Nehru, Abdullah betrayed Maharaja Hari Singh

http://www.niticentral.com/2013/01/nehru-abdullah-betrayed-raja-hari-singh.html

Nehru, Abdullah betrayed Maharaja Hari Singh

By Sandhya Jain on January 13, 2013

Tags: Jammu and Kashmir, Jawaharlal Nehru, indian history, louis mountbatten

The duplicitous games played with the only monarch who embraced Indian nationalism long before freedom could be seen on the horizon, whose accession retained India’s civilisational and geographical link with the land of sage Kashyap, is best gauged from his anguished letter to President Rajendra Prasad on 16-17 August 1952, three days before the monarch was abruptly abolished.

The 9000-odd word missive details the treachery of the Delhi durbar, choreographed by Jawaharlal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah; Louis Mountbatten had moved on after initiating the State’s ruination. That such an important historical document is untraceable in the collected works of Indian statesmen is a telling commentary on how State-funded historians have fiddled with the history and memory of the Indian people. The integrity of such collections can be restored only by making every letter public, so that the nation can assess the heroes, villains and knaves for itself.

Writing from exile in Poona, Hari Singh informed the President that since his accession to the throne in 1925, the British had strengthened their hold on the State due to its great strategic importance. Hari Singh incurred their wrath as he tried to curtail their domination.

They instigated a religious rebellion in 1931 with slogans like ‘Down with Hindu Raj’ and ‘Islam in danger’; its key leaders like Chaudhary Ghulam Abbas and Maulvi Yusuf Shah received official posts in ‘Azad’ Kashmir. Within the kingdom, the leaders gained Congress cooperation by calling themselves ‘National Conference’. In 1947, Mountbatten hinted that the Maharaja join Pakistan, while the Government of India’s attitude was desultory.

In September 1947, Hari Singh was asked to appoint Mehr Chand Mahajan as Prime Minister; the latter was briefed by Sardar Patel and promised full cooperation. But on October 21, 1947, Patel wrote to MC Mahajan saying that Sheikh Abdullah (released from prison) was anxious to help the State deal with the troubles and wanted his hands strengthened. Nehru penned a similar letter to Mahajan, urging formation of a provincial government headed by Abdullah, the “most popular person in Kashmir”. Nehru urged withholding accession to India till such Interim Government was installed in the State. (Accession finally happened on October 26-27 in well-known circumstances).

Nehru again pressed Hari Singh for Abdullah’s elevation on November 13, 1947. On December 9, 1947, Minister without Portfolio, N Gopalaswami Ayyangar, urged immediate changes in the State’s constitutional and administrative set up, and sent a draft Proclamation approved by Abdullah, for Hari Singh to issue. Gopalaswami insisted on the matter on March 1, 1948, claiming Sheikh was vital to India’s case in the Security Council. Nudged by Nehru, Abdullah made some polite noises and on March 5, 1948, the Maharaja issued the Proclamation referred to in Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.

Between March 1948 and April 1949 when he was forced to quit the State, Hari Singh complained that Sheikh Abdullah and his party assumed total control, ignoring the king and directly securing the consent of the Government of India for whatever they wished. Sheikh objected when the Maharaja and his wife began touring the State to interact with the people and got Delhi to make the Maharaja quit the State ‘for a few months’.

The Yuvraj was appointed Regent, but reduced to a figurehead. The Proclamation of March 1948 stipulated appointment of a Dewan and reserved subjects, yet Abdullah subverted this repeatedly with Nehru’s backing. Hari Singh’s record of this constitutional sabotage makes painful reading even today as the nation reels in shock at the brutal mutilation of its brave jawans defending its difficult borders.

After the king’s eviction, Sheikh Abdullah aspired for absolute control. In a frontal attack on the Maharaja, he began interfering with his private properties, including administration of the Dharmarth Trust created by the dynasty of which Hari Singh was sole Trustee. Charities and institutions maintained from Trust revenues were starved of funds, costs of Puja in temples and Devasthans denied, and the Jammu branch of the Imperial Bank of India ordered to deny the Trustee the amounts of the fixed deposits of the Trust and to transfer the deposits to its Bombay Office! This single episode is the best instance of how Nehruvian secularism would unravel in independent India. Even now, there should be an inquiry into whose orders made the bank act in this manner.

By far the worst was Sheikh Abdullah’s slander – repeated by Nehru in an exceedingly rude letter to the Maharaja – that Hari Singh ran away to Jammu when the invasion began, when the truth is that he left on October 25 at the urging of VP Menon and in the larger interests of the State as the raiders were already at Baramulla. It was Sheikh Abdullah who fled from Srinagar for Delhi (and Nehru’s home) and did not return till Indian troops started landing in Srinagar.

