4 Men Who Converted To Islam Arrested In India

Four members of a family arrested in Madhya Pradesh under the Freedom of Religion Act.

Four members of a family who have converted to Islam were arrested last night in Madhya Pradesh, hours after they told a court that they had not been forced into adopting another religion. Seven others have been held for questioning.

Tularam Jatav, his son Keshav and relatives Manikram and Makhubhai Jatav were arrested on Wednesday under the state's Freedom of Religion Act, which allows conversions only if the district administration has verified that they are not forced. Those wanting to change their religion have to seek the state's permission.

All four, if found guilty, face two years in jail.

On Tuesday, when the Jatav family went to a district magistrate with affidavits affirming that they were converting willingly, a large group of activists from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal arrived too, and started protesting and chanting slogans. 

Later, an FIR was filed against the Jatavs and a team was sent to their house.

The VHP and Bajrang Dal are both part of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-led pro-Hindu conglomerate that includes the state's ruling BJP. 

Officials say the Jatavs appear to have violated the law, as the probe team had learnt that they had switched to Islam months ago without informing the government.

Others in their village went to the police on August 28 and alleged that forced conversions were taking place in the family. The Jatavs denied it twice, but yesterday, shortly after they tried to submit affidavits in a court, they were held.

"We have not been forced to convert; we were inspired by the teachings of Islam. This is an unnecessary controversy," said Keshav Jatav, before being taken into custody.

A police team will now investigate the villagers' allegation.

Source: NDTV

India's Silent War

Dalai Lama Stirs Controversy In Kashmir

The Dalai Lama: "Kashmiri people should live peacefully and if there is any problem, dialogue is the only way [to resolve issues]. Violence is in nobody's interest. A peaceful way is essential," he said in Jammu and Kashmir's summer capital, Srinagar.

Kashmiri separatist leaders have said that the spiritual leader allowed this visit to be hijacked by the Indian government, as he overlooked the grim reality of human-rights abuses in the region.

"We respect the Dalai Lama ... However, peace cannot prevail till justice is done," Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the chairman of the Hurriyat Conference political front, told a local news agency. Faroog said that the spiritual leader's failure to meet local civil society members and mention Kashmiris killed by Indian security forces was a disappointment to many.

"He did not interact with people, neither did he meet civil society members, rights workers or different shades of political leadership. He did not talk about injustice, killings and human-rights violations," said Faroog.

Another Kashmiri leader, Syed Ali Gilani, said the Dalai Lama was being used as a tool by the Indian government. "He should have cleared the very basics about Kashmir and then talked to different sections of society. He is appeasing New Delhi. He should have cleared the very basics about Kashmir and then talked to different sections of society. He is appeasing New Delhi by his utterances."

Avoiding the separatist issue, the Dalai Lama spent much of his trip meeting high-ranking Indian officials, interacting with students at the Tibetan Public School and visiting Buddhist sites.

Some Kashmiris say that as a champion of Tibet's right to self-determination, the spiritual leader could have done more to highlight their plight.

"The Dalai Lama came to Kashmir and chose to remain silent; it was more like a tourist visit to the valley as he didn't speak of any politics. As he was kept away from the public eye in Kashmir, the people fighting the cause of Kashmiri freedom were not allowed to meet him just for the reason that they might persuade him to speak out the truth," said Basharat Ali, director of the Kashmir Centre for Peace and Reconciliation.

"The Dalai Lama did not make even a cursory mention of the abuses and oppression faced by the common Kashmiri. This caused a lot of heartbreak in the valley among those looking for a show of solidarity," said Dawar Dedmari, a young Kashmiri engineer.

Apparently, the Dalai Lama, a long-staying guest in India who once called himself a "son of India", did not want to irritate his host, which uses exiled Tibetans as a leverage against China. This is perhaps the fundamental reason for his caution on commenting on the Kashmir issue.

Via: "Asia Times Online"

India Fortifies Its Island Defenses

By Sudha Ramachandran
May 8, 2012
Courtesy Of "Asia Times Online"

BANGALORE - The Indian Navy has commissioned a new base, Indian Naval Ship (INS) Dweeprakshak, in the Lakshadweep Islands. Located at Kavaratti, the island chain's capital, Dweeprakshak will provide the navy with a permanent and more robust presence in waters that are threatened by pirates. 

The Lakshadweep archipelago (Lakshadweep means a hundred thousand islands in Sanskrit) consists of 36 islands, 12 atolls, three reefs and five submerged banks that are scattered in the southern Arabian Sea, 200-400 kilometers off the southern Indian coastal state of Kerala. 

Since 1980, the Indian Navy has operated a detachment in the Lakshadweep Islands. However, in December 2010 a Coast Guard district headquarters was commissioned at Kavaratti and a Coast Guard station was set up at Minicoy. A second Coast Guard station was set up at Androth Island in April this year. 

The facilities at Lakshadweep have been scaled up now to a full-fledged naval base. 

INS Dweeprakshak is India's sixth naval base and the fourth protecting the country's western flank. It is India's second base in island territories, the other being the base at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. Dweeprakshak will come under the Southern Naval Command. 

The decision to beef up India's naval muscle at Lakshadweep has its roots in security concerns in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 and the rising threat of pirate attacks in the Arabian Sea in recent years. Lakshadweep's strategic significance stems not only from its proximity to the Indian mainland but also, Nine Degree Channel - a 200-kilometer wide stretch of water through which much of the shipping between West Asia and South East Asia transits runs to the north of Minicoy, the southern-most of the islands. 

