May 10, 2014 – Brown Pundits

Vietnam for a “rising India” (against China)

This really tickled the funny bone, we are talking about a navy whose submarines explode while standing still in the parking bay. But apparently the Vietnamese are dead serious (and they have reason to be).

Quy said there was not much clarity in the Obama
administration. “That is why we want India should rise quickly. We have
great expectations from India,” he said.

The Chinese are placing a strong emphasis on the “peaceful rise” theme these days. What they really want (we imagine) is to set the clock back a few centuries when all subject countries used to dispatch emissaries with lavish gifts to the Middle Kingdom, bribe the mandarins and secure (temporary) favors.

MELBOURNE: Concerned over China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea, Vietnam wants India to “rise quickly” in the region. “We are deeply concerned by Chinese assertiveness in the South China
Sea. The Chinese navy is acting without provocation. These decisions
seem to be taken by the Chinese leadership at the highest level,” said
Ambassador Dang Dinh Quy, president of Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam
(DAV).
Quy said there was not much clarity in the Obama
administration. “That is why we want India should rise quickly. We have
great expectations from India,” he said.

The remarks were made at a round table meeting of DAV held here on Saturday. DAV is said to carry out strategic research in international relations
and foreign policy, as well as serve as a think-tank for foreign policy
for the ministry of foreign affairs, the party and the state.

The meeting was held for the delegates to share information with
Australian scholars around regional security issues such as US-China
relations, maritime issues in the Indo pacific region and discuss more
broadly Australia’s engagement with Asia
… ….……

Chinese ships are ramming Vietnamese
vessels and spraying sailors with water cannons in a clash over plans to
drill for oil in disputed waters. Several
boats have been damaged and six people on one vessel have been injured,
said officials in Hanoi, with neither side showing any signs of backing
down.

Vietnamese vessels
are trying to stop China placing a $1billion oil rig off their country’s
coast. The say they want a peaceful solution, but a top official warned
‘all restraint has a limit’.

The
clash has been continuing for several days since a Chinese flotilla of
military and civilian ships moved into the disputed area of the South
China Sea on May 1.
Vietnam
promptly dispatched marine police and fishery protection vessels to the
area but they were harassed as they approached, said Ngo Ngoc Thu, vice
commander of Vietnam’s coast guard.
He
said Vietnam had not carried out any offensive actions of its own in
waters close to the rig, which is around 140 miles off the Vietnamese
coast.

‘No
shots have been fired yet,’ said a Vietnamese navy official, who could
not be identified because he was not authorised to speak to media.
‘Vietnam won’t fire unless China fires first.’
Another
Vietnamese official, who also preferred to remain anonymous, said that
Vietnam’s ships were outnumbered by the Chinese flotilla. He said the
ships were trying to stop the rig from ‘establishing a fixed position’.

Western
analysts have called China’s stationing of the oil rig one of its most
provocative steps yet in a gradual campaign of asserting its sovereignty
in the South China Sea. China claims almost the entire sea, rejecting
rival claims from Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei.

Chinese
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying insists the rig, owned by
Chinese state-run oil company CNOOC, is in China’s territorial waters
and therefore drilling is ‘normal and legal.’
‘The
disruptive activities by the Vietnamese side are in violation of
China’s sovereign rights,’ she said. China had previously said no
foreign ships would be allowed within three miles of the rig.
…………
Link (1): http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Concerned-over-Chinas-assertiveness-Vietnam-wants-India-to-rise-quickly-in-region/articleshow/34934709.cms
Link (2): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2622152/Vietnam-tries-stop-China-oil-rig-deployment.html

…………
regards

Muslims are over-represented only in jails

Saba Naqvi re-visits the famous “moth-eaten” word, to describe the parlous state of Indian secularism. She particularly focuses on the dangers of polarization. It is nobody’s case that BJP has anything to offer towards a unifying agenda. But what have the secularists ever done for India (and Indian muslims)?

the only area
where Muslims are over-represented is in Indian jails

Naqvi points out the effect of the poison pus from partition I (partition II is not mentioned, even though she talks about Axom and Bengal) but she should have also pointed out that ideologies are more poisonous than events.

The biggest and most powerful poison source is the two nation theory: “our heroes are their villains and vice versa,” a logic that can equally hold true for Shia/Sunni, Urdu/Bengali, and all other ways that humanity can be divided. Today Pramila Rani Baruah is a hero for Bodos and a villain for muslims: this is the proud legacy of the TNT.

the
rhetoric of Modi/Shah amounts to
this: Muslims got two countries out of Partition and rejected secularism; why
are they still in India trying to vote against us?

