Lucknow Monday, November 19, 2012
Delhi, November 19, 2012
Photographs of Delhi demonstration by Benny Kuruvilla. For more pictures, click here.
Category Archives: Politics
Worldwide protests as Israel attacks Gaza
List of world-wide protests from Bethlehem to Quebec, November 14-17, 2012
Child wounded in Israeli air strike on November 14th
[From The Electronic Intifada]
Yesterday Israel ended an effective truce with armed groups in Gaza, and carried out the extrajudicial execution of Ahmed al-Jabari, the commander of the military wing of Hamas.
Israeli attacks today killed at least seven people including two young girls in Gaza.
Aside from the fact that it almost always violates truces and ceasefires, seeking escalation where instead there could be calm, what motives might Israel have?
Israel’s “Minister of Home Front Defense” [Avi Dichter] says Gaza must be “reformatted” as if it were a computer hard drive, just like Israel did in the West Bank in 2002 during a series of massacres it called “Operation Defensive Shield.”
Israel’s Ynet reported in Hebrew that Dichter
said in a closed meeting, in the course of his visit in the south under the escalation, that “there is no other choice, Israel must carry out a formatting action in Gaza, actually format the system and clean it out, the way we did in Judea & Samaria during Operation Defensive Shield.”
Protest in London over Israeli airstrikes in Gaza in 2009
Imagining Post-Zionist Futures – Israeli Apartheid and Palestinian Resistance III
This post is the third of a series based on a visit by Nivedita Menon and myself to Palestine in mid-September 2012. The first two are Nakba and Sumoud and Waiting for the Third Intifada.
It was the 18th of September, our third evening in Ramallah. We were at the Ramallah Cultural Palace to listen to Palestinian youth bands perform. The place was teeming with people, mostly young, in their twenties and thirties. The hall was packed, the atmosphere so electric that even if Magid had not been there to explain, there was no way we could have missed the excitement and the anger that the songs evoked in the audience. Interestingly, not all the songs were about Zionist oppression and the travails of everyday life in occupied Palestine. When a song critical of the PA (Palestinian Authority) began, the hall went up in spontaneous applause, endorsing the sarcastic lyrics directed at PA that has lately been involved in carrying out repression on its own population.
The complexity of the current phase of the movement arises from the fact that now, the new forces of Palestinian liberation are arrayed, not merely against Israeli occupation but also against this entity called PA and the Oslo Accords that put in place the political arrangements that mark the division of territories today. An arrangement that was supposed to be merely an interim one lasting but a few years, until the question of Palestinian statehood could be settled, has become a quasi-permanent one that is seen to threaten the longer-term goal itself.
Continue reading Imagining Post-Zionist Futures – Israeli Apartheid and Palestinian Resistance III
भदरसा के जलने में प्रशासन की अहम भूमिका: रिहाई मंच
This release in Hindi about recent communal violence in the Bhadarsa area of Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh comes to us from the RIHAI MANCH. Please help us translate this into English by translating just one paragraph in the comments
- Jannatunisa
फैजाबाद, 9 नवम्बर 2012। रिहाई मंच के जांचदल ने दशहरा के दौरान हुयी साम्प्रदायिक हिंसा से प्रभावित भदरसा गांव का दौरा किया। जांच दल ने पाया कि भदरसा में हुयी हिंसा पूरी तरह सुनियोजित थी जिसे साम्प्रदायिक तत्वों और प्रशासन की मिलीभगत से अंजाम दिया गया जिसमें मीडिया की भूमिका भी संदिग्ध थी। जांच दल ने यह भी पाया कि प्रशासन की तरफ से आगजनी से पीडित परिवारों से घटना के साक्ष्य जबरन मिटवाए जा रहे हैं जबकि पीडि़तों को न तो उचित मुआवजा मिला है और ना ही एफआईआर दर्ज किये गये हैं। जांच दल ने प्रेस काउंसिल द्वारा गठित शीतला सिंह जांच आयोग से भी भदरसा जाने की मांग की है। Continue reading भदरसा के जलने में प्रशासन की अहम भूमिका: रिहाई मंच
“We may weep but we will stay”: Women resist evictions in Palestine: Kalyani Menon Sen
Guest post by KALYANI MENON SEN
- Umm Nabil’s settler-occupied house is painted with Israeli symbols. (Photo: Aruna Rao)
Umm Nabil al Kurd is 82 years old. She is tiny and frail – her hands tremble as she takes the mike. But her voice is steady as she describes how she lost her home.