The magnitude of India's concern over the safety of sea lanes can be gauged from the fact that over 97% percent of India's trade by volume and 75% by value is sea borne. The key role that the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean play in meeting its India's energy requirements is evident from the fact that 67% of this comes from the Persian Gulf and 17% from Africa. 

Although the vulnerability of India's coast to terrorist infiltration and attacks became apparent in the early 1990s - the huge quantity of explosives used in the serial blasts in Mumbai in March 1993 was transported through the sea route - it was only after the terror attacks there in November 2008 that the India establishment began acting to secure the coasts - investigations revealed that Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives from Pakistan entered Mumbai undetected via the Arabian Sea. India has now put in place a maritime defense plan to secure its 7,516-km long coast line, including the island territories of Laskhadweep. 

The infrastructure set up in Lakshadweep is essential not only to safeguard the Indian mainland from terrorist attacks but also to prevent terrorists from taking sanctuary on the islands. Of Lakshadweep's 36 islands, 26 are uninhabited. That makes them vulnerable to misuse by terrorists for sanctuary or as training bases. Such anxieties have grown in the wake of the growing religious extremism, reported jihadi activity and political instability in the Maldives, which lie to the south of Lakshadweep. 

Besides, there is the threat of piracy to Indian and other shipping near India's waters. Anti-piracy operations by the multi-national task force in the Gulf of Aden created a "balloon effect", which resulted in pirate attacks shifting further afield into the middle of the Indian Ocean, even the seas near the Indian coastline. There have been a series of incidents in recent years involving piracy and trespassing in the vicinity of the Lakshadweep Islands. 

In March 2010, for instance, pirates sought to hijack a Maltese ship 200 nautical miles off Lakshadweep Islands in India's exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The attempt was foiled by the Indian Navy. 

Then in May, eight Somali pirates were apprehended by the Indian navy off the Lakshadweep Islands. In November, two piracy attempts on container ships were successfully thwarted; one of the incidents happened just 150 nautical miles off Minicoy. 

In December, a Bangladesh merchant ship was hijacked by Somalian pirates some 70 nautical miles from the Lakshadweep Islands. The same month an Indian warship on patrol apprehended an Iranian dhow with four Iranians and 15 Pakistanis on board some 300 nautical miles west of Lakshadweep's Bitra Island in India's EEZ. In November last year, a "mysterious" Iranian shipMV Assa that was reportedly armed was docked in the EEZ near Lakshadweep for around 40 days. 

Surveillance and patrolling of the seas off the Lakshadweep Islands by the Indian Navy and Coast Guard have resulted in hundreds of pirates being apprehended over the past year. The setting up of a full-fledged naval base at Lakshadweep will substantially enhance India's capacity to ward off threats from pirates and terrorists. 

India has deployed a warship in the Gulf of Aden as part of the multi-national anti-piracy force. It has stationed two warships in the central and eastern Arabian Sea "but in a flexible formation for redeployment on an as required basis", India Abroad News Service reported. Such efforts will be further strengthened by the base at Lakshadweep, which will have warships, aircraft and helicopters. 

While the naval base will enhance the infrastructure and capacity of the coastal security network, the problems of India's coastal security seem rather basic and cannot be addressed by deploying more warships. 

The flaws in the coastal security network were made visible rather dramatically during the turbulent monsoon months last year when unmanned ships slipped past radars and other high-tech "eyes" to drift undetected in Indian waters and ran aground at Mumbai's Juhu beach. 

The first incident occurred on 12 June 2011, when a 9,000-ton cargo ship MV Wisdom that was headed to the Alang shipbreaking yard in Gujarat broke tow, and then drifted on to Juhu beach. Then on July 31, the 1,000-ton MV Pavit, which had been abandoned by its crew a month earlier near Oman, ran aground at Juhu beach. The 1,000-ton ship had drifted for over a hundred hours in India's territorial waters and slipped past a three-level coastal security network involving the navy, the coast guard and the coastal police before it crept up on to the beach. 

These were not small fishing boats but massive vessels and that they could enter not just Indian waters but also ride right onto the coast undetected is a damning indictment of the coastal security network. 

While analysts have focussed on the poor infrastructure in detailing the leaks in the coastal security network, it is the lack of communication and co-ordination between the navy, the coast guard and the coastal police that lies at the heart of its failures. 

Consider the response to MV Pavit's advance onto the Indian coast. It appears that the ship was first sighted the previous night by a hotel manager looking at the sea through his binoculars. He alerted a police station at Juhu. A cop went to the beach but couldn't see the vessel. He did not pass on the information anyway to the Coast Guard. 

The following morning, fishermen saw the vessel lurching towards the coast. The informed the police station, who again failed to alert the coast guard. When the cops finally informed the coast guard at around 8.30 am, the latter asked for the information to be faxed but the police station was not equipped with a fax machine. By then, MV Pavit had run aground at Juhu beach taking early morning joggers by surprise. 

Very basic problems are causing the coastal security network to leak. These are problems that warships cannot fix. 

According to Pushpita Das of the Delhi-based Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, the "problem lies not in the measures adopted but in the inadequate attention paid to the functioning of the system at the ground level where the actual action takes place". 

The little "coordination or information sharing" taking place at present between the navy, the coast guard and the coastal police "is largely based on personal rapport between the concerned officers", she observes, calling for the institutionalization of this "rapport". 

A new naval base with warships and aircraft is a fine idea for enhancing security in the seas. But there is only so much it can do to secure the coast. 

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore. She can be reached atsudha98@hotmail.com 

(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Asia's Colliding Giants

China believes that India intruded on oil and gas interests within its jurisdiction [GALLO/GETTY]


Tensions Are Growing In The South China Sea, Where India, China and Other Countries Have Spared Over Drilling Rights.