It is basically a massive con game. The agenda will be set by conservative muslims males who have only one thing in their mind: Islam khatre mein…..and that’s it. It was the Shah Bano case that convinced the Hindu upper-caste, middle-class (the primary source of opinion-makers) that secularism should be ditched in favor of majoritarianism and gave rise to the BJP as a political player. The secularists are opportunists who would pursue soft-Hindutva (Congress in Gujarat) and soft-Islamism (Samajwadi party in UP, Trinamool Congress in West Bengal) to get votes. Sure they dont have a genocidal agenda, but they dont have the good of any community at heart. Politics to them is an exercise to simply feather their family beds. If the Aam Admi party stands apart from the crowd it will get the votes of deprived muslims as well as relieved hindus. If it adopts the same formula as the secularists it will be doomed to a cut in the vote-bank and nothing more.
……………………..

Muslim
equals terrorist equals Pakistani equals infiltrator equals Bangladeshi is not
a new construct for the Sangh parivar. But in this election, the BJP is using
the Bangladeshi immigrant rhetoric with particular emphasis as it believes
there are gains to be made by polarising sensibilities in Assam, Bengal and
Bihar. So the demonology only needs to be updated and tweaked. And this time
the Muslim bogeyman returns in the shape of the “Bangladeshi”. The immigrant,
illegal migrant, settler, foreigner etc.

At
one level, these are all battles erupting around the Partition fault-line, the
wounds that routinely get infected and begin oozing pus. At its base level, the
rhetoric of Modi/Shah and even the more sophisticated right-wingers amounts to
this: Muslims got two countries out of Partition and rejected secularism; why
are they still in India trying to vote against us? If they want to stay, it
should be on our terms, not those set by people who are infiltrators and
terrorists anyway.

Communal ideology and prejudice are easy to spot and
analyze. It is harder to confront the great crisis of Indian secularism, that
is now so hollowed out that it makes it easy for communal forces to grow. One
could even borrow the phrase Mohammed Ali Jinnah used for the Pakistan he
got—“moth-eaten”—which is what the fabric of Indian secularism has become
today. For those who still have idealistic stardust in their eyes, we must
blink and accept that Indian secularism is not about some utterance of the soul
as a Jawaharlal Nehru may have once imagined it. It appears to be mostly about
electoral management by secular parties that involves first seeing Muslims as a
herd and then trying to keep that herd together.

But
the crisis of secularism is no laughing matter. The Muslim community has
slipped on all human development indices. Yet in modern secular India, an
entire mobilisation has thrived on the argument that they are “appeased”. There
is indeed a section of the community that is appeased: the clerics. All
political parties go to them. Last week, Priyanka Gandhi did so in Rae Bareli;
simultaneously in Delhi Mehmood Madani, an influential cleric from the Deoband
tradition, who has of late been making pro-Modi noises, said “Priyanka would
have been better than Rahul” for the Congress.

Since Independence, secular
parties in India have approached the Muslim community through clerics and in
the process given them legitimacy. The maulanas, in turn, have used the cover
of “secularism” to keep retrograde personal laws in place and thereby their own
relevance intact till presumably they land in paradise. They rarely talk of
jobs, employment, modernity. The result now is that having been given
“secularism” to eat and a vote to brandish, the Muslims of India have been left
in their ghettos with many “sole spokesmen” of the community. It is these
clerics who promise the deliverance of that herd during election time. Their
projection of their own clout is often a fraudulent exercise.

As
the BJP thrives, so will the clerics who live off victimhood and the fears of
the minority community. Among the most successful is Badruddin Ajmal, who leads
the AIUDF in Assam. In the 2012 violence in the state, he too had stoked the
flames. A graduate of the Deoband seminary, he describes “religious discourse
and Islamic theological exchanges” as among his favourite pastimes on his
website. He is a perfume moghul with expansive business and charity interests,
who no doubt sees himself as a protector of the community and a servant of
Allah.

How
did we get here? For one, the clout of the maulanas has increased ever since
the Congress famously capitulated before them when it overturned the Shah Bano
judgement in 1986. It is hardly worth restating that this not only pushed
Muslims deeper into the ghetto, it eventually created conditions for the rise
of the BJP on the stage of national politics in the late ’80s.

The
All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) was at the heart of that churning.
Founded in 1973, it is a collection of clerics with a motley crew of
professionals whose main purpose is to protect Sharia law. Of its 201 members,
101 are life members. They represent an orthodox male viewpoint that has not
just been allowed to go unchallenged but has also been promoted actively by the
secular state.

