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Protests over conversions set back reform agenda

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india-parliament

New Delhi/Reuters: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reform agenda suffered a setback on Monday as protests erupted in parliament and in the streets over a campaign by Hindu hardliners linked to his party to convert Muslims and Christians to Hinduism.

Opposition members threw papers and swarmed to the centre of the upper house of parliament, forcing the suspension of the session and effectively preventing the government from tabling a bill to increase foreign participation in the insurance sector.

The long-pending insurance legislation to raise the cap on foreign investment to 49 percent from 26 percent, and another bill to replace a decree to overhaul the coal sector, were considered low-hanging fruits that Modi hoped to push through parliament’s winter session, which ends on Tuesday.

But comments by the head of the right-wing Hindu group, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, that India was a “Hindu nation” provoked a storm of criticism, snuffing out any chance of opposition support for government business in the upper house of parliament, where Modi lacks a majority.

“This is an attempt to divide the society,” Nitish Kumar, an opposition leader from the state of Bihar told hundreds of people at a protest in New Delhi, referring to religious conversions.

“The government is not capable of resolving the core issues of our country, so they want to divide the society and distract people.”

Modi is facing a backlash for not doing enough to rein in hardline affiliate groups that have become emboldened in their pursuit of a Hindu-dominant agenda, threatening India’s secular foundations, critics say.

Trouble erupted this month after a group of Muslims complained they had been tricked into attending a conversion ceremony by Hindu groups. A Hindu priest-turned-lawmaker of Modi’s party had planned a mass conversion ceremony on Christmas Day, but that has been put off.

About a fifth of India’s 1.2 billion people identify themselves as belonging to faiths other than Hinduism. Conversion is a sensitive issue with Hindu groups saying many poor Hindus were forced over the ages to give up their faith, or lured into Christianity and Islam.

On Monday, opposition Congress party leader Anand Sharma urged Modi to make clear where he stood on conversions.

Modi actively communicates via social media and addresses the nation every month on radio, but has not commented on conversions, letting colleagues tackle the criticism.

North Korea 'back online' after internet outage

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US denies involvement after reported online-access disruption amid tensions over cyberattack on Sony Pictures.

North Korea is embroiled in a confrontation with US over the hacking of emails from Sony executives [EPA]

North Korea is embroiled in a confrontation with US over the hacking of emails from Sony executives [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

North Korea, at the centre of a confrontation with the US over the hacking of Sony Pictures, experienced a complete internet outage for hours before links were restored, according to a US company that monitors internet infrastructure.

Dyn, the New Hampshire-based internet monitor, said on Tuesday the reason for the outage was not known but could range from technological glitches to a hacking attack.

Several US officials close to the investigations of the attack on Sony Pictures said the US government was not involved in any cyber action against North Korea.

US President Barack Obama had pledged on Friday to respond to the major cyberattack, which he blamed on North Korea, “in a place and time and manner that we choose”.

Dyn said North Korea’s internet links were unstable on Monday and the country later went completely offline.

“We’re yet to see how stable the new connection is,” Jim Cowie, chief scientist for the company, said in a telephone call to Reuters news agency after the services were restored.

“The question for the next few hours is whether it will return to the unstable fluctuations we saw before the outage.”

North Korea is one of the most isolated nations in the world, and the effects of the internet outage there were not fully clear.

Internet dependence

Very few of North Korea’s 24 million people have access to the internet.

However, major websites, including those of the KCNA state news agency, the main Rodong Sinmun newspaper and the main external public-relations company went down for hours.

Almost all of the country’s internet links and traffic pass through China, except, possibly, for some satellite links.

“North Korea has significantly less internet to lose, compared to other countries with similar populations: Yemen [47 networks], Afghanistan [370 networks], or Taiwan [5,030 networks],” Dyn Research said in a report.

“And unlike these countries, North Korea maintains dependence on a single international provider, China Unicom.”

Meanwhile South Korea, which remains technically at war with the North, said it could not rule out the involvement of its neighbour in a cyberattack on its nuclear power plant operator.