By Jaswant Singh
Last Modified: 27 Oct 2011 08:26
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"


Even in an age of 24-hour globalised news, some important events only come to light well after the fact. Something of this sort happened several months ago in the South China Sea - and may shape how relations between the world's two most populous countries, China and India, develop in the years ahead.

While returning in late July from a goodwill visit to Vietnam in waters recognised as international, an Indian naval ship was "hailed" on open radio and advised to "lay off" the South China Sea. Although naval incidents between China and its near neighbours - particularly Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines - are not unusual, this is the first one to involve India.

Why did China attempt to interfere with a ship sailing in open seas? Was this "merely" another of China's unwarranted assertions of sovereignty over the whole South China Sea, or was something more malevolent afoot?

At China's foreign ministry, a spokesperson explained: "[W]e are opposed to any country engaging in oil and gas exploration and development activities in waters under China's jurisdiction." Then, in passing, he added that "countries outside the region, we hope... will respect and support countries in the region" in their efforts "to solve... dispute[s] through bilateral channels".

India's government responded promptly: "Our cooperation with Vietnam or any other country is always as per international laws, norms and conventions," it declared, stating that "cooperation with Vietnam in the area of energy is very important". Indeed, Indian companies already have invested heavily there and are seeking to expand their operations.

"[W]e are opposed to any country engaging in oil and gas exploration and development activities in waters under China's jurisdiction." - Spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry

Although India's statement is explicit enough, doubts persist. Is the two countries' argument merely about who will develop the South China Sea's untapped energy resources, or are we dealing with the beginning of a struggle for spheres of influence?

To find an answer requires confronting civilisational norms, which are reflected in the intellectual games that the countries favour. India has traditionally favoured the game of chaupad (four sides), or shatranj (chess), concentrating on contest, conquest and subjugation. China, on the other hand, has wei qui (known in Japan as go), which focuses on strategic encirclement. As Sun Tzu advised many centuries ago, "Ultimate excellence lies... not in winning every battle, but in defeating the enemy, without ever fighting".

A recent US Defence Department paper, "China's Military and Security Developments - 2011," argued that "China's 'near sea' politics has seriously disturbed not only India, but Japan, Australia, the US, and the ASEAN countries". In response, China's defence ministry proclaimed that "China and India are not enemies, not opponents, but neighbours and partners".

Chinese Chess

So where do things stand? It is clear that India, given its years of cooperation with Vietnam on oil and gas development, is not about to acquiesce in China's claim to the South China Sea. Moreover, as energy extraction begins, a new memorandum of understanding between India and Vietnam is scheduled to be signed later this year. China was most likely reacting to these developments by accusing India of violating its territorial waters.
For India, the sense that a struggle for regional mastery is occurring has become increasingly keen. Chinese activity in Pakistan and Myanmar, the expansion of China's port agreements in the Indian Ocean (the so-called "string of pearls"), and heightened Chinese naval activity in the Indian Ocean have jangled India's security antennas. Indeed, the official Chinese publication Global Times, altering its previous stance, recently called for putting a stop to India's energy plans in the region. "Reasoning may be used first, but if India is persistent in this, China should try every means possible to stop this... from happening." 

"[India must] ... bear in mind ... that its actions in the South China sea will push China to the limit." - Global Times, official Chinese publication

The same article then threw Tibet into the stew of accusations.

"Chinese society," it continued, "has... been indignant about India's intervention in the Dalai [Lama] problem," cautioning India to "bear in mind" that "its actions in the South China Sea will push China to the limit." According toGlobal Times, "China cherishes the Sino-Indian friendship, but this does not mean China values it above all else."

There was a more broad, ominous message as well, one that belies China's official rhetoric of harmony: "We should not leave the world with the impression that China is only focused on economic development, nor should we pursue the reputation" of being a "peaceful power, which would cost us dearly."

It is this "triumphalist" foreign policy, as Henry Kissinger calls it, with which India has to contend. The "Chinese approach to world order", writes Kissinger in his new book On China, is dissimilar to the Western system of "balance of power diplomacy", primarily because China has "never engaged in sustained contact with another" on the basis of the concept of the "sovereign equality of nations". As Kissinger, a committed Sinophile, points out: "That the Chinese Empire should tower over its geographical sphere was taken virtually as a law of nature, an expression of the Mandate of Heaven."

Perhaps India and others should contend with China's assertiveness by heeding Sun Tzu's counsel: "Contain an adversary through the leverage of converting the neighbourhood of that adversary into hostiles." Just as China has cultivated Pakistan, is India's growing embrace of Vietnam a counter-move on Asia's strategic chessboard?

Perhaps. After all, just as India recognises China's vital interests in Tibet and Taiwan, there must be reciprocal recognition of India's national interests. China must fully accept that any effort at strategic encirclement of India will be countered. That is an Indian national-security imperative. So is restraint and mutual cooperation - as is true for China as well.

Jaswant Singh, a former Indian finance minister, foreign minister, and defence minister, is the author ofJinnah: India - Partition - Independence.

U.S. Considers China and India As Threats

By REUTERS 
NOVEMBER 18, 2011 
Courtesy Of "Canada"

GROTON, Conneticut — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta appeared to call China and India "threats" on Thursday...

Panetta, addressing workers at a submarine plant in Connecticut, was talking about emerging challenges facing the United States as it looks beyond the Iraq and Afghan wars.

After detailing the threat of cyber warfare, Panetta turned to concerns over "rising powers."

"We face the threats from rising powers, China, India, others that we have to always be aware of," Panetta said.

