Most other newspapers are openly partisan, and routinely refer to minorities as people from the ‘other’ community. Students demanded the dismissal of their professor for condemning the attack on women in the Mangalore pub, and the professor was served notice by the collage authorities for offending ‘religious’ sentiments.

This climate of daily fear is further fanned by regular targeted ‘black-shirt’ type attacks on minority individuals and places of worship. These have continued apace from 1997, with communal propaganda against the two principal minority faiths erupting in regular episodes of attacks and ransacking of their homes, livelihoods and shrines. They convert small disputes, such as over road accidents or sports contests, into communal clashes. I met Azween, an 18-year-old daily wage labourer in a hospital in Mangalore, his left eye destroyed. Returning from work, he watched a local cricket match. A skirmish over an umpire’s decision erupted into ugly attacks with iron rods on all Muslim youth who were present, and Azween’s eye was pierced with a trishul.

Matters deteriorated further since the BJP government came to power in 2006. The police refuse to take action against vigilante groups who beat up and insult young people with impunity in their mission of cultural policing. Instead, they assist and collaborate in their extra-legal criminal intimidation. Both the Chief Minister and Home Minister by implication also justify planned attacks on churches by referring to ‘the spontaneous anger’ of the people against conversions.

I met in Mangalore heroes who resist and battle daily this social apartheid: journalists, teachers, students, engineers, businessmen, actors, writers. Extraordinary men and women, mostly from the majority Hindu faith, who accept daily persecution and harassment willingly as the price they must pay to hold their peoples, and their beliefs, together.

And yet I encountered in coastal Karnataka a society almost as bitterly divided as in Gujarat. Unlike in Gujarat, there is no carnage here. Only everyday living weighed low by the burdens of hate and fear.

[Source: The Hindu]

The Daily Beast survey took into consideration daily calorie intake, TV viewing habits, percentage of the population that plays sports and Internet usage, reports the New York Post.

Out of those four categories, the US was first in calories and watching the most TV – enough for the top spot.

The Canadians came second after leading the planet in Internet usage.

Belgium, a nation known for its waffles, beer and pomme frittes, stood third while Turkey landed the fourth spot.

The last in the survey was Switzerland since its people spend the least amount of time in front of the TV of all the 24 countries on the list.

The top five laziest countries are:

1. US

2. Canada

3. Belgium

4. Turkey

5. Great Britain (ANI)

Pundit Debbie Schussell, former Mark Siljander (VT staff writer) staffer, has bitterly complained about the strong ties between Fox News and Al Jazeerah.  Fox owner, Rupert Murdoch, is the most powerful “influencer” of the ultra-rightists in Israel.  Attempts by the press to present Al Jazeerah of today as the “pro-terrorist” media it seemed like many years ago is an epic misrepresentation.

A further abuse, of course, is not only that we are no longer seeing the easily debunked bin Laden doubles whose video tapes were “mysteriously” released by SITE Intelligence, the Rita Katz/Israeli group that seems to find them in trash bins behind delicatessens.  The “new” audio tape itself contains statements claiming credit for 9/11 in direct contradiction to the real bin Laden videos, the only ones authenticated.  If you wondered why the FBI doesn’t list Osama bin Laden as a suspect in 9/11, I think you have your answer.  If they think the bin Laden “admissions” aren’t credible, I wonder who the FBI is investigating or if they have simply been told to mind their own business.

The terrorist incident itself is the last thing Al Qaeda would ever take responsibility for despite the claims by SITE Intelligence that they found an unnamed and unverified internet site that confirmed this.  Who in the name of all that is holy would want to take responsibility for an idiot who was led onto an American bound plane by passing around searches, customs and passport control in an airport run by an Israeli security company but who carried a “bomb” designed by a three year old.

Who would be so stupid as to try to pass off this childish tape when reliable witnesses saw the terrorist being led onto the plane in Amsterdam in a manner that required full cooperation from security personnel, passport control and the airline itself.  We don’t even have to go into the fact that the “terrorists” in Yemen that supposedly claimed responsibility were released from Guantanamo under the personal signature of Vice President Cheney in 2007 or that before the incident, the government of Yemen tied these individuals to Israeli controllers through captured computers.