It said only non-critical data was stolen and operations were not at risk, but had asked for US help in investigating.

Park Geun-hye, South Korean president, said on Tuesday the leak of data from the nuclear operator was a “grave situation” that was unacceptable as a matter of national security, but she did not mention any involvement of North Korea.

UAE's first nuclear plant to start in 2017

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Soaring energy use and inadequate gas supplies have spurred the UAE to look to nuclear power. Photo: Shutterstock

Soaring energy use and inadequate gas supplies have spurred the UAE to look to nuclear power. Photo: Shutterstock

by Al Akhbar

The first of four nuclear reactors being built by the United Arab Emirates will become operational in 2017 and the rest will be fully functional by 2020, an official said Monday.

“When they are fully operational in 2020, they will generate 25 percent of UAE power needs,” the CEO of the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corp (ENEC), Mohammed al-Hammadi, told an energy conference in Abu Dhabi.

Hammadi said that 61 percent of the first reactor has been completed and it is slated to start production in 2017, while work is underway on the second and third reactors as the site is being prepared for the fourth. The second reactor will come on line in 2018, the third the following year and the last in 2020.

ENEC’s CEO added that his firm has signed a $3 billion contract with international firms to provide fuel for the plants over 15 years.

In 2009, an international consortium led by the state-run Korea Electric Power Corp won a $20.4 billion (15.8 billion euro) deal to build four nuclear power plants in Baraka, west of Abu Dhabi. Under the biggest single contract Seoul has ever won abroad, South Korean firms including Samsung, Hyundai and Doosan Heavy Industries are building the four 1,400-megawatt reactors.

Also in 2009, UAE signed an agreement with the United States on nuclear cooperation, paving the way for the Gulf state to acquire nuclear technology.

According to Hamadi, another five percent of UAE electricity needs will be provided by renewable energy sources by 2020, helping the Gulf state to cut 12 million tons of carbon emissions.

Oil-rich UAE, pumping 2.8 million barrels per day of crude oil, opened the world’s largest operating plant of concentrated solar power in Abu Dhabi in March, which has the capacity to provide electricity to 20,000 homes.

Progress in UAE’s nuclear program comes at a time when Iran and world powers are negotiating to end a standoff over Tehran’s nuclear goals. The Islamic Republic insists that its program is for peaceful purposes, aiming at producing atomic energy to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels.

However, the West and Israel insist the fuel could be enriched to produce a bomb. Consequently, they imposed international sanctions on Iran that have crippled the country’s economy.

Unlike Iran, the UAE is a key Western ally and has avoided international scrutiny over its program.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

In latest attack on Palestinian heritage, Israel reopens museum in old mosque

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Palestinians praying under a mosque in Gaza destroyed in the 51-day Israeli summer offensive. Photo: Anadolu

Palestinians praying under a mosque in Gaza destroyed in the 51-day Israeli summer offensive. Photo: Anadolu

by Al Akhbar

In the latest Israeli efforts to stifle Palestinian culture, authorities in the Israeli-occupied city of Beersheba recently converted a historical mosque into an Islamic museum, despite the fact that 10,000 local Palestinian Muslims have nowhere to pray, locals said.

Locals told Ma’an news agency that an exhibit showcasing a collection of Muslim prayer rugs was recently opened in the building that was formerly the Great Mosque of Beersheba, which was once used regularly as a house of worship before the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their land in 1948.

The exhibit, which locals say has no Arab or Muslim member on the technical supervisory team, will continue until June 2015.

The move comes after decades of protest from the area’s 10,000-strong Palestinian Muslim community, composed primarily of local Bedouins whose ancestors survived the Israeli expulsions as well as Palestinian with Israeli citizenship who have moved to the city from other parts of the country.

Representatives of the community have long petitioned Israeli authorities to allow them to open the mosque for daily prayers or at least once a week for Friday prayers. However, their demands were repeatedly rejected.