“We came to Jerusalem from Haifa as refugees in 1948” she says. “The Jordanians allotted us our house. We have lived there for 60 years – my children were born there. It was small and broken when we moved in – we extended it and improved it as our family grew. We planted a garden. When my son got married and the grandchildren came, we built a separate unit for him at the back of the main house. We built with our own money, with our own hands. Then, two years ago, the Israelis came with the police and told us to leave. They said the house was theirs. They pushed me to the ground, called me filthy names, turned their dogs on me. They threw out our furniture and moved into the house. We went to court but the judge said we were occupying the house illegally – he told us to pay 100,000 shekels as rent for the years that we had lived in the house. We had to pay – my husband would have been imprisoned if we did not. We are still fighting the case – the next hearing is in July but I don’t know if we will ever get the house back.” Continue reading “We may weep but we will stay”: Women resist evictions in Palestine: Kalyani Menon Sen
Israeli Apartheid and Palestinian Resistance II – Living the Occupation
Planning to visit Palestine? Good news, Indian citizens don’t need a visa to enter Palestine. One small thing though. Palestine is occupied, and you cannot enter Palestine except through Israeli border control. The occupied Palestinian territories (OPT) have no control over their external borders.
Entry to Ayda refugee camp in the West Bank, established in 1950. The key is the symbol of the Right of Return of Palestinians. (Photo AN/NM)
Whether you fly in through Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, or enter by road from Jordan or Egypt – it’s an Israeli visa that is required – there is no such thing as a visa to Palestine. Indeed, from the point of view of the occupying state, there is no Palestine, only Palestinian Territories – that is, West Bank and Gaza, the two green bits in the fourth map reproduced in the previous post. (There are also no Palestinians, according to Israeli state classifications – there are Israelis and there are bureaucratically differentiated Arabs, as we’ll see below). Continue reading Israeli Apartheid and Palestinian Resistance II – Living the Occupation
Friends of Palestine Respond to InCACBI Call to Boycott the Cameri in Delhi
On Sunday evening, November 4th, about 60 friends of Palestine — theatre persons, writers, artists, film makers, academics, students and activists — gathered outside Delhi’s Siri Fort auditorium, the venue for the Israeli state-sponsored performance by The Cameri Theatre. Their form of protest was an unusual one. All of them wore T shirts which said, in bold black letters on white, No to Israeli Apartheid. There were no slogans or placards. Instead, they stood around the entrance, distributing leaflets and talking to theatre goers about the boycott. A few theatre goers actually responded and did not go in. A couple even joined the protest. One woman, who took a T shirt to wear inside, found a different form of discrimination being practiced in the auditorium; the Israeli theatre goers were let in, but the Indians had to wait. She read the leaflet in her hand, came out to join the protestors. Read more
लोकतंत्र के ईश से दूर होते नीतीश : मनीष शांडिल्य
नीतीश कुमार और मीडिया दोनों एक-दूसरे को बहुत प्रिय हैं. (यहां मीडिया से तात्पर्य मुख्यतः बिहार के मुख्यधारा के बड़े अखबारों से है.) नीतीश कुमार बतौर मुख्यमंत्री मुख्यधारा की मडिया पर बिहार का खजाना लुटाते हैं और बदले में मीडिया अपना युगधर्म भूलकर उनकी झूठी-सच्ची तारीफ में लगा रहता है, उनके पक्ष में तर्क-कुतर्क गढ़ता है, अखबार संदर्भ-बेसंदर्भ उनकी बड़ी-बड़ी तसवीरें छापते हैं. वैसे नीतीश कुमार और मीडिया के बीच के मधुर रिश्ते की और भी दूसरी बड़ी वजहें भी हैं, लेकिन उनकी चर्चा फिर कभी. फिलहाल इस रिश्ते का जिक्र इस कारण क्योंकि पिछले दिनों नीतीश अखबारों के पहले पन्नों पर दिखाई तो दे रहे थे, मगर कुछ दूसरे अंदाज में उनकी तस्वीरें छप रही थीं.