In November 1950, Vishnu Sahay urged the Maharaja to set up a Constituent Assembly for the State, as foreshadowed in the March 1948 Proclamation, and now demanded by the National Conference. A draft Proclamation was sent for the Maharaja’s comments.

Hari Singh objected to this manner of setting up the Constituent Assembly as he was the properly constituted authority in law to promulgate the Proclamation, and not the Regent (Yuvraj). He felt the powers and functions of the Constituent Assembly should be express, well-defined and accurately worded and exclude from its purview matters not expressly entrusted to it. It should report to the authority that constitutes it, i.e. the ruler who shall seek the advice of the Parliament of India in the matter. But ultimately, the Maharaja was forced to permit the Yuvraj to set up the Constituent Assembly.

Warning the President of the dangers ahead, the Maharaja said the Indian Government had failed to appreciate the legal position; Nehru was taking it for granted that the relevant Articles, particularly Article 370, of the Indian Constitution can be altered and/or amended to suit Sheikh Abdullah. But Article 370 refers specifically to the Maharaja’s Proclamation of March 5, 1948. That is the law which governs the State of Jammu and Kashmir until a new Constitution is framed, approved and adopted not only by the Constituent Assembly of the State but also approved by the King and then by the President of India. But Nehru asked the Yuvraj (who is acting only as Regent) to become the elected Head of State with immediate effort, even before the State Constitution was framed, let alone approved and adopted. He thus deposed the king and the dynasty.

How, the aggrieved king asked the President, could the Government of India take all these steps over the head of the person on whose authority they entered the State and are continuing there and who was the Chief Author of the Proclamation on which is based the future construction of political set up in the country? Despite acting in good faith on the advice of the Indian Government, Mountbatten, Nehru, Patel and Gopalaswami, and despite Abdullah’s promises and assurances, he was eliminated by a process which was neither fair nor honourable. “Only history and posterity will be able to do justice to our respective points of view,” Hari Singh concluded. Perhaps the time for this has arrived.

What ails Kashmir? The Sunni idea of ‘azadi’

What ails Kashmir? The Sunni idea of ‘azadi’

The discomfort Kashmiris feel is about which laws self-rule must be under, and Hurriyat rejects a secular constitution

http://www.livemint.com/2010/08/06210254/What-ails-Kashmir-The-Sunni-i.html?h=B

We know what Hurriyat Conference wants: azadi, freedom. But freedom from what? Freedom from Indian rule. Doesn’t an elected Kashmiri, Omar Abdullah, rule from Srinagar?

Yes, but Hurriyat rejects elections. Why? Because ballots have no azadi option.But why can’t the azadi demand be made by democratically elected leaders? Because elections are rigged through the Indian Army. Why is the Indian Army out in Srinagar and not in Surat? Because Kashmiris want azadi.

Let’s try that again.

What do Kashmiris want freedom from? India’s Constitution.

What is offensive about India’s Constitution? It is not Islamic. This is the issue, let us be clear.

The violence in Srinagar isn’t for democratic self-rule because Kashmiris have that. The discomfort Kashmiris feel is about which laws self-rule must be under, and Hurriyat rejects a secular constitution.

Hurriyat deceives the world by using a universal word, azadi, to push a narrow, religious demand. Kashmiris have no confusion about what azadi means: It means Shariah. Friday holidays, amputating thieves’ hands, abolishing interest, prohibiting alcohol (and kite-flying), stoning adulterers, lynching apostates and all the rest of it that comprises the ideal Sunni state.

Also Read Aakar’s previous Lounge columns

Not one Shia gang terrorizes India; terrorism on the subcontinent is a Sunni monopoly.

There is a token Shia among the Hurriyat’s bearded warriors, but it is essentially a Sunni group pursuing Sunni Shariah. Its most important figure is Umar Farooq. He’s called mirwaiz, meaning head of preachers (waiz), but he inherited his title at 17 and actually is no Islamic scholar. He is English-educated, but his base is Srinagar’s sullen neighbourhood of Maisuma, at the front of the stone-pelting. His following is conservative and, since he has little scholarship, he is unable to bend his constituents to his view.

Hurriyat’s modernists are led by Sopore’s 80-year-old Ali Geelani of Jamaat-e-Islami. Jamaat was founded in 1941 by a brilliant man from Maharashtra called Maududi, who invented the structure of the modern Islamic state along the lines of a Communist one. Maududi opposed Jinnah’s tribal raid in Kashmir, which led to the Line of Control, saying jihad could only be prosecuted formally by a Muslim state, and not informally by militias. This wisdom was discarded later, and Hizb al-Mujahideen, starring Syed Salahuddin of cap and beard fame, is a Jamaat unit. Maududi was ecumenical, meaning that he unified the four Sunni groups of thought. He always excluded Shias, as heretics.