"And (we have to) try to make sure that we always have sufficient force protection out there in the Pacific to make sure they know we're never going anywhere."

His remarks came the same day that President Barack Obama said on a visit to Australia that the U.S. military would expand its role in the Asia-Pacific region despite budget cuts. Obama declared America was "here to stay" as a Pacific power.

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Panetta made the comments after touring a nuclear-powered, Virginia-class attack submarine in the very final phase of construction. The U.S. submarine fleet is considered one of the most important counters to China's growing military might, which includes advances in missile technology that make surface targets easier to reach.

Obama also announced this week that the United States will extend the military's reach into Southeast Asia with Marines, naval ships and aircraft deployed to northern Australia from 2012.

China has questioned the deployment to Australia, raising doubts whether strengthening such alliances will help the region pull together at a time of economic gloom.

© Copyright (c) Reuters

Are Foreign Investors Colonising Africa?

New Economic Powers India and China Are Being Accused Of Buying Land Cheaply and Uprooting Indigenous Communities.

Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

The Stream speaks with Indian author Anand Giridharadas, Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of The Oakland Institute, and Christine L. Adamow, Managing Director of Africa BioFuel, a U.S. company invested in farmland in Kenya and Tanzania.

Indian, Chinese and U.S. companies are among many inking land-investment deals in Africa, including Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Sudan, Mali, and Mozambique. According to a study by the U.S.- based Oakland Institute, foreign investors bought or leased a land area in sub-Saharan Africa about the size of France in 2009 alone.

American universities’ trusts (including Harvard’s) are also buying up land, reportedly displacing millions of farmers in the process.

Advocates say the land is being taken from indigenous communities by often violent means, and that land rights are handed over without proper contracts after closed-door deals. A lack of regulations in these countries allows foreign firms to purchase or lease large tracts of arable land, leaving little recourse for displaced residents.

Investors claim to be growing food for the global market that will indirectly alleviate food shortages in Africa, but land is very often used to grow non-edible export commodities such as flowers and biofuels.

Defendants of the deals say local farmers who are employed by foreign firms earn more working the land than they otherwise could, and that infrastructure developments (like clean water facilities or improved irrigation systems) are there to help them.

But many of the long-term social and environmental costs are more hard to predict, and critics say the “land grabs” are already causing “deprivation and destitution” for locals.

Indian author and media commentator Anand Giridharadas will the joining the programme. The Oakland Institute’s Executive Director, Anuradha Mittal, will be on the show via Skype along with Christine L. Adamow, Managing Director of Africa BioFuel, a U.S. company invested in farmland in Kenya and Tanzania.

What do you think? Is Africa being colonised again? Send us your thoughts and comments on Facebook or Twitter using hashtag #AJStream.

• As India, China, Saudia Arabia and South Korea all lease land in the horn, some say we are in the midst of a second 'scramble for Africa.'  
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  1 day 12 hours ago
• Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is depicted as a shady back-alley dealer, putting Ethiopia up for sale.
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  addisvoice.com

  1 day 12 hours ago
• In this cartoon, Africa's land is up for grab by developed countries.
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  farmlandgrab.org

  1 day 12 hours ago
• Some Ethiopians are writing open letters to the people of India asking them to speak out against Indian agro-companies brokering land deals in their country.
• "What would Gandhi say today were he to know that Indians, who were only freed from the shackles of colonialism in recent history, were now at the forefront of this "land-grabbing" as part of the race for foreign control over African land and resources; currently being called the Neo-Colonialism of Africa?"

  
  

  "This land is not just "nobody"s land" as the government claims; it is our life! Without it, we could have never existed as a people. I don"t think we will accept our land being given away to foreigners without resisting." 

  
  

  "We have had enough and will not tolerate this new onslaught of exploitation and dehumanization in the 21st century! Many want to keep us Africans poor, disenfranchised and vulnerable only to more easily take advantage of the pillaging of our continent."
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  An Open Letter to the People of India, a Day Light Robbery in Ethiopia

  "Doing Business" With African dictators "If it is unacceptable for Ethiopians to go to India, China or Saudi Arabia and clear their land without consulting the people, it is unacceptable here. We are human too and we care about the future of our children like everyone else…my message to the foreign investors is, listen to the owners of the land!"

  

  ecadforum.com
• The horn of Africa has some of the highest rates of hunger in the world.
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• (Photo from UK Department for International Development)
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• (Photo from UK Department for International Development)
• Read the full Oakland Institute report:

India has only 914 girls for every 1,000 boys, according to the latest census [Davinder Kumar/Plan International]


Gender Selective Abortions Have Skewed Birthrates, So Millions Of Men Will Never Find Wives, Potentially Causing Strife.

By Chris Arsenault
Last Modified: 24 Oct 2011 08:26
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Dr Neelam Singh is on the front line of India's battle to save its girls.

Modern medical technology - specifically ultrasounds for determining the baby's sex - coupled with ancient cultural values which give preference to boys, mean that hundreds of thousands of girls are never being born.

There were only 914 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of six in India, according to the 2011 census, compared with 927 for every 1,000 boys in the 2001 census. Today's ratio is the highest imbalance since the country won independence in 1947.

"I feel the demand [for abortions] every day," Singh told Al Jazeera. "Parents say it's important to have a son in the family. They want to keep their family name. I see this as the most heinous kind of discrimination towards a girl child."

A gynecologist in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, Singh has witnessed population growth at a rate of 20 per cent. Out of a population of almost 200 million, men outnumber women by nearly 10 million.

The world's population will hit seven billion later in October, according to the UN, and the problem of imbalanced gender ratios is getting worse in several regions.