मामला कुछ यूं था. बिहार को विशेष राज्य दिलवाने की मांग (या कहें जिद) के लिए जन-समर्थन जुटाने जब इस बार नीतीश कुमार बिहार भर की ’अधिकार-यात्रा’ पर निकले तो जनता-जर्नादन को अपने अधिकारों की भी याद आ गई. (लिखत-पढ़त में यह उनकी सरकारी यात्रा नहीं थी!) मिथिलांचल इलाके से इस यात्रा के दौरान आम लोगों, खासकर नियोजित शिक्षकों ने अपने मांगों के समर्थन में नीतीश कुमार का ध्यान खींचना शुरू किया. गौरतलब है कि इस मंहगाई में नौकरी करते हुए भी मात्र छह-सात हजार मासिक पाने वाले ‘सरकारी’ शिक्षकांे को बिहार में कई महीनों से वेतन तक नहीं मिल रहा था. अब जनता का तो अपना तरीका होता है (कहीं-कहीं बहकावे में भी आ जाती है, कहीं-कहीं जनता की भीड़ में शरारती तत्व भी घुस जाते हैं), वह कहीं काला झंडा लहराने लगी तो कहीं मंच की ओर चप्पल दिखाने-उछालने लगी. उपेक्षा और परेशानियों से उपजे लोगों के आक्रोश ने खगड़िया जिले में रौद्र रूप धारण कर लिया. और खगड़िया के बाद ही नीतीश कुमार अखबारों में उस अंदाज में दिखाई देने लगे, जिस बदले रूप का ऊपर जिक्र है.
Continue reading लोकतंत्र के ईश से दूर होते नीतीश : मनीष शांडिल्य
Israeli Apartheid and Palestinian Resistance I – Nakba and Sumoud
[In September 2012, Aditya Nigam and I had the incredible good fortune to visit Palestine. This post is the first of a series in which we reflect on our experience and what we learnt there. We stayed in Ramallah, visited and interacted with colleagues at Birzeit University and spoke at a conference organized by Muwatin, a research institute based in Ramallah. We met a large number of inspiring people who pushed the frontiers of our minds, and we came away humbled and moved by the dignity of a people living through the brutal occupation of their lands by the Zionist state of Israel, with limitless courage and sense of humour intact.
Deepest gratitude to Rema Hammami of Birzeit who drove us around Jerusalem, and whose inimitable commentary gave us a live historical sense of her country.
Words are inadequate to thank our friends Magid Shihade and Sunaina Maira, whose passionate love of Palestine and determination to help us make the most of our brief stay there, expanded our horizons continually.]
On the 15th of May 1948, the state of Israel was born, dispossessing Palestinians who had lived on that land for centuries. Fleeing terror and genocide in Europe, and anti-semitism globally, Jews from all over the world poured into Palestine.
Why Palestine? Why was Palestine given to the Jews as their home? And whose property was Palestine, that it could be given away? Why were people who had never done any harm to the Jewish people made to pay the price for European anti-semitism? It was Germany and Italy and Poland that had in fact, run concentration camps; it was any number of other countries of Europe that could boast of centuries-old histories of violent anti-semitism. Why were not parts of these countries carved out to make a country for the people they had wronged?
Maps showing the gradual obliteration of Palestine by Israel
Continue reading Israeli Apartheid and Palestinian Resistance I – Nakba and Sumoud
Boycott Zionazi Apartheid at Delhi International Arts Festival!
[Posted below is a statement by artistes, writers and the Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. The statement is self-explanatory. However, as we shall be explaining in a series of posts on Kafila soon, Zionism in Israel has perfected the most hated techniques of their own twentieth century tormentors, the Nazis, against the people of Palestine. Worse still, it has given these techniques a veneer of ‘normalcy’ – and every ‘cultural exchange’ with Israel only helps further normalize this most despicable form of colonial occupation. ‘Settlements’, in this game of occupation, become the mode of annexing more and more of the Palestinian territory through settling of civilian Jewish populations in what still remains of Palestinian areas. – AN]
Call to boycott The Cameri Theatre at the Delhi International Arts Festival 2012
The organizers of the Delhi International Arts Festival (DIAF) — the Prasiddha Foundation, the Hindustan Times and the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) — have invited The Cameri Theatre from Israel to perform at Siri Fort on November 4th as part of the Festival’s celebration of “the spirit of Delhi”.
The Cameri Theatre serves as an official propaganda tool for the State of Israel — a state that occupies Palestinian lands and practises apartheid policies on the Palestinian people. The Cameri theatre is complicit in the Israeli Occupation of Palestine because it chooses to perform in the illegal settlement of Ariel. Ariel is one of the largest settlements in the occupied West Bank, located on expropriated agricultural Palestinian land. The construction of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land violates international law, and amounts to a war crime.