The Great Mosque of Beersheba, a town originally known as Bir al-Sabaa, was built in 1906 during the Ottoman era with donations collected from the Bedouin residents of the Negev.

It remained an active mosque until the Israelis occupied the city in 1948 and turned it into a detention center and headquarters for a magistrate court, following the expulsion of Beersheba’s approximately 6,000 Palestinian residents, most of whom fled to Gaza.

Thousands of Jewish immigrants were subsequently brought in to populate the city, while the Palestinian refugees were never allowed to return, despite many of them living only kilometers away.

In 1953, the Israeli authorities turned a portion of the mosque into a museum, which was recognized in 1987 by the Israeli department of archeology as the Negev Museum.

In 1992, the museum was shut down because the building had become vulnerable. However, it was retrofitted recently, paving the way for its reuse.

On December 10, Israel resumed excavations in a Muslim graveyard in West Jerusalem as part of the “Museum of Tolerance” project.

So far in 2014, Israel has demolished more than 543 Palestinian structures and displaced at least 1,266 people, according to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions estimates that Israeli authorities have demolished about 27,000 Palestinian structures in the West Bank since 1967.

A recent statement from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Negotiation Affairs department said that “despite its small size, Palestine has an abundance of historical, religious and cultural heritage sites. Every inch of this land has a story to tell, every hill the scene of a battle, and every stone a monument or a tomb. One cannot understand the geography of Palestine without knowing its history and one cannot understand its history without understanding its geography.”

But Israel has systematically tried to obliterate, annex and confiscate Palestinian sites as it seeks to strip the land it occupies of its Palestinian identity.

Palestinians accuse Israel of heritage theft as Israeli authorities, besides taking over Palestinian lands and properties, deliberately target sites that have historical importance and provide evidence of Palestinian heritage and culture.

Following Israel’s summer offensive against Gaza, many of Strip’s ancient sites, including houses of worship, tombs and cemeteries, were left in ruins.

Gaza’s historic mosques, dating back to the time of the first Islamic caliphs and the Ottoman Empire, were the worst affected.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs, Israel targeted mosques on purpose, partially damaging 130 mosques and completely destroying 73.

The destruction of Gaza’s ancient mosques has brought the total losses incurred by the religious affairs ministry to an estimated $50 million.

Gaza’s only three churches were also damaged during the latest conflict, including the oldest church in the Gaza Strip, the Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, which dates back to the 1150s.

Moreover, settler violence against Palestinians and their property is also systematic and often abetted by Israeli authorities, who rarely intervene in the violent attacks or prosecute the perpetrators.

On November 12, a group of Israeli settlers broke in and torched a mosque in the Palestinian village of al-Mughayyir near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Witnesses, who went to the mosque at around 4:40 am to perform dawn prayers, said the settlers burnt 12 copies of the Qur’an, Islam’s holy book, and set the carpets of the first floor of the two-story building on fire.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there were at least 399 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in 2013.

Israeli authorities have also allowed Zionist settlers to take over homes in Palestinian neighborhoods both in annexed East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and announced plans to build thousands of settlements strictly for Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem while ignoring Palestinian residents.

In addition, Israeli settlers and military forces also regularly sabotage, burn and uproot hundreds of thousands of olive trees, which are highly symbolic for the Palestinian community.

In order to build its apartheid wall and infrastructure for Israeli-only settle­ments, Israeli bulldozers plowed down more than 800,000 olive trees in the West Bank, the equivalent of bulldozing all of New York City’s Central Park 33 times.

Israeli tourism

Besides destroying historical sites, Israel encroaches on Palestinian spaces and heritage in the name of tourism.

Following its expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, Israel rewrote maps, changed the names of Palestinian towns and streets, and tailored their own versions of history very early on so as to counter future generation of Palestinians.

On Sunday, the Israeli parliament’s finance committee voted through $3.3 million to build a tourist center in a settlement in the occupied West Bank, a statement said.

The money is for a project at the Barkan settlement in the north of the Palestinian territory, the Knesset statement said.