Widespread Patriarchy

"In India, there is a confluence of factors leading to passive infanticide, active infanticide or sex selective abortion," Valerie Hudson, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University who studies birth rates, told Al Jazeera.

"Probably the most important is the tradition of dowry [payment to a prospective husband]. Having to marry a girl off may be the equivalent of several years of income for a family. A daughter is often seen as a thief who will rob necessary resources."

Restrictive property rules, where inheritance is passed from father to son rather than to daughters, male dominated funeral rights and parental hopes that male breadwinners will support them through old age also play a part in skewing demographics, Hudson said.

The world's largest democracy still fares better than China, where the ratio is 121 men per 100 women. Globally, 163 million girls have gone "missing" from the world's population due to sex selective abortions in the last thirty years, according to the calculations of Mara Hvistendahl, author of Unnatural Selection.

By 2020, an estimated 15 to 20 per cent of men in some regions of northwest India will lack female counterparts. "In Punjab, there are entire villages with no girls under [age] five," said Rohini Prabha Pande, an independent demographer who works on gender issues in India. "There are some districts with 700 girls per 1,000 boys," she told Al Jazeera.

Social Disorder

These massive social imbalances could spark a host of social problems.

"When 15 per cent of young adult males in your population will never become head of household or heirs you will alienate these men in ways that cannot be fixed," Hudson said. Poor men will be the biggest losers in this equation.

"The historical record shows there can be distinct negative impacts on levels of violent crime, riots and rebellion against the state," when large groups of single young men are alienated and lack family commitments, according to Hudson.

The lack of women is being felt by bachelors, policy makers and women's rights activists across Asia. By 2020, China could be home to 40 million bachelors who won't be able to find mates.

"North Korea's largest export is women across their northern border with China," Hudson said, noting that the ruling communist party is particularly worried about prospects for unrest from angry, unmarried men.

Governments will likely funnel bachelors into the military, she said.

While prospects for conflict are unclear, other problems including human trafficking, prostitution and polyandry – men (usually relatives) sharing a wife - are certain to get worse.

Governments are, however, trying to address the problem.

Legislative Response

After India's 1991 census, a prolonged campaign by women's rights activists over the skewed child sex ratio led to the enactment of the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act in 1994.

"Technology allowing families to detect the sex of a foetus at an early stage and plan for an abortion has been banned," said Mohammed Asif, director of programme implementation with Plan India, an NGO which lobbies to save baby girls.

"The government's law is stringent, but people have been trying to work around it, going to far away clinics and giving fake addresses. Loopholes have been exploited and a key strategy would be to take action against illegal ultra sound clinics," Asif told Al Jazeera.

Other researchers don't think legal changes are the best way to improve the situation. If cultural values discourage against having girls, families can find other ways of getting rid of them without advanced screening techniques.

"Ultra sound technology is just the latest wave to select a son preference," Pande said. "In rural Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, you see a fairly balanced sex ratio at birth. But when you look at what is happening between birth and age six, they resort to traditional means of neglecting girl children. They are less likely to be immunised, less likely to be taken to a health centre and more likely to be chronically malnourished."

No Cure In Education

Contrary to popular belief, education, status and upward mobility can actually make the problem worse.

"You have a much greater chance of survival as a girl baby if born to a poor family, rather than a rich family," Hudson said. "Richer families have more assets which could be put in jeopardy by girls due to dowry payments," she said, adding that wealthy groups worry about having their family name tarnished if their daughter marries from a lower class.

While national trends are cause for concern, the situation is improving in some areas. "Tamil Nadu is one of the few states where we have seen an improvement," said Sharada Srinivasan, a professor of gender studies at York University in Canada.

In addition to counselling, and the creation of self-help groups for women, the southern state is using the carrot and the stick approach. "The government has created a massive cash transfer programme" to entice parents to keep baby girls, Srinivasan told Al Jazeera. Parents who commit infanticide are increasingly being prosecuted for homicide, she said.

Tamil Nadu also hosts some of India's new outsourcing and information technology and these post-industrial jobs could improve women's rights. "Before, women's work was either at home or on the farm," Plan India's Asif said. "With globalisation, girls are now picking up jobs in banking, manufacturing and hi-tech. This is creating a lot of buzz in the family to start considering girls."

While cash incentives, laws against gender selective ultrasounds, harsh punishments and economic changes all play a role, changing deeply ingrained social values is arguably the most important issue, and the most difficult.

Some communities in Punjab and elsewhere are taking collective pledges not to kill or abort girls, considering the practice a source of shame and an example of backwardness. This is where government policy ends and grassroots action begins.

"There is no way you can tax patriarchy," Srinivasan said. "Public action has a role to play in changing social norms. History is full of examples of this."

India's Muslims Themselves Who Are Terrorised

The (In)Visible In Indian Terrorism

Indian Muslims Are Often Accused Of Terrorist Links, But In Many Cases It Is Muslims Themselves Who Are Terrorised.

By Irfan Ahmad
Last Modified: 16 Sep 2011 17:46
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

According to the Indian government and media, many Muslim groups have recently been involved in terrorism. Of these, three stand out: Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), formed in 1976 and banned soon after 9/11 for fomenting “communal disharmony” and “sedition”; Deccan Mujahideen (DM), an outfit which shot to prominence by claiming responsibility for the 2008 Mumbai terror attack; and Indian Mujahideen (IM), a group believed to have been formed after 2001. These groups have been charged with killing hundreds of people. The latest attack came on July 13, when 20 people were killed in a series of bombings in Mumbai.

Shortly after the attack, the police said that IM and SIMI were behind the blasts. A nationwide hunt followed. According to Rakesh Maria, Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) Chief, expert teams fanned out to seven states. Officers from the National Intelligence Agency, formed after the 2008 Mumbai attacks to fight terrorism, raided the houses of two IM suspects in Ranchi, capital of Jharkhand state.