Outright corruption in the name of secularism too is part of
the disease. Particularly so in the matter of Waqf properties that can be
described as religious endowments made in the name of Allah for the benefit of
the poor and needy in the Muslim community. There are approximately 3,00,000
registered Waqf properties in India on about four lakh acres of land (the
second largest land holding after Indian railways). It is a national resource
that should have been developed for the welfare of the community, as it is meant
to. Instead,
this resource has been mortgaged, sold and encroached upon with the connivance
of the same clerical class in league with elected Muslim representatives. Waqf
boards in all the states are repositories of corruption, yet they get away with
it because any demand for scrutiny is described as an attack on Islam.

Meanwhile, issues that really concern the community such as employment,
safety, prosperity are not addressed. The police and the entire judicial
system is known for its profiling on communal lines and the only area
where Muslims are over-represented is in Indian jails while even
well-to-do members of the community are not rented homes in many
localities in Indian metros.

……….
Link: http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?290671
………….
regards

Chanakya-II (sequel opens May 16)

Now we finally understand how the Tamil Shudras must feel: dude where is my self-respect revolution? Entire rivers of blood, sweat and tears have flown down from Tala-Kaveri to Poompuharam, yet the poor Dravidas are still toiling under the thumb of a super-caste (Iyengar Brahmin) decider.

Moving onto national news, it is reported that Pranab Mukherjee made a sudden surprise symbolic declaration of neutrality, after all preparations were in place for a postal vote (May 12 ballot in Kolkata).

This is not the most important vote (of confidence) from the first citizen. It is likely that on May 16th there will be no political combination with an absolute majority. As per the Indian Constitution this is when the President gains maximum power to inflict maximum harm or good, depending on the point of view.

Consider (as an imperfect analogy) what transpired in Delhi recently. No party got an absolute majority in the state elections. When BJP as the largest party did not want to rule as a minority govt,the Aam Admi party came to power with support from the Congress. Then wonder-boy Arvind (AK-49) Kejriwal cast aside his crown and in order to fight for the highest chair. Lt Governor Najeeb Jung is now the de-facto ruler and having a lot of fun by beating up evil black marketeers (see below). If new elections are held the AAP may secure an absolute majority on the back of new generation muslim voters.

In the Lok Sabha elections it is likely that BJP/NDA will get the max seats but will fall short of a simple majority. In that event, the President has the discretionary powers to invite the BJP to form the government. If history is any guide, BJP will be able to bribe small parties to form a coalition of the (weak) willing. Sanjaya Baru has confirmed in his book that Sonia purposefully denied Pranab Babu the Prime Minister’s seat (in favor of the docile Manmohan). The sudden flip to “neutrality” may be a sign that the (life-long) family servant will request for a (cold) dish named revenge.

Legend has it that the original Chanakya used his super-powers to place a Chandal (dalit) on the throne. When a new-age Chanakya blesses a (fake?) Shudra king it will be one for the books as well.

On the morrow of May 16 all eyes will be on
Rashtrapati Bhavan. As a stickler for constitutional propriety,
President Pranab Mukherjee will invite the leader of the largest
political party or coalition to form the government and prove – within a
reasonable period of time – that it enjoys majority support in the Lok
Sabha. No one seriously doubts that the leader will be Narendra Modi. Should he realise the goal he set for himself when he embarked on the
election campaign – 272+ – the new government will be in place without a
major hiccup.

Modi’s room for manoeuvre will narrow if BJP-led NDA fails to reach
the half-way mark. And this is where President Mukherjee’s formidable
political skills and experience will come into play. He knows that a
shortfall of 20 seats would spell disquiet in BJP ranks; a shortfall of
40 seats would spell acute discomfiture; any figure below that would see
power equations within BJP itself change to Modi’s disadvantage.

A free hand for Modi would mean a faster, if inequitable, rate of
economic growth and a cleaner, if not always transparent or accountable,
governance. Whether it would also encourage him to rein in Hindu and
Muslim fanatics with equal zeal is still a moot point. These dangers
would subside to some extent if he has to rope in allies to form the
government. Much would of course depend on their number. The higher
their numbers, the greater the risks he would run to head the government
or indeed to enable NDA to assume office.

Should such a scenario unfold, President Mukherjee could well be the
one to orchestrate a denouement of the frenzied dance of Indian
democracy. He won’t spare anyone who has slighted him in the past. And
he won’t spare anyone who is likely to chip away at the foundations of
the republic. Both have much to fear from a Brahmin of the finest
Nehruvian vintage.

………….
In a
departure from the recent past, President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday
decided not to vote in the Lok Sabha elections in order to maintain his
“political neutrality”. The decision came as a surprise since
Mukherjee, a registered voter in south Kolkata, had ordered for a postal
ballot and would have been the first head of the state to use it. He
was slated to cast his vote on May 12.