Illegal Ariel contaminates Palestinian water and agricultural lands. Illegal Ariel is surrounded by walls and fences, and closely guarded by soldiers and armed security personnel. A theatrical performance in this illegal settlement is, by definition, a performance to an exclusively Israeli audience. Palestinians living even in the nearest village are physically excluded from attending. By performing in such circumstances, the Cameri profits from and legitimizes Israel’s illegal colonization policies, and becomes an accomplice to these crimes.
Continue reading Boycott Zionazi Apartheid at Delhi International Arts Festival!
विशालतम लोकतंत्र का संकीर्णतम इतिहास: धीरेश सैनी
(रामचंद्र गुहा की पुस्तक ‘इण्डिया आफ़्टर गांधी’ के हिंदी अनुवादों की धीरेश सैनी द्वारा की गई समीक्षा, समयांतर के अक्टूबर 2012 अंक में प्रकाशित)
रामचंद्र गुहा की बहुप्रचारित किताब `इंडिया आफ्टर गांधीः द हिस्ट्री ऑफ दी वर्ल्ड्स लार्जेस्ट डेमोक्रेसी` का हिंदी अनुवाद पेंगुइन बुक्स ने दो खंडों (`भारतः गांधी के बाद` और `भारतः नेहरू के बाद`) में प्रकाशित किया है। बकौल गुहा, उनका `संपूर्ण कैरियर `इंडिया आफ्टर गांधी` लिखने की एक वृहत (और तकलीफदेह) तैयारी रही है।` यह बात दीगर है कि उन्होंने इस तकलीफदेह तैयारी को बतौर `दुनिया के विशालतम लोकतंत्र का इतिहास` प्रस्तुत करते हुए `ऐतिहासिक किस्सागोई का पुराना तरीका अख्तियार` किया है। किताब के कवर पर इस बात का जिक्र है कि यह `एक `व्यापक शोध के बाद किए गए लेखन का नतीजा है जिसे रामचंद्र गुहा ने अपनी मखमली भाषा में रोचक तरीके से लिखा है।` सुशांत झा द्वारा किया गया अनुवाद भी किस्सागोई और भाषा की रोचकता को बरकरार रखता है। जाहिर है कि इतिहास की किताब का महत्व उसकी किस्सागोई की मखमली भाषा की रोचकता से ज्यादा उसमें कहे गए तथ्यों और उनके विश्लेषण और कहने से छोड़ दिए गए जरूरी तथ्यों पर ही निर्भर करता है। 1947 से छह दशकों के सफर को विभिन्न भागों और अध्यायों के जरिये तय करने वाली इस किताब का हर अध्याय उथलपुथल, हिंसा और दूसरे झंझावतों के बीच `एकीकृत भारत` के अस्तित्व को लेकर निरंतर आशंकाओं (प्रायः पश्चिमी जगत की) का उल्लेख करता है और उसका समापन प्रायः इस `खुशी` के साथ होता है कि देखो दुनिया वालो, यह फिर भी `साबुत` खड़ा है। Continue reading विशालतम लोकतंत्र का संकीर्णतम इतिहास: धीरेश सैनी
Bootlegging Education – Four Strategies for Fighting Back
Yes, this is what we must do now on a large scale – bootleg education.
Thanks to the conjunction of new heights of intellectual bankruptcy with new regimes of intellectual property, a large scale attack on equitable access to education is upon us. A longer discussion on ‘Intellectual property’ is required, but the immediate provocation for this post is of course the Delhi University photocopying case. Elsewhere on Kafila, there is a post that links to a petition by authors and academics on this issue. The case, very simply is this: three big corporate publishers, namely Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Taylor and Francis have filed a petition in the Delhi High Court, claiming infringement of copyright with regard to course packs used by students. The offender against these giant publishers is a small photocopy shop in Delhi School of Economics. As many legal experts on intellectual property and the Indian copyright law have stated, this kind of photocopying is well within the framework of the law (See some of the discussion here and here).
At the moment, however, I am not concerned with the pure legality of the issue. The question of ‘course packs’ concerns the vital interests of our society as a whole. For there was a time when teaching at the college and university level was conducted largely through substandard kunjis, or guidebooks – honourable exceptions apart, of course. Even today we have at least one of the corporate giants (that happens to be among those suing the little Rameshwari photocopier), producing slightly upmarket versions of such guidebooks. University professors willing to write a substandard book a month that fits into some course or the other, are also published by publishers like these now, euphemistically called ‘textbooks’. In an earlier time, such books of barely passable scholarship (largely plagiarized cut-and-paste jobs) would be published only by dubious publishers.