In Indian political discourse, outfits like SIMI, DM and IM appear as a threat to India’s stability and its global rise. While some depict them as domestic groups, others portray them as working in alliance with outfits from Pakistan. It is thus believed that IM was floated by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a militant group formed in 1990 in Afghanistan and active in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. Most accounts of these outfits are, however, inconsistent and even contradictory.

By analysing the Mumbai attack and the alleged involvement of IM and SIMI, I make three arguments. First, since the media and the security agencies have a close and uncritical relationship, we should have a healthy doubt about the accuracy of their information, and refrain from immediately pointing fingers at one Muslim group or another. Despite the fact that barely anyone adequately knows what IM is and how it came about, after the July attack several Muslims were arrested as terrorists.

Second, because Muslims are blamed, arrested, tortured, and killed (by the police) after each terror attack, with little or no evidence, such measures might end up creating the danger the Indian state claims to fight.

Third, I contend that the Indian media’s role in “reporting” terrorism is prejudiced.

What Is Indian Mujahideen?

After the blast, the police arrested many people from Mumbai’s “sensitive” (read Muslim) neighbourhoods, a practice the residents of such neighbourhoods have grown accustomed to in the last decade. One suspect, Faiz Usmani, died in police custody. The police claimed that his death was caused by “hypertension”; his family believes that he was tortured. Usmani was the brother of Afzal Usmani, in jail for his alleged involvement in the 2008 Ahmadabad blast. Both brothers are reported to be IM members.

Riaz Bhatkal, described as India’s “most wanted terrorist”, is regarded as IM’s founder. He became close with SIMI in the early 1990s when it began to radicalise. Born in 1976, Bhatkal went to an English-medium school and later studied engineering at a Mumbai college. But beyond that, much of IM’s history remains unclear. It's not even known whether Bhatkal is alive or dead. After the July 13 blast, the ATS attempted to nab him. This is surprising, because early this year the media reported that Bhatkal was killed in Karachi by Chhota Rajan, Mumbai’s underworld don.

The media provides differing accounts of IM’s formation and, in fact, is sometimes inconsistent even within a single version. For example, Animesh Roul, the director of the Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict in Delhi, claimed that IM was “conceived at a terrorist conclave attended by top leaders of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami (HuJI) in Pakistani-administered Kashmir in May 2008”. He did not find it contradictory when in the next paragraph he wrote, “IM came into the open for the first time in November 2007”. In Asian Policy, Christine Fair indicated two dates of its formation: 2001 and an ambiguous date of “much later”. According to The Times of India, IM was formed in 2005. To Namrata Goswami of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis in Delhi, “key SIMI members …started supporting the idea of the formation of the IM as early as December 2007”.

IM first hit the headlines after a series of explosions in November 2007. In an email to the media and police, IM claimed responsibility for the blasts. As the email explained, the aim of those attacks was to protest against “the pathetic conditions of Muslims in India that idol worshippers can kill our brothers, sisters, children and outrage dignity of our sisters at any place and at any time and we can’t resist them”. Then, in 2008, minutes before the blasts in Ahmadabad, IM sent an email (entitled “The Rise of Jihad, Revenge of Gujarat”) to the media saying: “We hereby declare an ultimatum to all the state governments of India … to stop harassing the Muslims and keep a check on their killing, expulsion, and encounters.”

The messages are a sign that IM’s aim is to protest against and avenge the killings and humiliation of Muslims at the hands of Hindu nationalists and the state administration. The destruction of the Babri mosque by Hindu nationalists in 1992 is important to IM’s ideological repertoire - hence its description by the media and the terrorism experts as a “home-grown”, “domestic” terror outfit. Since the media regard the Babri mosque as a domestic issue (unlike Kashmir, which is international) and the IM invokes the Babri mosque to rationalise its attacks, the IM is thus considered a domestic outfit.

However, many Indian security experts hold that IM is a tool of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) used to destabilise India. In these accounts, IM is a means to advance ISI’s agenda of destabilising India and at the same time to exonerate Pakistan of any allegations made by India and the West of promoting terrorism. The logic of the security experts is that the word “Indian” in IM points to India’s domestic groups, rather than Pakistani groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, through which the ISI has been operating in Kashmir. On the other hand, experts like B Raman allege that IM and SIMI's reach extends beyond South Asia, characterising the groups as a part of a global network of Islamic radicals without furnishing adequate evidence.

India’s Guantanamo Bays

The media invariably base their stories on the sources of the state. An apt example is Praveen Swami, a terrorism expert cited by everyone writing about the IM. Swami is to print media what Arnab Goswami (of Times Now) is to Indian TV: Their views are rabidly nationalist, some might even say Islamophobic. Swami reproduces the police version (e.g. see his writings in CTC Sentinel, May 2010; The Hindu, Edit-Page, March 22, 2010; and Frontline, June 2-15, 2007) without giving the other side of the story, namely: the viewpoints of the alleged terrorists, their family members, or the Muslim community. It is well-known that the Indian police are biased against Muslims and have been complicit in killing them, as was evident in the state-mediated 2002 Gujarat violence, in which 1,000 Muslims were killed.

Given that the Indian media is uninterested in reporting “facts” and multiple views, can an anthropologist like me make sense of the mediatised world of terrorism? Thomas Eriksen holds that a concept like globalisation has “no meaning to an anthropologist unless it can be studied through actual persons, their relationship to each other and to a larger surrounding world”. I thus agree with Peter Van der Veer that “behind the growing visibility [of media] is a growing invisibility”.