According to the Palestinian Authority (PA), besides it being an effective tool in oppressing the Palestinian narrative and rewriting history, tourism is one of the basic grounds upon which the Israeli economy is built.

Palestinian tour guides or transportation companies haven’t been able to enter the Israeli-occupied territories since 2000. From over 240 tourist guides licensed to work all over Palestine before occupation, only 42 have permits to guide in Israel, which are renewed periodically and without guarantee.

In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, the PA says Israel collects about 90 percent of revenue related to pilgrims and tourists.

Sunday’s vote came less than three months before a snap general election on March 17 backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but denounced by the opposition.

Centrist Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid, sacked by Netanyahu as finance minister on December 2, called Sunday’s finance committee vote “electoral corruption.”

“Netanyahu wants to please the settler lobby before the elections,” he told the private television station Channel 10.

The expansion of Israeli settlements remains a major stumbling block to peace with the Palestinians. According to international law, settlements on occupied land are illegal.

In November, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Israel will never agree to limit its illegal settlement building in annexed East Jerusalem, a day after the PLO said in a statement on Independence Day that the “possibility of a two-state solution is quickly fading away” because of Israel’s settlement plans.

According to the PLO, between 1989 and 2014, the number of Israeli settlers on Palestinian land soared from 189,900 to nearly 600,000. These settlements, meanwhile, are located between and around Palestinians towns and villages, making a contiguous state next to impossible.

While major Palestinian cities have boomed in the past 26 years, Israeli confiscation of land in border regions has continued unabated.

According to a UN report published in early December, the PA lost at least $310 million in customs and sales tax in 2011 as a result of importing from or through Israeli-occupied territories.

Last year, the World Bank estimated that Israeli control over Area C – the 61 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli military control – costs the Palestinian economy around $3.4 billion annually, or more than one-third of the Palestinian Authority’s GDP.

The roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict date back to 1917, when the British government, in the now-infamous “Balfour Declaration,” called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Zionist state – a move never recognized by the international community.

In November 1988, Palestinian leaders led by Arafat declared the existence of a State of Palestine inside the 1967 borders and the State’s belief “in the settlement of international and regional disputes by peaceful means in accordance with the charter and resolutions of the United Nations.”

Heralded as a “historic compromise,” the move implied that Palestinians would agree to accept only 22 percent, believed to have become 17 percent after massive Israeli settlement building, of historic Palestine in exchange for peace with Israel.

On the 26th anniversary of the treaty’s signing, the PLO said in a statement in November that despite the 1988 ‘“compromise,” Israel had since failed to be “a partner in peace,” adding that the Israeli expansion and colonization of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has dimmed the prospect of a two-state solution.

“Israel responded by colonizing more of our land and entrenching its control over the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. The possibility of a two-state solution is quickly fading away,” the statement read.

(Al-Akhbar, AFP, Ma’an)

The Interview, Hollywood and the politics of ridicule

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Is it ever okay to depict the assassination of living person? KCNA/Reuters

Is it ever okay to depict the assassination of living person? KCNA/Reuters

by Patricia Phalen, The Conversation

Sony’s decision to cancel the Christmas Day release of its film The Interview is drawing harsh criticism from Hollywood’s elite. George Clooney is asking everyone to stand up against the cancellation. Judd Apatow is defending comedy’s history of attacking people who are “bad to other people.” Rob Lowe, Steve Carell, Jimmy Kimmel and many, many more celebrities have added their voices to the mix.

The Interview, which features Randall Park in the role of North Korean leader Kim Jung Un, follows an absurd (and supposedly comical) assassination plot that ends with Mr. Kim’s violent death (evidently, his head explodes). The filmmakers might argue this is “all in good fun,” but the people ridiculed in the film are clearly not amused.

The North Korea-linked cyber-terrorists who hacked into Sony’s computer network last month threatened violence against theaters that screened the film and any moviegoers who dared to attend. When theater owners began backing out of their commitments to show the film, Sony pulled The Interview from distribution. The situation was, effectively, a bomb scare called in to every theater in the U.S.