The Kashmiri separatist movement is actually inseparable from Sunni fundamentalism. Those on the Hurriyat’s fringes who say they are Gandhians, like Yasin Malik, are carried along by the others in the group so long as the immediate task of resisting India is in common. But the Hurriyat and its aims are ultimately poisonous, even for Muslims.

The Hurriyat Conference’s idea of freedom unfolds from a religious instinct, not a secular sentiment. This instinct is sectarian, and all the pro-azadi groups are Shia-killers. In promoting their hatred, the groups plead for the support of other Muslims by leaning on the name of the Prophet Muhammad.

Hafiz is a title and means memorizer of the Quran. Mohammed Saeed’s Lashkar Tayyaba means army of Tyeb (“the good”), one of the Prophet’s names. This is incorrectly spelled and pronounced by our journalists as “Taiba” or “Toiba”, but Muslims can place the name. Lashkar rejects all law from sources other than the recorded sayings and actions of Muhammad. This is called being Wahhabi, and Wahhabis detest the Shia.

Jaish Muhammad (Muhammad’s army) was founded in a Karachi mosque, and it is linked to the Shia-killing Sipah Sahaba (Army of Muhammad’s First Followers) in Pakistan’s Seraiki-speaking southern Punjab. The group follows a narrow, anti-Shia doctrine developed in Deoband.

Decades of non-interference by the Pakistani state in the business of Kashmiri separatism has led to a loss of internal sovereignty in Pakistan. The state is no longer able to convince its citizens that it should act against these groups. Though their own Shia are regularly butchered, a poll shows that a quarter of Pakistanis think Lashkar Tayyaba does good work. We think Indian Muslims are different from Pakistanis and less susceptible to fanaticism. It is interesting that within Pakistan, the only group openly and violently opposed to Taliban and terrorism are UP and Bihar migrants who form Karachi’s secular Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) party.

So what do the separatist groups want? It is wrong to see them as being only terrorist groups. They operate in an intellectual framework, and there is a higher idea that drives the violence. This is a perfect state with an executive who is pious, male and Sunni. Such a state, where all is done according to the book, will get God to shower his blessings on the citizens, who will all be Sunnis.

There are three types of Sunnis in Kashmir. Unionists, separatists, and neutrals. Unionists, like Omar Abdullah, are secular and likely to be repelled by separatism because they have seen the damage caused by political Islam in Pakistan. They might not be in love with Indians, but they see the beauty of the Indian Constitution. Neutrals, like Mehbooba Mufti, are pragmatic and will accept the Indian Constitution when in power, though they show defiance when out of it. This is fine, because they respond to a Muslim constituency that is uncertain, but isn’t totally alienated. The longer these two groups participate in democracy in Kashmir, the weaker the separatists become. The current violence is a result of this. Given their boycott of politics, the Hurriyat must rally its base by urging them to violence and most of it happens in Maisuma and Sopore. The violence should also clarify the problem in the minds of neutrals: If Kashmiri rule does not solve the azadi problem, what will?

India’s liberals are defensive when debating Kashmir because of our unfulfilled promise on plebiscite. But they shouldn’t be. There is really no option to secular democracy, whether one chooses it through a plebiscite or whether it is imposed. It is a universal idea and there is no second form of government in any culture or religion that works. The Islamic state is utopian and it never arrives. Since it is driven by belief, however, the search becomes quite desperate.

India has a constitution; Pakistan has editions. These are the various Pakistani constitutions: 1935 (secular), 1956 (federal), 1962 (dictatorial), 1973 (parliamentary), 1979 (Islamic), 1999 (presidential), 2008 (parliamentary). Why do they keep changing and searching? Muslims keep trying to hammer in Islamic bits into a set of laws that is actually quite complete. This is the Government of India Act of 1935, gifted to us by the British.

Kashmiris have it, and perhaps at some point they will learn to appreciate its beauty.

Aakar Patel will take a break from his column to write a book. He will return early next year.

Send your feedback to replytoall@livemint.com

What ails Kashmir? The Sunni idea of ‘azadi’

What ails Kashmir? The Sunni idea of ‘azadi’

The discomfort Kashmiris feel is about which laws self-rule must be under, and Hurriyat rejects a secular constitution

http://www.livemint.com/2010/08/06210254/What-ails-Kashmir-The-Sunni-i.html?h=B

We know what Hurriyat Conference wants: azadi, freedom. But freedom from what? Freedom from Indian rule. Doesn’t an elected Kashmiri, Omar Abdullah, rule from Srinagar?

Yes, but Hurriyat rejects elections. Why? Because ballots have no azadi option.But why can’t the azadi demand be made by democratically elected leaders? Because elections are rigged through the Indian Army. Why is the Indian Army out in Srinagar and not in Surat? Because Kashmiris want azadi.

Let’s try that again.

What do Kashmiris want freedom from? India’s Constitution.