What is rarely visible in the Indian media, however, are the brutal, illegal methods used against suspected terrorists: torture cells, illegal detention, unlawful killings in “police encounters”; elimination of evidence against the illegal actions of the law-enforcing agencies; and rampant harassment of Muslims. In July 2009, The Week reported on the existence of at least 15 secret torture chambers meant to extract information from the detainees. The methods to extract information include attaching electrodes to a detainee’s genitals as well as the use of pethidine injections. To quote The Week, these chambers are “our own little Guantanamo Bays or Gitmos”, which a top policeman called “precious assets”.

In May 2008, a Muslim boy aged 14 was abducted by the Gujarat police. He was dragged to the police car at gunpoint and taken to a detention centre where he was tortured. He returned home ten days later when the court ordered his release following his mother’s petition. The police subsequently threatened the boy’s family with dire consequences if they pursued the case in court. The police harassment becomes even more acute in light of the fact that most lawyers often hesitate to take up the cases of “terrorists”. As a disempowered community - as the government-appointed Sachar Committee report (of 2006) minutely demonstrates - Muslims themselves don’t have adequate and qualified lawyers to pursue such cases. Muslims’ marginalisation thus renders their voice invisible in the media too.

It is believed that after SIMI was banned, soon after 9/11, its radical members formed IM. During my fieldwork (2001-2004) on Jamaat-e-Islami and SIMI I did not hear anything about IM. SIMI activists and other Muslims I met felt terrorised themselves. It is worth noting that since 2001 far more people have been arrested as “SIMI terrorists” than the actual number of SIMI members, which in 1996 was 413 (when founded in 1976, SIMI’s members numbered 132). Until today, the Indian government has still not legally proved its rationale for banning SIMI.

The Story Untold

In the fight against terrorism, evidence and the rule of law are subservient to prejudice. As of this writing, the Indian government has not yet tracked the perpetrators of the July 13 attack. However, only two days after the attack, Subramanian Swamy, a prominent politician and former minister (with a doctorate from Harvard University) wrote an article called “How to Wipe Out Islamic Terror”. Without any evidence, he blamed Muslims for the attack, in the same way that The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Sun suspected Muslim involvement in the Norway shooting nine days later.

What Swamy did is standard practice in Indian media. In September 2006, a blast killed 35 people at a Muslim graveyard in Malegaon (in the state of Karnataka). The media blamed Muslims. Likewise, in 2007, after a blast killed 10 Muslims praying in Hyderabad’s Mecca mosque, Praveen Swami freely wrote about the Muslim terrorists he believed caused it and about what he perceived to be the “Islamist threat to India’s cities”. However, investigations later showed that Hindu nationalists carried out the Malegaon and Mecca mosque terror attacks.

Returning to Subramanian Swamy, Swami wrote: “We need a collective mindset as Hindus to stand against the Islamic terrorist. The Muslims of India can join us if they genuinely feel for the Hindus. That they do I will not believe unless they acknowledge with pride that though they may be Muslims, their ancestors were Hindus”. Those refusing to acknowledge this, Swamy advocated, “should not have voting rights”. He proposed declaring India “a Hindu Rashtra [state]”.

Stories of Muslim terrorists abound in both the Indian and Western media. Since the July 13, 2011 Mumbai bombings, vitriolic pieces like Subramanian Swamy’s have appeared frequently in the media. These pieces subtly influence the analyses of many liberal intellectuals.

By contrast, stories portraying Muslims as the terrorised remain fairly sparse. One wonders if, and how, such stories will be told.

Irfan Ahmad is a political anthropologist and a lecturer at Monash University, Australia and author of Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami (Princeton University Press, 2009) which was short-listed for the 2011 International Convention of Asian Scholars Book Prize for the best study in the field of Social Sciences.

The Kashmir-Afghanistan Puzzle

Despite revived diplomatic efforts between India and Pakistan, many doubt real progress will be made unless the attitude of the military changes [Reuters]


The Trust Deficit Between India and Pakistan Is Not Only Toxic To Kashmir But Has Broader Ramifications In South Asia.

By Mujib Mashal
Last Modified: 18 Aug 2011 12:53
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"


In August 1998, about 70 US missiles landed in eastern Afghanistan, targeting former mujahideen training camps that had been handed over to al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden, in what his bodyguard later described as "divine intervention", was on his way to Kabul and survived. But many of the 34 people killed - 20 Afghans, seven Pakistanis and seven Arabs - were training to fight Indian troops in Indian-administered Kashmir.

"When Bill Clinton ordered missiles [attacks] on former Haqqani camps in Afghanistan, there were definitely Kashmiris killed there," says Wahid Muzhda, an Afghan political analyst and former mujahid who fought the Soviets during the 1980s.

After Pakistan was pressured to stop fighters advancing its cause in Kashmir during the 1990s, Muzhda says, it simply relocated their training camps to Afghanistan, where they slipped under the radar during the chaos of a bloody civil war.

Today, many analysts suggest that the continuing violence in Kashmir and Afghanistan remain pieces of the same puzzle.

"The Kashmir imbroglio is an unfortunate phenomenon whose obvious shadow has loomed over not just Indo-Pakistan relations but upon Afghanistan as well," says Mohammad Taqi, a columnist for Pakistan's Daily Times.

The trust deficit between archrivals Pakistan and India - a rivalry partly rooted in the unresolved Kashmir dispute - continues to fuel the two countries' struggle for regional influence. And as the US searches for a resolution in Afghanistan, many suggest Kashmir remains a crucial, but largely overlooked, factor in establishing stability in South Asia.