So far, public discussion has centered on the hackers’ success at using threats of violence to derail an American film. Particularly galling is the notion that cyber-terrorists can dictate the business decisions of an American company. Because the entertainment industry is involved, most see this as a direct attack on freedom of expression. The loudest and most pervasive analysis of this situation is that Sony negotiated with terrorists, Sony caved, and the terrorists won.

On one level, this argument is a fair characterization.

However, we could use this incident as a springboard for a different – and more complicated – discussion, one that goes beyond the “they won, we lost” binary and introduces important questions: does the American entertainment industry have an ethical responsibility when it comes to representing real people? If so, what are the parameters of this responsibility?

The 2006 British film Death of a President portrayed the fictional assassination of George W. Bush. Many commentators couldn’t quite articulate the problem with showing the violent death of a living person, but there was a shock factor in this film that went beyond simple bad taste.

2006’s Death of a President depicted a fictional assassination of President George W. Bush. imdb.com

The Interview’s filmmakers probably thought Kim Jung Un was a safe target, given the overwhelmingly (and justifiably) negative public opinion of his regime. If the hackers hadn’t been able to make credible threats, the film might have gone virtually unnoticed by many Americans. Nonetheless, a fictional assassination of a real political figure is ethically problematic.

While Hollywood’s claim to the right of “creative expression” rings true, perhaps this freedom isn’t (or should not be) absolute. I am not suggesting any kind of externally imposed rules limiting the content of films; only from within the ranks of filmmakers can any kind of normative guidelines evolve.

In the end, Sony will most likely find a way to distribute The Interview – and the controversy is sure to enhance its profitability as an “on demand” option or even a theatrical release.

But the question of ethics in the entertainment world will – and should – persist.

Patricia Phalen is an Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

The Conversation

"Not getting any reservation benefits, hence converted to Hinduism"

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home-coming-Hinduism

Thiruvananthapuram: As Kerala Police began a probe into reports of 35 people in two districts converting to Hinduism, two families Monday said they did it on their own and not under any pressure.

The families of Babu and Joy, siblings from Cheppad in Alappuzha district, told the media that in official records they were classified as Christian Cheremars, but they had been practising Hinduism right from childhood.

They said that despite being classified as Christian Cheremars, they were not getting any reservation benefits.

Hence, they decided on their own to convert to Hinduism to enjoy the benefits.

They also said they had approached the local leadership of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and it was they who made arrangements for their conversion rituals.

A total of 35 people from Alappuzha and Kollam districts had Sunday converted to Hinduism, following which state Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala had ordered a probe.

Additional Director General of Police A. Hemachandran has been asked to conduct a detailed probe and submit a report, Chennithala’s office told IANS.

“He has constituted a team of officials and they are trying to find if there was any forced conversion. The report is awaited,” the office said.

The VHP leadership Monday continued to maintain that there was no attempt on their part to woo people to convert to Hinduism.

Fr. Paul Thelekkat, spokesperson of the Syro Malabar Catholic Church, told IANS that there exists a problem in Kerala where reservation benefits are there for Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe Hindus and not for SC/ST Christians.

What happened Sunday was probably to enjoy those benefits, he said.

“Moreover, the Bharatiya Janata Party, through this could look to polarisation of Hindu votes,” Thelekkat said.

(IANS)

Jammu & Kashmir heading for hung assembly; BJP to form Govt in Jharkhand

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BJP

Srinagar/Ranchi: Jammu and Kashmir today appeared headed for a hung assembly with BJP making gains in Jammu region while the party is all set to form government in Jharkhand, the trends coming from both the states in assembly elections show.

The PDP, headed by Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, and the BJP were leading in 25 seats each. The ruling National Conference was ahead in 16 seats and the Congress in 14 of the 87 seats for which the trends were available.

JKPC led by Sajjad Lone was ahead in two seats while JKPDF and CPI-M were leading in one seat each while Independents were leading in three seats.

