This applies to all of us. Point your criticisms to people other than the small community that supports this blog. It creates a hostile atmosphere for everybody but especially for women, I note with some anguish that all the ladies have disappeared and a “boys only” space currently exists on BP. This is completely unacceptable.

To repeat, there is much to disagree (which is fine) but dont make it personal.

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The Pak establishment takes the first critical step to re-establish order. This initiative signifies the coming together of the civilian and military wings under the able guidance of PM Nawaz Sharif. With victory anticipated in 2014, things are looking fairly promising on the home (and near home) front.

Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed has given a ‘fatwa’ that militant activities within Pakistan cannot be considered a part of ‘jihad’ and asked terrorists to desist from carrying out attacks in the country.
“Militant activities in Pakistan do not fall in the category of jihad. I appeal to all jihadi organizations not to carry out attacks inside Pakistan as it is not jihad (holy war). America and India are taking benefit from their activities,” Saeed alleged in a statement. He said: “Our strength is in unity and not in infighting among us. However, Muslims will have to continue jihad to maintain their freedom”.

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Right after Woolwich, this will not improve community relations in England. Also the police taser did not work….what if the assailant had a gun instead of a knife?

Police said the arrested man was local, believed to be of Somali origin. He was attending the mosque for the first time. Dr Arshad Mahmood, who was at the mosque, told the BBC: “A man started stabbing one of the guys who was just sitting right next to him. I don’t know what exactly was the reason but he just started stabbing him. “We went to save him. He had multiple injuries, three or four wounds. Then the policeman came and was also attacked and stabbed.”

Mohammed Shafiq, the leader of the Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim organisation, said: “I have spoken to someone who lives a few doors down from the mosque and they described hearing an argument inside the mosque. “It escalated into violence and a police officer has been stabbed. People, anti-Muslim extremists, are going to try to take advantage of this – it’s very serious that a police officer has been stabbed during duty.”

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Javed Akhtar sent his last telegrams to his grandchildren. Shabana (present wife) tweeted that she was sad at the loss of telegrams. Why? She is on Twitter, which is a far better communicating medium than telegrams (including other modern innovations as well).

The thing that interested me were the names. Javed and Honey (Irani) had children Farhan (Urdu name means pleasant) and Zoya (Urdu name means caring). Farhan and Adhuna have children named Shakya and Akira (Japanese name means knowledgeable, also film background).

How about Shakya? Shakayamuni is of course the Buddha but then again this is a girl. Regardless we have culturally middle-eastern (CME) people choosing a CSA name (and a CEA name for the other daughter). Food for thought.

Shakya background (ref. Wiki): Shakya is a Suryavanshi Kshatriya dynasty of Hindu religion in India.The Genealogy of Shakyas is found in Book IV of Vishnu Purana, the Shrimad Bhagavatam and the Brahma Purana.

King Shakya was one of the last decendants of Ikshvaku dynasty, commonly known as Suryavansha. Rama was one of the earlier decendants of Ikshvaku. Chapter 1 of Vishnupurana mentions that Brahma created Daksha out of his thumb. Daksha had a daughter Aditi, who was mother of Sun. From the Sun was born Manu. Since the Sun-god was Manu’s father, his lineage came to be known as the Suryavansha. Manu had many sons…Ten sons survived, one of whom was Ikshvaku.

Shakyas considered themselves as the purest race. To protect their race they married only within their community. So when Prasenjit king of Kosala asked to marry a Shakyan princess, they gave him a slave girl instead. Son of Prasenjit and the slave girl was Virudhaka. When Virudhaka came to know about this he was ashamed and wanted to take revenge. He attacked the Shakya empire, Kapilvastu. Shakyans were killed in masses. Some fled from Kaplivastu to a place named Pipphalvana and adopted a fake title “Maurya” probably because of the large number of peacocks in that area who were considered sacred…..As the history goes, Chandragupta Maurya overthrew the ruling Nanda Dynasty and establised the Maurya Empire.

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If the super achievers in BP land want to help Dalits and become (even more) rich in doing so, a new Fund has been launched to do just that. The min investment is one crore rupees. The (internal rate?) return is 25%. Not a bad deal at all and you will generate enough blessings to perhaps short-circuit the karma cycle.