A US official aware of the US State Department's dealings with Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, who asked not to be named because he is not authorised to speak on the matter, told Al Jazeera that addressing tensions in Kashmir was not part of the US' immediate efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan.

"The US tries to use its bilateral relations with both India and Pakistan to encourage easing of tensions over Kashmir, but it does not introduce the issue into discussions over Afghanistan," he said.

However many fear that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan could, in the words of Nitin Pai, a fellow in geopolitics at the Indian Takshashila Institute, free up "thousands of armed, violent, radicalised" men who might find their way, once again, to Kashmir.

"With shattered, feudal economies and lack of skills that would make them employable, this pool of manpower will destabilise these countries and pose risks to the broader region," says Pai.

'The Jihad Around The Corner'

Click here for more on the Kashmir conflict

"The initial call to the holy war - jihad - in Kashmir was rather generic," Taqi says, referring to 1948, when the first war between Pakistan and India broke out over the disputed territory. "But the next decades saw the full-fledged use of highly indoctrinated and Wahabised proxies inducted into Kashmir, especially after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan."

The struggle for Kashmir developed more pronounced religious undertones in line with the increased religious fundamentalism in Pakistan during the rule of General Zia ul Haq in the 1970s and 1980s.

"Kashmiris' right of self-determination was jettisoned along the way," says Taqi. "Organisations that started demanding 'Kashmir for Kashmiris' - i.e. independence from both India and Pakistan - were abandoned by Pakistan, in favour of Islamist proxies, when they started moving away from the Pakistani position."

Even during the struggle against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Pakistan - pivotal to the then CIA-supported Afghan fighters - kept the two fronts close to each other to signal that, despite the USSR knocking on its door, Kashmir remained its biggest policy issue.

Muzhda, who, along with other Afghan mujahideen went to Pakistan for training, says the Kashmiri presence at the training camps was noticeable.

"The trainers were people who had ties to the ISI [Pakistan's intelligence agency] and some of them were even religious scholars," he says.

Many Afghans who received training at the camps were also deployed to Kashmir in subsequent years.

"I heard stories from fellow mujahideen who went to Kashmir for a stint. There was a feeling of pan-Islamism at the training camps and for many - including Afghans and Arabs fighting in Afghanistan - Kashmir was just another jihad around the corner," Muzhda says, adding that a share of machine gun and long range weapon shipments from China and Egypt also made its way to Kashmir.

As Pakistan came under international scrutiny over the expanding militant activities of groups like Lashkar-e Jangvi and Harakat-ul Ansar during the 1990s, their training camps were relocated to Afghanistan. "But the stage for the national-security-state paradigm becoming the cornerstone of Pakistan's domestic and foreign policies was set long ago - by the events of 1947 and 1948," says Taqi, referring to the years of partition.

"The involvement of the security apparatus in achieving Pakistan's foreign policy objectives at a time when the democratic institutions were in an embryonic state set the stage for a larger-than-life role the military assumed in the affairs."

While India and Pakistan have fought several wars over Kashmir, the battle has also raged through proxy groups and Afghanistan has historically been, and remains, a perfect battlefield for such a proxy war.

Davood Moradian, a professor of politics at the American University of Afghanistan and a former diplomat, however, believes the large disparity between Pakistan's military establishment and its democratic institutions is at the core of the issue. He says Kashmir is but one manifestation of this.

"As the separation of East Pakistan [now Bangladesh] and ongoing violence within Pakistan show, the underlying causes are the main issues for regional stability rather than the proximate one of Kashmir," Moradian explains. "Pakistan's military and political elite see Pakistan as a hegemonic country. A hegemon and regional power requires parity with India and domination over Afghanistan."

Proxy Warfare


"The proxy warfare that had started in Kashmir in 1947 remains the sheet-anchor of Pakistan's defence strategy. The quest for the so-called 'strategic depth' in Afghanistan is also a manifestation of this phenomenon," Taqi says.

Now that the US, facing economic troubles and war-fatigue at home, seems desperate for a resolution in Afghanistan, many fear the consequences will be felt in Kashmir.

"To the extent that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan frees up militants to fight elsewhere, there is a risk that some of them will find their way to Kashmir," Pai says.

Pakistan's history of reliance on proxy groups only adds to these fears, particularly among those who believe Pakistan has yet to completely sever its ties with armed groups that have had historical relations with the army over causes such as Kashmir.

"Because this diverts the militants from destabilising Pakistan's domestic politics, even civilian leaders are likely to encourage this, as we saw in the early 1990s," says Pai.

India, under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has assiduously pushed for better relations, considering a stable Pakistan crucial to its economic ambitions. It is a move that has been reciprocated by Pakistan's civilian administration.

"Prime Minister Singh's 'peace offensive' with Pakistan is guided by the fact that, if India wants to become an Asian power in the real sense, it has to extricate itself from contentious issues of South Asia," says Indian political analyst Luv Puri.

In her first visit to India, Pakistan's new foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, pushed for "purposeful and forward-looking" talks on Kashmir. In a move seen by some as a sign that she is genuine in her efforts to find a resolution, she also met with Kashmiri separatist leaders in New Delhi.

But many think that Pakistan's civilian government can only go so far on foreign policy and that it is the army that will ultimately have the final say.

"The perpetuation of the Kashmir problem remains in the interest of both such militant groups and the Pakistani military establishment," says Taqi.

"Any resolution of the problem would deprive the jihadists and military, which sired them, of their raison d'être.

"So, despite much trumpeted calls [for] Kashmiri freedom, the Pakistani army, which is addicted to its business ventures, would resist any resolution of the problem, especially an independent Kashmir."