Continue reading Bootlegging Education – Four Strategies for Fighting Back
The (Ir)resistible Rise of Arvind Kejriwal – Enter The ‘Outsider’
The tide is clearly turning. You know this when former critics and lampooners start talking of him as a ‘game changer’; you know this when weather-cocks turn away from the corridors of power where once they had been ensconced. You know this when rats start deserting the sinking ship.
Suddenly, everybody is talking favourably about the man from the ‘outside’ who is refusing to respect any of the established protocols of protest and politics. More startling perhaps, is the fact that in the past two days we have had senior journalists and political analysts suddenly telling us that they had known all along that there was a ‘post 1980 contract’, a secret code of silence, that never would the dynasty be attacked – indeed never would any apsiring dynasty be attacked. Everybody knew, says Dipankar Gupta in the Times of India, that the issue came up one and a half years ago – and we all do know that. Robert Vadra’s doings had already been known. A senior BJP leader is even reported to have told a senior journalist that his party had indeed been in possession of the very same documents that Arvind Kejriwal brandished at his press conference. But, this leader went to say, “after an intense discussion, the leadership decided not to rake up the issue in Parliament even after submitting a motion in each House asking for a discussion.” Everybody knew – the parties, their leaders, the media persons, political analysts. And yet, nobody spoke out. All of them colluded, in other words, in suppressing the issue. Politicians kept silent for an understandable reason – aspiring dynasties that they are, after all. But the others? Mediapersons? Any guesses?
As someone who has been trying to understand Indian politics over the decades, I have often wondered at what I have referred to as the ‘implosion of the political’ – that is to say, the destruction of politics in the formal political domain. What is called a noora kushti in Hindustani, had come to mark our parliamentary-political grammar. Farcical walk-outs after equally farcical fire-spouting rhetorical speeches in parliament, and a happy bonhomie away from the glare of the media – that was what our politics had been reduced to.
Continue reading The (Ir)resistible Rise of Arvind Kejriwal – Enter The ‘Outsider’
To Build A Bridge in Kashmir: A fable by Abhijit Dutta
Guest post by ABHIJIT DUTTA
Once upon a time, a young politician – young enough to have a ‘baba’ appended to his name – came to Kashmir to build a bridge in Srinagar. Now as anyone who knows Srinagar knows, the city is filled with bridges. Some are famous, like Gawkadal, some are pretty, like Zero Bridge, and some are simply without charm, like the Abdullah Bridge that goes from fountain square to Rajbagh. There are several others too, each with their own unique character, their own unique relation to the Jhelum.
When he was told about the many bridges in Srinagar, the politician shouted, “I want to build a bridge.”
“But we don’t need a bridge,” said a man softly to him, wanting not to embarrass this well-meaning man who had come to Kashmir from aafar. In response, the young politician turned around and shouted once again: “I want to build a bridge.” Continue reading To Build A Bridge in Kashmir: A fable by Abhijit Dutta
Stuck Between Gandhi and Cultural Crap: Papilio Buddha Reveals Much
Sometimes a minor cut on the surface of the skin will do to reveal the rot beneath. This is precisely what the film Papilio Buddha, made by the New York-based Malayalee film-maker Jayan Cherian, which draws broadly upon contemporary caste politics in Kerala, has achieved for us. In fact, its achievement on this count is simply amazing. At a single stroke, it has brought to light several stinking sores above which Malayalees, especially many Malayalee intellectuals who occasionally don the garb of public intellectuals, strut. Continue reading Stuck Between Gandhi and Cultural Crap: Papilio Buddha Reveals Much
‘Big Ticket’ Reforms and Bigger Deceptions: Shankar Gopalakrishnan
Guest post by SHANKAR GOPALAKRISHNAN
When the country’s rulers have to tell barefaced lies to get their policies through, you know that there’s something wrong. Consider the recent “big-ticket reforms,” of which the two biggest (in terms of direct impact) have been the diesel price hike and the opening of the retail sector to FDI. The diesel hike, we’re told, was a “tough decision” necessary to “prune subsidies.” Except that diesel isn’t subsidised in this country. To repeat: there is no subsidy on diesel in India. As for FDI in retail, the Cabinet statement on the policy cites four justifications, accompanied by a “Studies show…” claim. Except that the data in the government’s sole study on the issue does not support three of these four justifications. As for their much touted “safeguards”, at least one has been said to be illegal by the Commerce Ministry itself, while the very same CCEA meeting diluted a similar safeguard for single brand retailers. Continue reading ‘Big Ticket’ Reforms and Bigger Deceptions: Shankar Gopalakrishnan
Zero tolerance for democracy – Kudankulam, Omkareshwar, Aseem Trivedi
Which of these three images brings dishonour to India?