In fact, the tradition
for a President to vote is fairly recent with KR Narayanan breaking the
convention of “political neutrality” to become the first to vote in the
1998 parliamentary polls. Mukherjee’s immediate predecessors — APJ Abdul
Kalam and Pratibha Patil — had voted in the 2004 and 2009 general
elections respectively. Both were registered voters in Delhi.

Sources said all formalities for Mukherjee’s voting through postal
ballot had been completed. He is a registered voter in 160 Rashbehari,
part of the South Kolkata parliamentary seat. However, he decided not to
exercise his franchise, bringing back the convention followed by many
past Presidents.

South Kolkata will see a multi-cornered contest
with Congress fielding Mala Roy and BJP nominating state president
Tathagata Roy. Trinamool Congress has fielded sitting MP Subrata Bakshi
whereas CPM’s candidate is Nandini Mukherjee, a professor.
.
………..

The
crackdown against hoarders and blackmarketeers will continue till the
time President’s rule remains in Delhi, Lt Governor Najeeb Jung said
Thursday.

“More raids are in store for wrongdoers at public
offices. The crackdown will not end till the time President’s rule in
Delhi gets over,” Jung told IANS.

Jung had recently ordered massive raids at fair price shops, petrol pumps and gas agencies.

“We will act tough against hoarders and blackmarketeers,” he said.

Delhi
is under President’s rule since Feb 17, when it was imposed five days
after Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal announced the resignation of
his government. – See more at:
http://www.smetimes.in/smetimes/news/indian-economy-news/2014/May/09/crackdown-against-blackmarketeer-continue29281.html#sthash.hbGBFHjJ.dpuf

The crackdown against hoarders and
blackmarketeers will continue till the time President’s rule remains in Delhi,
Lt Governor Najeeb Jung said Thursday. “More raids are in store for wrongdoers at public offices. The crackdown
will not end till the time President’s rule in Delhi gets over,” Jung told
IANS.

Jung had recently ordered massive raids at fair price shops, petrol pumps and
gas agencies.
“We will act tough against hoarders and blackmarketeers,” he said.

Delhi is under President’s rule since Feb 17, when it was imposed five days
after Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal announced the resignation of his
government.

……….
Link (1): http://liveblogs.indiatimes.com/talking-terms/if-mission-272-fails-rashtrapati-bhavan-may-hold-the-trump-card/
Link (2): http://www.smetimes.in/smetimes/news/indian-economy-news/2014/May/09/crackdown-against-blackmarketeer-continue29281.html
……….

regards

The Chibok Christians must convert (or die)

As they say in the liberal circles, Boko Haram seems a bit outlandish, even by the high standards that the jihadists have set for themselves. It is quite possible (as liberals see it) that this is a neo-con plot to gain hold of African resources (ahead of China) by fomenting warfare – Nigeria turned into Afghanistan – as per that memorable phrase deployed in the Guardian.

After having separated facts from hysteria what seemed like utter madness appears to be not so mad, quite normal in fact. Boko Haram is merely following in the foot-steps of giants in (recent) history. When the Pandits were kicked out of Kashmir, the message from their neighbors was short and simple: leave with all you have, leave your girls behind.

Borno state in Nigeria is majority Muslim. Chibok however is a majority Christian community. The girls participating in Western/Christian education were mostly Christian (as per the Christian Association of Nigeria). There were a few muslim students as well, presumably the ignorant parents liked the idea that the girls were studying some useful stuff beyond islamiyat.

All in all it is clear that Boko Haram wants to establish a pure Sharia state which (1) should be populated exclusively by muslims of the right sort (beliefs), (2) girls should only study the holy books, (3) infidels (especially girls) must be converted by persuasion and/or force.

This is standard issue public policy as practiced in many Islamic nations and if polled would probably attract upwards of 70% (super-majority) of the public in its favor.
…….
A Nigerian evangelist said that most of the 200 plus schoolgirls
kidnapped by terrorist group Boko Haram are Christians, which he says is
further evidence of the militant Islamists’ specific targeting of
followers of Christ.

“Chibok local government is 90% Christian.
Majority of the girls abducted are Christian! Why did Boko Haram visit
Chibok local government? Why didn’t they visit so many other local
government girls secondary schools in Borno State?” asked Evangelist
Matthew Owojaiye of the Old Time Revival Hour Church in Kaduna, who
compiled a list of 180 kidnapped girls who have been identified,
International Christian Concern shared.

Of those, Owojaiye identified that 163 are Christian girls, and 15 are Muslims.
……..
Link: http://www.christianpost.com/news/most-of-boko-haram-kidnapped-schoolgirls-are-christians-nigerian-evangelist-says-119194/
…….

regards