What is offensive about India’s Constitution? It is not Islamic. This is the issue, let us be clear.

The violence in Srinagar isn’t for democratic self-rule because Kashmiris have that. The discomfort Kashmiris feel is about which laws self-rule must be under, and Hurriyat rejects a secular constitution.

Hurriyat deceives the world by using a universal word, azadi, to push a narrow, religious demand. Kashmiris have no confusion about what azadi means: It means Shariah. Friday holidays, amputating thieves’ hands, abolishing interest, prohibiting alcohol (and kite-flying), stoning adulterers, lynching apostates and all the rest of it that comprises the ideal Sunni state.

Also Read Aakar’s previous Lounge columns

Not one Shia gang terrorizes India; terrorism on the subcontinent is a Sunni monopoly.

There is a token Shia among the Hurriyat’s bearded warriors, but it is essentially a Sunni group pursuing Sunni Shariah. Its most important figure is Umar Farooq. He’s called mirwaiz, meaning head of preachers (waiz), but he inherited his title at 17 and actually is no Islamic scholar. He is English-educated, but his base is Srinagar’s sullen neighbourhood of Maisuma, at the front of the stone-pelting. His following is conservative and, since he has little scholarship, he is unable to bend his constituents to his view.

Hurriyat’s modernists are led by Sopore’s 80-year-old Ali Geelani of Jamaat-e-Islami. Jamaat was founded in 1941 by a brilliant man from Maharashtra called Maududi, who invented the structure of the modern Islamic state along the lines of a Communist one. Maududi opposed Jinnah’s tribal raid in Kashmir, which led to the Line of Control, saying jihad could only be prosecuted formally by a Muslim state, and not informally by militias. This wisdom was discarded later, and Hizb al-Mujahideen, starring Syed Salahuddin of cap and beard fame, is a Jamaat unit. Maududi was ecumenical, meaning that he unified the four Sunni groups of thought. He always excluded Shias, as heretics.

The Kashmiri separatist movement is actually inseparable from Sunni fundamentalism. Those on the Hurriyat’s fringes who say they are Gandhians, like Yasin Malik, are carried along by the others in the group so long as the immediate task of resisting India is in common. But the Hurriyat and its aims are ultimately poisonous, even for Muslims.

The Hurriyat Conference’s idea of freedom unfolds from a religious instinct, not a secular sentiment. This instinct is sectarian, and all the pro-azadi groups are Shia-killers. In promoting their hatred, the groups plead for the support of other Muslims by leaning on the name of the Prophet Muhammad.

Hafiz is a title and means memorizer of the Quran. Mohammed Saeed’s Lashkar Tayyaba means army of Tyeb (“the good”), one of the Prophet’s names. This is incorrectly spelled and pronounced by our journalists as “Taiba” or “Toiba”, but Muslims can place the name. Lashkar rejects all law from sources other than the recorded sayings and actions of Muhammad. This is called being Wahhabi, and Wahhabis detest the Shia.

Jaish Muhammad (Muhammad’s army) was founded in a Karachi mosque, and it is linked to the Shia-killing Sipah Sahaba (Army of Muhammad’s First Followers) in Pakistan’s Seraiki-speaking southern Punjab. The group follows a narrow, anti-Shia doctrine developed in Deoband.

Decades of non-interference by the Pakistani state in the business of Kashmiri separatism has led to a loss of internal sovereignty in Pakistan. The state is no longer able to convince its citizens that it should act against these groups. Though their own Shia are regularly butchered, a poll shows that a quarter of Pakistanis think Lashkar Tayyaba does good work. We think Indian Muslims are different from Pakistanis and less susceptible to fanaticism. It is interesting that within Pakistan, the only group openly and violently opposed to Taliban and terrorism are UP and Bihar migrants who form Karachi’s secular Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) party.

So what do the separatist groups want? It is wrong to see them as being only terrorist groups. They operate in an intellectual framework, and there is a higher idea that drives the violence. This is a perfect state with an executive who is pious, male and Sunni. Such a state, where all is done according to the book, will get God to shower his blessings on the citizens, who will all be Sunnis.

There are three types of Sunnis in Kashmir. Unionists, separatists, and neutrals. Unionists, like Omar Abdullah, are secular and likely to be repelled by separatism because they have seen the damage caused by political Islam in Pakistan. They might not be in love with Indians, but they see the beauty of the Indian Constitution. Neutrals, like Mehbooba Mufti, are pragmatic and will accept the Indian Constitution when in power, though they show defiance when out of it. This is fine, because they respond to a Muslim constituency that is uncertain, but isn’t totally alienated. The longer these two groups participate in democracy in Kashmir, the weaker the separatists become. The current violence is a result of this. Given their boycott of politics, the Hurriyat must rally its base by urging them to violence and most of it happens in Maisuma and Sopore. The violence should also clarify the problem in the minds of neutrals: If Kashmiri rule does not solve the azadi problem, what will?