This one?
The full coercive force of the state slams down on villagers who have been so far peacefully protesting the location of a nuclear power plant in Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu.
Charges of sedition have been laid on hundreds of protesters in Kudankulam.
The women of Kudankulam wrote recently in a moving message to their fellow citizens:
When we carried the dead body of democracy and burnt it in the outskirts of our village on Aug 15th, 2012, little did we realize that so soon we would witness the real death of democracy. As this last nail is being tightened on our lives, we realize how insignificant has been our voice. But this has only strengthened our vow to be together.
(Read the latest update from Kudankulam below)
Continue reading Zero tolerance for democracy – Kudankulam, Omkareshwar, Aseem Trivedi
If speaking the truth is sedition then I am guilty of sedition: Aseem Trivedi writes from jail
This is the text of a statement issued by ASEEM TRIVEDI from inside a jail in Mumbai. Trivedi has been remanded to judicial custody till 24 September for displaying and publishing cartoons that are allegedly seditious, insult national honour and, under the IT Act, are “grossly offensive” and of “menacing character”. An English translation of his letter is followed by the Hindi original.
Friends,
I am a true citizen of this country, not someone who has committed sedition.
If speaking the truth is sedition, then I am indeed guilty of sedition. If raising one’s voice against injustice is sedition, then I am guilty of sedition. If patriotism and the definition of patriotism have changed, then you could say I am guilty of sedition. If Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and Azad were guilty of sedition, so am I.
Even a small child of this country can understand my motive. I oppose the insulting of the people and the Constitution of India. I have been opposing the insulting of the people and the Constitution of India through my cartoons. Continue reading If speaking the truth is sedition then I am guilty of sedition: Aseem Trivedi writes from jail
Muslim youths launch peace forum in Assam
This press release was put out by MY-FACTS, Guwahati, on 3 September 2012
As a response and being aggrieved over the communalisation of the recent violence and mass displacement in BTAD (Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts) area and in order to analyse the situation, on 2 September, 2012 about 60 highly educated, secular and liberal Muslim youths from all over Assam assembled at the Bhagabhati Prashad Baruah Bhaban, Guwahati, Assam, to brainstorm about a peaceful solution for the present scenario of hatred and violence prevailing in Assam that is spreading all over the country. The meeting was convened under the aegis of a newly formed platform named MY-FACTS (Muslim Youths: Forum Against Communalism, Terrorism and Sedition). Continue reading Muslim youths launch peace forum in Assam
Protesting the Forced Repatriation of Visiting Sports persons and Others from Sri Lanka
Previously posted on dbsjeyaraj.com
We the undersigned are aghast and anguished by the recent decision of the government of Tamil Nadu, acting on the Chief Minister’s orders, to send back two sports teams from Sri Lanka that were in Chennai to play matches against local school teams.
Two days after the Chief Minister issued her orders, members of a Tamil nationalist group, Naam Tamizhar Iyakkam protested against a group of pilgrims from Sri Lanka visiting a church near Thanjavur.
There have been similar protests in the past against visiting teams – by members of the Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam. Continue reading Protesting the Forced Repatriation of Visiting Sports persons and Others from Sri Lanka
When the pseudo-sentiments of the pseudo-religious are pseudo-hurt
In neighbouring Pakistan, an Islamic cleric recently accused a young Christian girl, Rimsha Masih, of blasphemy, a charge punishable by life imprisonment. He said she had burnt some pages that contained verses from the Quran. The 14 year old girl hails from a poor family and suffers from Down’s Syndrome. An eyewitness to the event showed courage and told a magistrate the truth: it was the Muslim cleric who had put those burnt pages in Rimsha’s bag. The cleric has been arrested and is set, in turn, to be charged with blasphemy.
I have been thinking about the incident. Insulting somebody’s religion is bad. It may cause offence. Often it is intended to cause offence. If somebody insults Islam, by doing things like burning pages containing verses from the Quran, it is bound to outrage a Muslim. Continue reading When the pseudo-sentiments of the pseudo-religious are pseudo-hurt
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 