On June 6, a new venture capital fund was launched by the Dalit Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DICCI) to raise Rs 500 crore from investors for investment in companies run by dalits and tribals. ….The fund aims to provide investors with a commercial 25% pre-tax internal rate of return.

DICCI now has 3,000 millionaire dalit members. Over a thousand of these have turnovers exceeding Rs 100 crore. The richest, Rajesh Saraiya, runs Steel-Mont Pvt Ltd, based in Ukraine and spanning eight countries. His turnover exceeds Rs 2,000 crore, and he is the first dalit billionaire.

Dalit and tribal entrepreneurs find it difficult to get funding or mentoring. To make this easier, the DICCI SME Fund aims to raise money to provide equity, loans and technical advice to small and medium enterprises run by dalits and tribals. The aim is not to get donations from bleeding hearts for the needy. The minimum subscription for investors in the fund is one crore rupees….. Milind Kamble, chairman of DICCI….sees capitalism as a revolutionary force that has finally blasted apart the caste system, and allowed dalits to rise…Historically, says Kamble, business was dominated by traditional occupational castes who did not let others come in or compete. The licence-permit raj of Nehru and Indira Gandhi was supposedly socialist, yet protected a few big business houses (who hogged all licences) from competition from below. Economic reform and globalization after 1991 finally launched competition……Money became more important than caste.

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Kanwar Sandhu ex- Indian Express has achieved a significant milestone- The story behind Operation Bluestar. Detailed interviews with the people who knew of the details will certainly shine light on the massive tragedy.

My “involvement” with Operation Blue Star began on the morning of May 30, 1984 when, during a routine visit to an army officer friend, a Major posted in the Chandimandir cantonment, I noticed a flurry of activity. “Partner, we are moving for Operation Woodrose along the Punjab border…so see you on return.”….Armed with this information, I filed a report about the army being called out in Punjab to deal with the situation. Late in the evening, a message from our Delhi office said that the report was incorrect and should be spiked.

On the afternoon of June 1, I again visited Chandimandir and noticed a lot of activity. The initial information of the army moving into Punjab was bolstered by the presence of the entire top brass of the Western Command. The goc-in-c, Lt Gen K. Sundarji, himself was also camping there. That evening, I again filed a report reiterating that the army was in the process of moving into Punjab. This too was spiked. I was told that sources in the Union home ministry and the Rashtrapati Bhavan had not confirmed any such move. I was politely told not to believe in canards…It was the very next evening that the ‘canard’ turned out to be true when the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, addressed the nation on national television to announce that the army was being called out in Punjab in aid of civilian authorities.

One of the primary reasons for working on the television series Operation Blue Star, The Untold Story was the fact that whenever one has travelled abroad, one has faced persistent questions from Sikhs about the operation. Some of these queries bordered on myths and half-truths despite a number of books written on the subject.

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There was the case of the nine year old boy driving a Ferrari. Now rising value of spices and rubber is causing Kochi to be one of the largest market for super-luxury cars in India.

Luxury carmakers ET spoke to say Kochi has been clocking 40% year-on-year growth for the last three years, much higher than the rest of India, and it now sells more luxury cars than Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad.“Kerala has been a key market for us and it has grown nearly four times in the last four years for us,” Eberhard Kern, managing director and CEO at Mercedes-Benz India, says.
Ashish Chordia, whose Shreyans Group imports superluxury cars such as Ferrari, Maserati and Porsche, says, “Over the past few years, we have seen a definite increase in the demand from Kerala, especially Kochi, for all the brands we represent.” Besides Kochi, people in smaller cities such as state capital Thiruvananthapuram, northern port city and spice centre Kozhikode and Kottayam, the land of rubber estates, too, have started to flaunt luxury cars.
Driving this demand is the state’s increasing entrepreneur class as well as wealthy farmers of spices and rubber. While rubber prices have eased from its historical highs of 2011, it still hovers around Rs 175 per kg. Kerala — mainly Kottayam, Pathanamthitta and Idukki districts — account for about 90% of rubber produced in India.