India’s liberals are defensive when debating Kashmir because of our unfulfilled promise on plebiscite. But they shouldn’t be. There is really no option to secular democracy, whether one chooses it through a plebiscite or whether it is imposed. It is a universal idea and there is no second form of government in any culture or religion that works. The Islamic state is utopian and it never arrives. Since it is driven by belief, however, the search becomes quite desperate.

India has a constitution; Pakistan has editions. These are the various Pakistani constitutions: 1935 (secular), 1956 (federal), 1962 (dictatorial), 1973 (parliamentary), 1979 (Islamic), 1999 (presidential), 2008 (parliamentary). Why do they keep changing and searching? Muslims keep trying to hammer in Islamic bits into a set of laws that is actually quite complete. This is the Government of India Act of 1935, gifted to us by the British.

Kashmiris have it, and perhaps at some point they will learn to appreciate its beauty.

Aakar Patel will take a break from his column to write a book. He will return early next year.

Send your feedback to replytoall@livemint.com

MOHAMMAD Ali Jinnah visualised the state of Pakistan as “a homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent”. by Irfan Husain

Irfan Husain

http://www.thepersecution.org/news/11/dawn1008.html

MOHAMMAD Ali Jinnah visualised the state of Pakistan as “a homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent”. by Irfan Husain

Sadly, he did not specify precisely which sect of Muslims he had in mind. Although a Shia himself, he did not have a sectarian bone in his body.

Indeed, he was secular to the core, and this was the philosophy he bequeathed to the state he had created virtually single-handedly. This was a bequest we tore up even before he was laid to rest.

So as we witness the ongoing massacre of Hazara Shias in Balochistan, we need to take a hard look at the monsters Pakistan has spawned over the years. Management gurus teach us that before we can solve a problem, we must first analyse it to gain a full understanding of the underlying causes.

But given the deep state of denial we prefer to stay in, we shy away from making the logical connection between cause and effect. When elaborating on his ‘two-nation theory’, Mr Jinnah was of the view that Muslims could not live side by side with Hindus in a united India as we were a different nation in terms of values and cultural norms.

This notion led to the partition of India in 1947, and even though millions of Muslims did not — or could not — make their way to the new state, Pakistan was born in a cataclysm of blood and fire. Almost immediately, the hard-line vision of Islam, espoused by Maulana Maududi and his Jamaat-i-Islami, became the ideology of large numbers of right-wing intellectuals and clerics.

However, it wasn’t until Zia seized power in 1977 that this literal strand of Islam became the official ideology of the state.

Some of the hard-line Sunni groups like the Sipah-i-Sahaba came into being in Zia’s period, declaring Shias to be ‘wajib-ul qatal’, or deserving of death. Needless to say, these killers were permitted to thrive by Zia.

Step by step, the notion of separateness at the heart of Partition has fostered a feeling of ‘us against them’. Taken to its illogical extreme by hard-line ideologues and their brainwashed followers, this translates into the belief that those not following their particular school of Islamic thought become ‘wajib-ul qatal’.

Massacres and individual murders resulting from rabid intolerance bearing the spurious stamp of religious orthodoxy are too numerous to cite here. But the recent episodes of the cold-blooded slaughter of Hazara Shias in Balochistan should open the eyes of those wishing to negotiate with the terrorists responsible for these acts.

Another hard-line, anti-Shia group, the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, was quick to claim responsibility for these murders, and yet the state has done nothing to bring this organisation to book.

According to a Human Rights Watch press release, “In Balochistan, some Sunni extremist groups are widely viewed as allies of the Pakistani military, its intelligence agencies and the paramilitary Frontier Corps, which are responsible for security there.

Instead of perpetrating abuses in Balochistan against its political opponents, the military should be safeguarding the lives of members of vulnerable communities under attack from extremist groups”.

But it’s not just in Pakistan that Hazara Shias have been targeted: in Afghanistan, thousands have been killed by the Taliban.

Being a visible ethnic group, they are especially vulnerable to an increasingly vicious and violent Sunni majority. In a blog on this newspaper’s website, Murtaza Haider has cited a revealing doctoral thesis by Syed Ejaz Hussain. According to his research, 90 per cent of all those arrested for committing terrorist attacks in Pakistan between 1990 and 2009 were Sunni Deobandis.

And it’s not just Shias who are being targeted, or Christians, Hindus and Ahmedis: as we have seen time and again, suicide attacks against mosques and Sufi shrines have killed thousands of Sunnis as well. While there are a growing number of extremist groups, they are all united in their intolerance, and their contempt for democratic values and common decency.

