Features

A hallmark of the Modi government’s first 200 days in office is the beginning of the Sangh Parivar’s Long March through the institutions of the state, in particular bodies that deal with education and culture. The Parivar’s agenda is to reflect its own specific brand of “cultural nationalism” in these institutions by engineering long-term changes in their programmes and priorities, and by making key appointments of personnel who will loyally execute such changes.

The dominant architectural site in the city is not the Sacred Mosque, where the Kaaba, the symbolic focus of Muslims everywhere, is. It is the obnoxious Makkah Royal Clock Tower hotel, which, at 1,972 feet, is among the world’s tallest buildings. It is part of a mammoth development of skyscrapers that includes luxury shopping malls and hotels catering to the superrich. The skyline is no longer dominated by the rugged outline of encircling peaks. Ancient mountains have been flattened. The city is now surrounded by the brutalism of rectangular steel and concrete structures — an amalgam of Disneyland and Las Vegas.

The presumption is that ISIL, also known as IS or ISIS, is somehow out of control, having turned on its covert masters in American and British military intelligence. However, when you note the political consequences from these very public executions of American and British citizens, it appears that the terror network is in fact carrying out orders to facilitate geopolitical objectives.

Missing from the chorus of outrage, however, has been any acknowledgement of the integral role of covert US and British regional military intelligence strategy in empowering and even directly sponsoring the very same virulent Islamist militants in Iraq, Syria and beyond, that went on to break away from al-Qaeda and form ‘ISIS’, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or now simply, the Islamic State (IS).

Saudi Arabia has all the vices and none of the virtues of an oil rich state like Venezuela. The country is governed by a family dictatorship which tolerates no opposition and severely punishes human rights advocates and political dissidents. Hundreds of billions in oil revenues are controlled by the royal despotism and fuel speculative investments the world over.

Kashmir is in tangled mess created by all the stakeholders involving the camp known by the name Freedom camp. Let us embrace the fact and the fact of the matter is that this mess was initiated by none other than by those who claim to be the champions of the ‘Kashmir cause’. The current movement has its genesis from the later part of 1989 when a group of men or groups of men just created a hullabaloo and set the tune in for this movement. With this the foundation stone of the chaos and confusion was laid down.

The condemnable attack on Supreme Court Lawyer and ‘team Anna’ member Prashant Bhushan on 12th October 2011, threw up many a questions. To begin with the attackers were congratulated by ‘ultra Nationalists’ like Bal Thackeray of Shiv Sena, showing the gross intolerance around certain issues in our society, more particularly those related to Kashmir and other issues being raised by those who have been practicing the sectarian politics. It does reflect the growing intolerance in the society without doubt.

Asma Jahangir’s recent venomous outburst on a television channel against the army and its senior leadership was unfortunate and uncalled for. Given her stature as a human rights activist, lawyer and President Supreme Court Bar Association, she was expected to conduct herself in a more dignified and responsible manner. While her performance surely shocked the domestic audience, she played well to galleries across the borders.

India’s ruling upper castes cannot be more than 15% of our population. They are led by the vaidiks who have been the traditional centuries-old exploiters whom Budha, Guru Ravidas, Nanak, Phule, Dr. Ambedkar, Periyar E.V. Ramaswamy fought. They are the country’s leaders of thought and action having co-opted the other three caste groups—Kshatriya, Vaishya and to some extent even the shudra—and converted them into reckless, heartless exploiters.

It’s hard to imagine now, but in 1944, six years after Kristallnacht, Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism, felt comfortable equating the Zionist ideal of Jewish statehood with “the concept of a racial state — the Hitlerian concept.” For most of the last century, a principled opposition to Zionism was a mainstream stance within American Judaism.