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Yesterday, Birmingham (Edgbaston) was filled out by tens of thousands of India and Pakistan supporters for the Champions Trophy league match. In contrast tickets for the England vs Australia game have gone unsold. To emphasize how much water has flown down the Thames, Lord Tebbit had (back in the good old days) proposed a loyalty test (thus a naturalized Brit-Indian would support England over India in a cricket match). That said it is also interesting to note how an English reporter describes the India-Pak rivalry (on and off the field)- no mention of how Britain was involved as the big brother.

…Champions Trophy of 2004…. game attracted a capacity crowd of 19,800, which will be beaten by around 5,000 this time because of the expansion of Edgbaston. The majority of the tickets were snapped up within three hours when they went on sale last autumn, and the last few thousand lasted less than half an hour when they were released in March. Warwickshire have also sold out of all the hospitality around the ground, in stark contrast to last weekend’s England-Australia game at Edgbaston when only a handful of boxes were filled, underlining the huge appeal and consequent financial value of staging an India-Pakistan fixture.

Unsurprisingly, given the incoming traffic from London, the midlands and the north, this was also an Asian occasion with a distinct and varied British tang. During the extended rain delay a large knot of British Pakistanis and British Indians in the Eric Hollies stand staged a mass sing-along to, among other things, Yeh Dosti from the classic Hindi film Sholay, as well as (but we shall gloss over this) the collected hits of Bruno Mars.

It is of course impossible to ignore the layers of historical intrigue involved in England staging a cricket match between these two countries. Modern Pakistan was effectively created out of an act of the British parliament, while the manner and execution of the partition of India remains a historical sore. India and Pakistan have gone to war four times in the 56 years since, and as recently as January there were skirmishes on the border of Kashmir. There is, it seems safe to say, a little more in the background of these contests than the usual banter.

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…one of the greatest whistleblowers, great service to humanity. His $50 mil reward (after 8 years of investigations) must be gratifying (and serves the cause of justice and humanity).

The company’s problems began in 2004 when the World Health Organisation discovered that an outside laboratory testing drugs for Ranbaxy had fabricated results in the testing of anti-retroviral drugs for Aids and HIV sufferers.

Mr Thakur was then asked by his boss at Ranbaxy to conduct an internal inquiry. What he found led him to contact overseas regulators, including the MHRA. He told the regulator that seven Ranbaxy drugs the company wanted to sell in Britain had been put through clinical trials at the same suspect laboratory. At least three were approved by the MHRA: Gabapentin for epilepsy, Risperidone for schizophrenia and Sumatriptan for migraine. Ranbaxy later withdrew Sumatriptan.

Mr Thakur’s other key warning was that 10 drugs were available in Britain based on what he said was unreliable shelf-life data. They included Aciclovir, a herpes medicine, the anti-depressant Citalopram and Metformin for type-2 diabetes. The others were the antibiotics cefaclor, cephalexin, cefradine, co-amoxiclav and clarithromycin, and fluconazole, an antifungal treatment, and celiprolol, a beta blocker.

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PS Wiki notes that Ranbaxy is a portmanteau of the names of its first owners Ranbir and Gurbax Singh. Hopefully the company (and other fellow pharma cos) will learn and recover from its costly (half billion dollar) mistake

Pakistan is the undisputed world leader in search for gay porn…But in Pakistan the highest number of hits for some of these terms, including “shemale sex,” come from Peshawar. It seems beyond strange that the Taliban has instituted the principle that men are for bonding and women are for procreation.

Shereen El Feki, author of the recent book Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World, says the discrepancy between perceptions around homosexuality and its apparent reality in Pakistan is consistent with her own findings in the Middle East, where, in recent years, the dialogue around sexual identity has been co-opted by fundamentalist clerics. Long before the rise of Islamic conservatism, El Feki says, the Middle East and India had a literary tradition that celebrated gay love, but in recent years, that openness has been forgotten…“You find in most civilizations in the Global South a much more open approach to homosexuality—irrespective of its status in religious and theological doctrine—than you find today,” she says. “So very often, any attempt to open a dialogue in the Arab region is branded as some ‘Western conspiracy’ to undermine traditional Arab and Muslim values. The reality is that long before the West was talking openly about homosexuality, Arabs in particular were writing about this very frankly. Our history has come to be rewritten by Islamic conservatives.”

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PS interesting to note that Pak and China were polled but not India, I see the hidden hand…