Despite the evil these killers represent, there are growing voices in Pakistan demanding that the government negotiate with them. A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban was quoted recently as saying his group would talk to the government provided it broke off its relationship with the United States and imposed Sharia law in the country.

For a criminal gang to make such demands is preposterous; but for sane, educated Pakistanis to advocate talks with such people is even worse. Instead of insisting that we lock up these terrorists and try them, we are being asked to treat them as a political entity with valid demands.

If we are to ever defeat the hydra-headed monster we have created, our defence establishment will have to acknowledge its huge error in thinking that it could use these killers to further its agenda in Afghanistan and Kashmir. This has provided them with legitimacy, support and impunity. Unless the Pakistani state repudiates all links with extremism in all its forms, outfits like the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi will continue to murder at will within Pakistan, while the Lashkar-e-Taiba creates mayhem in our neighbourhood.

Quite apart from the collapse of the writ of the state caused by the depredations of these groups, and the innocent lives sacrificed at the altar of misplaced expediency, Pakistan has become a pariah in the international community. Increasingly, the use of terrorism as an instrument of policy is making us a scary country with a powerful death wish.

But while we struggle to cope with the rising tide of extremism, we need to step back and examine how and why we arrived at this abyss.

Clearly, it did not happen overnight. Looking back, we can see that the demand for separate electorates for Muslims in British India over 100 years ago was a major historical fork in the road. By conceding to this demand from a group of Muslim aristocrats as part of their divide-and-rule policy, the British tried to ensure that the two major religious communities would not unite against them.

However, we do not have the luxury of blaming our predicament on past imperial policies. The British are long gone, and the barbarians are poised to capture the state. We still have a choice, but if we don’t act quickly, we risk joining the ranks of failed states like Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan.

irfan.husain@gmail.com

Eye on persecution: Ahmadiyya mosque creed desecrated, community threatened by police

Eye on persecution: Ahmadiyya mosque creed desecrated, community threatened by police

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2011

Eye on persecution: Ahmadiyya mosque creed desecrated, community threatened by police

The demand to erase the Kalima (Islamic creed) from the Ahmadiyya mosque was issued by the Islamist extremist clerics of the area and the local police personal answered the call to “avoid a law and order situation,”

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk

Source/Credit: AMC Persecution report

By Imran Jattala | October 13, 2011

An “unfriendly visit of a government official” was paid to the members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community on the outskirts of Vehari, a city in the Punjab, Pakistan.

The conditions for the members of the Ahmadiyya community have further deteriorated in the area where police personal are now in cahutes with the local Islamist extremists, Ahmadiyya Times has learned.

According to a report issued by the public affairs office of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Pakistan, the police personal took it upon themselves to deface an Ahmadiyya mosque in Chak 245/EB, a few weeks ago.

The demand to erase the Kalima (Islamic creed) from the Ahmadiyya mosque was issued by the Islamist extremist clerics of the area and the local police personal answered the call to “avoid a law and order situation,” it was claimed.

“These mullas are now planning the same for some other Ahmadiyya mosques in the district,” the Ahmadiyya community has learned.

According to the report, an ASI (Assistant Sub-Inspector) Police from the Special Branch visited Chak 363/EB recently.

The police official’s visit was a cause of intimidation and concern for the members of the Ahmadiyya community.

“He inquired as to when the Kalima and the verse were written in the mosque,” it was reported.

Ahmadis told the ASI that the contents were written long ago, when the mosque was first constructed.

The police officer warned Ahmadis that local clerics were holding meetings about the Kalima in their mosque and there is a fear of public uproar.

It is often the practice of the law enforcement agencies in the Punjab that instead of assuring protection and safety, the police official would warn the community to be ready for ‘anything’ as a result.

-- Eye on persecution: Ahmadiyya mosque desecrated, community threatened by police

-- By Imran Jattala

-- By Imran Jattala. Follow on Twitter: @IJattala

Pakistan: Intolerance in the curriculum

Pakistan: Intolerance in the curriculum

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2011

Pakistan: Intolerance in the curriculum

Just a few days ago, 10 Ahmadi children, seven of them girls, were expelled from a school in the Hafizabad area, simply on the basis of their religious identity. The incident took place soon after preachers promoting anti-Ahmadism had visited the town and lashed out with familiar vitriol against a religious group that has been thrust out of the mainstream and then subjected to years of vicious discrimination.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk

Source/Credit: The News | Pakistan

By Kamila Hyat | October 13, 2011

There have been several shocking incidents over the past week or so that go only to highlight the kind of intolerance we are facing in our society and the manner in which this is spreading. Worst of all the spirit of hatred has also seeped into classrooms, and is being used to poison the minds of children.

This process will of course lead to the emergence, even before our watching eyes, of yet another generation persuaded that it is acceptable to discriminate on the basis of beliefs or other factors, or that minority groups are inherently inferior to the majority – deserving no place in mainstream society.