The BJP’s spectacular performance, the best in the state so far, was however limited to the Jammu region where 37 seats are up for grabs. The party has not bee able to make any dent in the Valley which has 46 seats in all.

Going by the trends, unless any two of the four major parties–BJP, PDP, NC and Congress–come together government formation would not be possible.

In the last elections, National Conference had won 28, PDP 21, Congress 17 and BJP 11 seats.

In Jharkhand, the BJP was well on the road to forming a government of its own by leading in 38 seats including four of ally AJSU in the 81-member assembly. Ruling JMM is leading in 20 constituencies, Congress 4, JVM (P) 8, RJD 5 and others 5, the trends show.

(PTI)

Pieces of a Rainbow lie scattered across the land…

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Peshawar_School_Bloody_Shoe

by Malavika

My heart leaps up when I behold,
A Rainbow in the sky,
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!

The Child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

I like to think that when Wordsworth wrote the lines, his heart was full of indescribable joy. The feeling of joy we all so instinctively hang on to, cling to for all we are worth. Which we seek to revive through smell and feel. That smell of freshly cut grass in the breeze, the salty warmth of the sea or of aromas from a passing kitchen, a spicy pickle, a familiar perfume from old boxes of clothes. The feel of velvet, which one so rarely sees these days, reminds me of my grandmother, her blouses, the fabric of which I loved to feel shifting under the patterns my young fingers drew on them, bent fibres displaying shifting dark and light lines across the cloth. The scent of winter chill in the pine forests of the mountains flooded my mind when I was just a child, and till today the slightest hint of cold pine in the air calms my body and soul, lifting me deep into a meditative silence in a way nothing else can.

Like Freud knew, when we search for the depths of our needs, we find the roots of all joys, of all happiness deeply intertwined with the fabric of our youth. And the fears and unhappiness as well. What I felt when I was young, is what has shaped me as a woman. And what we face in our youth, we often spend lifetimes either building upon, or tearing down. It is our childhoods that determine our destiny’s, the choices we make and where we seek happiness and warmth. For some family warmth is what is home, for others it is the freedom of open spaces. For some warmth is the vague familiarity of rough relationships, for others, the guidance of familial commitments. And for many, childhood is simply hand to mouth survival, life continuing for generations to be about simply and sadly, life and death.

The deep and horrendous loss of so many young lives under fire from the toxicity of the environment in which they grew, reflects the growing disorder in the world around us. Now more than ever the Darwinian wisdom, survival of the fittest seems to be shaping civilization. Descriptions of fitness ranging from considerations of physical and economic strength, to considered moral and spiritual superiorities. And at the front of the firing line stand, as always, the week, the handicapped and the poor. Amongst these then, the women and the children are particularly vulnerable, and more often than not, targeted by those with the strength and flawed bravado, to impose.

What will impact us all, and will shape lives for decades to come much more than the deaths caused by the collapse of a society in Peshawar on that tragic day of December, will be the young who will carry this incident emblazoned upon their souls. How many of the children who saw their friends fall will forever fear, avoid and shape their lives around the sounds of ricocheting bullets. How many will hate that need to fear, how many will hate others for making them fear. Not all can be a Malala, nor should all need to be. As a society we are failing, failing to protect the most vulnerable almost deliberately, and worse, allowing every man with a stick, to use them for target practice. From Nirbhaya to Peshawar, we as a society have failed. There is no doubt about that. But in time nature finds its balance. We will pay, each one of us, for this. The reason being the strength of the force which shapes the growth and fall of civilizations. The undeniable fact that every child grows up to become a man.

Janata Parivar targets Modi government on black money, conversions

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The leaders of the Samajwadi Janata Dal, a bloc of six parties, in Delhi on Monday. Photo: PTI

The leaders of the Samajwadi Janata Dal, a bloc of six parties, in Delhi on Monday. Photo: PTI

New Delhi: Leaders of the Janata Parivar raised the issue of black money both inside and outside parliament Monday, hitting out at the NDA government for failing to fulfil its promise of bringing back illegal cash stashed abroad. They also accused it of fomenting communal tensions.