I am only thankful that the duped terrorist, or as Lee Oswald had said, “patsy”, was the moronic son of a long time Mossad business associate in Nigeria.  Mr. Mutallab, banker, but mostly head of Nigeria’s defense industry, DICON, managed  almost entirely by Israelis, may have much more story to tell other than the one he told CIA Chief of Station on November 19, 2009.  Do we want to follow former Homeland Security director Chertoff, not only a Jewish activist but currently representing companies selling body scanners to airports and the mysterious ability for someone on worldwide terrorist watch lists to be escorted onto a US bound airliner without passport or search?

Billions in profits were realized almost instantly after this incident.  Companies tied to Chertoff, Israel and India were on the receiving end.

The only reliable information the world has on Osama bin Laden is that he was killed by American troops on December 13, 2001 and buried outside Tora Bora by his following, 30 Mujahideen.  At least 6 of these witnesses were alive at last check.  Since his death, every “leaked” video or statement has been timed for convenient electoral “terrorist” scares, been childishly unprofessional and has only worked to discredit Islam.

Every effort has been made by the MSM/corporate press to cover the facts behind the Christmas “bombing” and push the blame on everyone but the obvious culprits.  That effort was deemed so successful that now a brazen attempt to resurrect long dead Osama bin Laden to take responsibilty for trying to set off a bomb with a flame ignite that could only be exploded using a blasting cap, is being made.

Is this an attempt to make Al Qaeda look stupid?

“My name is Osama bin Laden.  I had a moron carry a defective bomb onto a plane full of Islamic families returning to Detroit, the most Muslim city in the west, as part of a terror campaign.  I chose a flight that connected from  the Middle East  so I could kill as many of the innocent faithful as possible.  Please excuse this and the dozen or other mistakes made but being dead has left me less sharp than I once was.  No, I do not work for the Mossad, they simply tape and distribute my interviews.  This is part of an agreement with my talent agent who is Jewish.  All talent agents are Jewish, ask anyone in Hollywood. What do you expect, miracles? 10% of nothing is nothing.

For my faithful followers, I expect to be a regular on Californication next season on Showtime.  I’ll be the guy with the beard who seems dead.”

The second possibility, one designed for the “spiritual” crowd is this:

“I am Osama, the ghost of Tora Bora.  Please give more money to Israel, vote to extend the Patriot Act and buy new airport scanners from the companies listed on my weekly newsletter distributed by SITE Intelligence.  Watch for more insane threats coming in the future and have a nice weekend.  Remember to stop eating pork.”

Any group that could make 5 airliners outwit NORAD, the most advanced air defense system in the world, any group that could train terrorist pilots inside the United States itself with nobody catching on, and it gets worse.  Sources tell us that FBI Special Agent Stephen Butler may have “accidentally” been cashing checks for and paying rent for two of the 9/11 hijackers.  Can people who can get this kind of thing done put a moron on an aircraft at an airport secured by an Israeli company, “extremely closely” related to the same company that managed security at all of the airports used on 9/11?

When Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell and his wife witnessed the famous, “he has no passport, he is a Sudanese refugee, we do this all the time”, incident in Amsterdam, only a phony bin Laden tape could make America forget, or so “they” hope.  Imagine our terrorist being  taken to meet the security head for the “airline” with his “Indian looking” handler, bomb strapped to his underwear.  Think of this exploding moron and his handler and who they would have had to know to get past, not only airline security and the Israeli company guarding the airport but Dutch passport control as well.

Anyone with the power to load the “crotch bomber” on a plane with no passport could have put a nuclear weapon in luggage easier.  Nukes are seldom on watch lists or have parents running to the CIA reporting them as “terrorists.”  Next time we are being lied to, please, have more respect.  Not everyone is a dumb as a Fox News, CNN,  the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times.

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

It is one thing claiming that poor, long dead Osama bin Laden runs terrorists in Yemen.  It is quite something else proving that he manages an airport in Europe or runs the Dutch government.   When US Senators can’t get thru airport security without being detained, bin Laden’s ability to get diplomatic VIP treatment for known terrorists makes him more than a threat, it makes him a magician.

We are thankful that nobody was seriously injured and that we can all laugh about this, maybe not all of us.  The people of Nigeria don’t think it is funny.  Millions of Muslims aren’t seeing the joke either.  Air travelers are having their bad moments also.  Some, however, have benefited in a major way, politically, financially and militarily.  None of those people, however, are ever openly accused of terrorism.