Just a few days ago, 10 Ahmadi children, seven of them girls, were expelled from a school in the Hafizabad area, simply on the basis of their religious identity. The incident took place soon after preachers promoting anti-Ahmadism had visited the town and lashed out with familiar vitriol against a religious group that has been thrust out of the mainstream and then subjected to years of vicious discrimination.

The feeble plea by the principal of the private school, that he did not wish to turn away the children from the school doors but had no choice in the face of threats made by villagers, just goes to show how weak we have become.

No one has answered the question of the distraught father of three of the girls driven away from school who asks how his daughters will now receive an education. Beyond the representatives of the Ahmadi community in Rabwah and some human rights groups, no one has spoken out in their support.

The issue has not been discussed by furious media anchors, even though the Constitution of our land lays down in unequivocal terms that every citizen has a right to education and cannot be denied this under any circumstances.

Such silence is perhaps the most dangerous element of all. The streets and other public places have been left to bigots, such as those who have been on the streets demanding the immediate release of Mumtaz Qadri, the man sentenced to death for the murder of Salmaan Taseer.

Precisely the same silence prevailed after yet another horrendous incident at a school a few weeks ago when an eighth-grade Christian girl was turned out of a POF-run school in the town of Havelian after making a minor spelling mistake in an Urdu paper.

Her teacher interpreted the mistake as an act of blasphemy, publicised the matter – which essentially revolved around one dot in a paragraph about a ‘naat’ – and as clerics staged protests the powerful POF management chose not only to expel the girl, but also to transfer her mother, a nurse at a hospital.

Such incidents have occurred elsewhere too. Ahmadi children have been punished in schools, their faith ridiculed and admission denied simply on the basis of their religious beliefs. Amidst all this, we talk of ‘the silent majority’. But do we really know what people believe and think?

It is true that many, indeed most, do not agree with the rabid views of the extremists. We would like to believe this is true. But popular thinking has been warped over the years by all kinds of factors that began essentially with the deliberate and evil distortions initiated in the early 1980s when our society first began its most serious transformation into an uglier, nastier place.

Discrimination is not based on religious beliefs alone. At an elite Lahore private school, a child from a different ethnic background was mocked and subjected to continuous ridicule for his appearance. It seems that the school management didn’t do very much to check this behaviour or persuade the majority of students who had resorted to uncivilised conduct towards the student to correct their ways.

Racism and bigotry of course need to be stopped using some degree of force within an environment in which the two have spread quite far and grown deep roots. African students based in colleges in Lahore and other cities will no doubt testify to the kind of treatment they face, solely on the basis of their skin colour.

One question that we all need to ask is why the government sits by as a silent spectator while all this happens. It needs to play a far more proactive role. We stand where we are today as a result of carefully thought out behaviours and policies put in place in the past. They succeeded in twisting minds and creating an atmosphere in which hatred, distrust and intolerence could blossom.

The need now is to begin an immediate reversal of this process. In the first place, the relevant authorities need to take notice of the instances of expulsion from schools on the basis of open and undisguised discrimination; this would put in place a good example of what should be done and where right separates from wrong, like oil from water.

There is no time to lose. It is quite obvious that things are growing worse and worse virtually by the day. Our only hope for the future lies in nurturing a generation that is able to think more openly and adopt an approach which is different to the destructive one that has become a normal part of our society today.

The provision that all citizens are equal needs to be turned into reality and not just a clause in a document that fewer and fewer people seem to be very bothered about.

How do we begin this? Schools are a good place to start. Government schools are perhaps the best, given the number of children attending them and the control the administration should have over them. Through curriculums and training for teachers, both children and those entrusted with the delicate task of educating them need to learn to think differently.

This is not an easy task of course. But it has been done elsewhere; Ireland, where Protestants and Catholics were deeply divided in the north for so many years, is one example where attempts towards greater harmony through schools have met with some success.

There are other examples in the world. We need to emulate them and move towards building a place where people are ready to speak out for what is right and refuse to allow extremist elements – who attempt to validate their intolerant ways by citing a distorted version of religion – to dictate how we live and what we do.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor. Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com

Read original post here: Pakistan: Intolerance in the curriculum

An Ahmadi Muslim's Plea: Be My Voice

An Ahmadi Muslim's Plea: Be My Voice

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2011

An Ahmadi Muslim's Plea: Be My Voice

Unlike the general blasphemy laws, however, the specific anti-Ahmadi Muslim laws of Pakistan have not found even this much of luck. They have been conveniently forced out of the discussion and few are aware of the existence and continuous abuse of these draconian laws.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk

Source/Credit: The Huffington Post

By Kashif N. Chaudhry | October 10, 2011

Religious freedom (or the lack thereof) in Pakistan cannot be emphasized enough. Due to the preposterous demeanor of Pakistan's self-righteous right-wing, many in the world today are aware of Pakistan's notorious blasphemy problem. Much frustration has been expressed on liberal Pakistani blogs and through international media outlets -- especially after the heartless murders of Governor Salmaan Taseer and Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti -- on the abuse of these laws. Even though nothing is expected to change anytime soon, at least the first vital step toward that goal is being taken: raising awareness.