Political heavyweights from the Janata Parivar, comprising the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) gathered in the Jantar Mantar area in the heart of the capital to address a rally denouncing the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.

“Why has the NDA government failed to fulfil its promises made before the (Lok Sabha) election?” asked JD-U leader Nitish Kumar.

“Where is the black money it promised to bring back (from abroad)?”

“The prime minister has campaigned across the nation. He had said that he would bring back black money; what happened to the promises he made? They are spending money on religious conversions, they made false promises during poll campaign, and now they are diverting people’s attention,” said the former Bihar chief minister.

He accused Modi of not acting tough against right-wing Hindu groups charged with religious conversion of Christians and Muslims and said the country should not be divided on religious grounds.

Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad were equally critical.

Mulayam Singh said: “They promised jobs to all the youth and Rs.15 lakh to everyone (from the black money they would bring back). They even asked people to open bank accounts. But where is the money?”

“The BJP’s conspiracy is to engineer riots so that attention is shifted away from the government’s failures,” said the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister.

“The Agra incident was just a beginning. They will do such things across the country,” Mulayam Singh said, referring to the conversion of 300 Muslims families in his state.

Lalu Prasad alleged that Modi was attempting to cause religious divide in the country by tacitly encouraging religious conversions.

“The minorities have also fought for India’s independence and the Modi government engages in ‘ghar vapsi’ (home-coming),” he said.

JD-U chief Sharad Yadav said: “Janata Parivar is protesting at the venue (Jantar Mantar) against the government over black money. You promised good days, employment”.

The issue was raised again in both houses by members of these parties. In the Lok Sabha, they also staged a walkout over the issue. Members of the Samajwadi Party and the Trinamool Congress also held protests in the parliament premises.

In the lower house, Mulayam Singh accused the government and Prime Minister Modi of not fulfilling the promises made to people who voted him to power.

Members of the RJD and the JD-U also demanded a statement from the prime minister over the issue.

The SP chief said promises were made that farmers would get money in their accounts and that land encroached by China and Pakistan would be taken back. But “these promises have not been fulfilled”.

Both houses of parliament have debated the issue of black money during the winter session.

(IANS)

Indologist Koenraad Elst says "…make it uncool to be Muslims" at the Goa conclave of the Hindutva Right, draws flak

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Koenraad Elst

Utorda: Former Jordanian Prime Minister Abdelsalam al-Majali Saturday walked out of the India Ideas Conclave 2014 held in Goa protesting the anti-Islam remarks by Belgian Indologist Koenraad Elst.

“I am appalled at what I heard from the platform about insulting Islam and insulting the Prophet. One can criticize this, that and the other but don’t insult. To try to destroy the whole faith is wrong”, Abdelsalam al-Majali said while walking out of the event organised by India Foundation whose directors include Union Minister Suresh Prabhu and Shaurya Doval, son of National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.

“We came here to understand each other and try to be peaceful. It is very sad to be at such a conference to hear insults on a religion which is followed by over one billion people”, he added.

According to the Indian Express, Elst while addressing the session on ‘Religion — Tolerance and Terror’ at the India Ideas Conclave 2014, said: “On the whole, you should make it uncool to be Muslims. That will help them. You do not forcefully need to convert them. Through this, they will themselves outgrow Islam.”

Referring to the row over the ‘Ghar Wapsi’ campaign, Elst said: “The Vishwa Hindu Parishad is coming under criticism for the one thing that they are doing very well which is Ghar Wapsi. We need to liberate Muslims from Islam. Every Muslim is an abductee and must be brought back.”

Elst anti Muslim rant was also criticised by Dr Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, former secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Countries, who lodged a protest with the organisation.

“We are hearing a speech of hatred. You cannot use your freedom of speech to hurt others. I was very happy being here until I heard this speech of hatred”, Dr. Ihsanoglu said.

Gunnar Stalsett, Bishop Emeritus of Oslo, and others also questioned the “demonization” of an entire faith.

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