Unlike the general blasphemy laws, however, the specific anti-Ahmadi Muslim laws of Pakistan have not found even this much of luck. They have been conveniently forced out of the discussion and few are aware of the existence and continuous abuse of these draconian laws. The silence of the liberal Pakistani blogosphere and the international media in this regard is baffling.

So who are the Ahmadi Muslims and what are these laws?

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community was founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), who claimed to be the long-awaited messiah. Ahmad single-handedly waged a struggle to bring about a renaissance of Islam. He declared that in this age the doctrine of violent jihad was against the teachings of Islam, a declaration met with edicts of heresy. Ahmad urged Muslims to emulate Prophet Muhammad's example. Accordingly, Ahmadi Muslims champion a complete separation of mosque and state, promote universal human rights and interfaith dialogue and practice nonviolence and non-retaliation amid brutal persecution in parts of the world. There are more than 600,000 Ahmadi Muslims living in Pakistan with tens of millions in 200 countries.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA -- the oldest Islamic-American organization -- has helped foster the Islamic ideals of peace and loyalty to nation through its Muslims for Peace and Muslims for Loyalty campaigns, respectively. It recently launched the nationwide Muslims for Life blood drive campaign to commemorate 9/11 and demonstrate Islam's emphasis on sanctity of life. The Community's charity organization, Humanity First, has been at the forefront of disaster relief both nationally and worldwide. Help, for instance, continues to be dispensed to the victims of Hurricane Katrina to date. Ahmadi Muslims have a central leadership, the Khalifa.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Muslim clerics perceived the rapid spread of the Community in its early days as a threat. Having failed to defeat them through reason and discourse, they took to sticks and stones -- literally.

After the formation of Pakistan, anti-Ahmadi Muslim groups organized to conspire and instigate massive nationwide riots. Friday sermons became an opportunity to spew venom against the Ahmadi Muslims. They were declared "apostates" and "worthy of being killed." Extremist right-wing influence ushered in violent street protests. The State succumbed to their pressure tactics and declared the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community to be non-Muslim in 1974. In April of 1984, Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq issued Ordinance XX. Zia was a military dictator who had taken over the country after a coup d'état in 1977. To legitimize his autocracy, he assumed de facto leadership of Pakistan's extremist cause. Because the hatred and violence had failed to halt the progress of the Ahmadi Muslims, he decided to use force.

Under the new laws, Ahmadi Muslims were arrested for using Islamic terminology. For example, saying the Salaam (greeting of peace) meant imprisonment. Thousands of Ahmadi Muslims filled jails across the country. On one side of prison sat rapists and murderers and on the other sat those who invoked peace on a passerby. The right-wing went on to demand the death penalty. Zia conceded and introduced the death penalty for propagation of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and distribution of Ahmadi Muslim literature.

These barbaric anti-Ahmadi Muslim laws exist to date. Hundreds of Ahmadi Muslims remain behind bars in Pakistan -- and hundreds have been killed.

These vicious laws are a threat to international religious freedom. They continue to embolden religious extremists in other countries like Bangladesh and Indonesia where similar demands to outlaw the peaceful Ahmadi Muslims have been put before the governments. In the case of the latter, these demands have been accepted in part, setting in a fresh wave of violence (caution: graphic). Because the hatred against the Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan was promoted and not checked by the State, it continues to be exported as far out as the U.K.

Pakistani and International media make no mention of this dangerous state-sanctioned violation of religious freedom and basic human rights. Despite the fact that Pakistan's anti-Ahmadi Muslim laws are a blatant breach of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there has been no outcry from the United Nations either.

United States' foreign policy recognizes religious freedom worldwide as one of its goals. While the persecution of Ahmadi Muslims gained momentum under Zia, the United States -- a close ally -- was busy funding his government and supporting the Afghan revolution. The plight of the Ahmadi Muslims went unnoticed. Three decades later, it is very encouraging that the U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom Report 2010 on Pakistan takes serious exception to Pakistan's anti-Ahmadi Muslim laws. Much, however, needs to be done to effect a change on ground. I am hopeful that as a primary supporter of international religious freedom, the U.S. will continue to play a positive role to this end.

Meanwhile, please join me in doing the least we can do: take that first step toward change: raise awareness.

Follow Kashif N. Chaudhry on Twitter: www.twitter.com/KashifMD

Read original post here: An Ahmadi Muslim's Plea: Be My Voice