Race Against Racism

ARUNACHAL MLA'S SON BEATEN TO DEATH IN DELHI - the headline screamed.. In yet another incidence of racism against north-East students, a young first year college student was beaten to death by shopkeepers in Delhi after an altercation sparked by their taunts on his hairstyle!!

What is happening to our country?? Are we really defined by this bunch of hooligans who hurl racist remarks on people who look different from us and molest girls in public?? Where is the thinking Indian hiding?? Don't we realize the dangers of such segmentation? Already our country has been divided into three pieces due to the never ending religious fights.. do we want to break it up again based on color and language?

Nido Tania, the unfortunate lad who lost his life today happens to be the son of an MLA from Arunachal hence the media highlight. How about the racism that an average person from the North-East has to deal with in his own country just because he looks different and has a better sense of style than the boorish thugs in Delhi's streets!

When he complained, he was abused and in anger he broke the shelf of the shop. He was then beaten up and handed to the police. After he paid an amount of 10,000 rupees to the police he was released and left back at the shop. There he was beaten up again mercilessly till he managed to run away to a friend's house. In the morning, he was no more...

Nido Tania, the unfortunate victim of racism in his own country!

It's a shame that even in the 21st century we can't accept people different from us as our own. Earlier it was the Muslim youth who had targeted North-East students in Bangalore and Pune as a reaction to the Rohingya killings in Maynamar and now this attack on an innocent student in Delhi!

On one hand we fight China stating Arunachal as our own state and on the other we can't even protect people from that state in our own capital city!! What a shame!! Our ancients never differentiated on the basis of color and features. The Kurma Puran states - In Bharatvarsh, men and women display different colors, worship various gods and perform many different duties.

Shri Krishna, the epitome of godhead was dark like a monsoon cloud and so was Shri Rama who forms the spearhead of Hindu Nationalist parties. King Dashrath's three queens were from Afghanistan, U.P. and Maharashtra while Arjun had married Subhadra from Gujarat and Chitrangada, the daughter of the king of Manipura (Orissa). There was no discrimination in their minds then why are we so narrow-minded??

Our scriptures record a plural society since time immemorial proving that we have always been a pot-pourri of different colors, cultures and appearances. The races differ in appearance but NOT in genetic parameters. Our present diversity evolved as waves of  initial settlers moved both towards North as well as South of the country, all the time Intermixing and Migrating to OTHER countries. 

Over the eons, Dravidian lineages have mixed with Indo-Europeans, Austro-Asiatics have mingled with Dravidians, and bridge populations in central India are blends of Dravidian, Indo-European and Tibeto-Burman groups. Read this post to know how closely we all are linked irrespective of our external features: Genetics of the Wandering Indian.

 

Macrohaplogroup M, a cluster of Proto-Asian maternal lineages, represents more than 60% of Indian MtDNA. Now, observe the similarities for this Haplogroup found in different populations of the country:

M2 - Most common in Bengal and Tamil Nadu (East and South)

M3 - Rajasthan and Karnataka (West and South-west)

M6 - Kashmir and Assam (North and East)

M18 - Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh (West and South-central)

M25 - Punjab and Kerala!! (North and South)

The study has shown some Hindu caste groups to be genetically closer to Muslims in the same geographical region THAN to their own caste cousins elsewhere in India showing that our current RELIGIOUS differences are merely superficial and people in a specific region are more or less the same.  

 

The Genetic Map thus obtained, shows a remarkable amount of heterogeneity within different Indian groups while bringing out even more remarkable RELATEDNESS between groups till now considered to be at the opposite ends of the spectrum. The differences in our appearance are broadly a result of the ADAPTATION to local weather conditions over thousands of years. 

The Natural Selection Hypothesis suggests that lighter skin color evolved to optimize Vitamin D production in extreme northern and southern latitudes. Gradually, as we started moving out of Africa, some groups migrated and settled into cooler climates of Asia and Europe, and the selectivity for Melanin production decreased and mutations appeared, making the skin tone lighter. North or South of 46 degrees latitude, the dark-skin could not produce enough Vitamin D while light-skin could hence it thrived! 

Another example of such adaptation is the smaller extremities observed in the Mountain-dwelling races. This adaptation is summed up in Allen's Law of Genetics which states that the protruding parts of a warm-blooded animal's body (such as the tail, ears, and limbs), are SHORTER in animals of same species from colder regions.

In other words, people living in COOLER areas have smaller bodies and flatter features to conserve the precious body heat compared to those living in WARMER climates. The same is quite evident in the populations dwelling in our Himalayan states.

Mountain dwellers show Allen's rule of Genetics

This doesn't make one race SUPERIOR to the other in any way except for the ability to SURVIVE in a particular environment!! All our apparent differences are Nature's GIFTS to ensure survival in the respective climates we are born in and do NOT in any way make us different from each other from inside.

Yet, we see Kashmiris and Punjabis looking down upon the rest of the country because they are better looking; Tamil Brahmins looking down upon other Tamilians as well as the rest of the country as inferior to them in intellect; Delhiites passing racial remarks on anyone who looks even a little Mongoloid; Reddys and Nairs don't like Tam-Brahms; Marathis crack jokes on Sardars; Sardars crack jokes on Marwaris/Baniyas; Gujaratis crack jokes on Sindhis and the list goes on!!

As long as this continues as harmless banter it is fine but the moment it starts hurting another person we should stop and think. Is having fun at someone's expense more important than another person's life?? Had those shopkeepers in Lajpat Nagar thought of this, perhaps a life could have been saved!!

I pray and wish that our countrymen move on from this parochial mindset and learn to accept everyone else as their own countrymen who we have to get along with isnpite our apparent differences. Ending this post with a prayer to the Motherland and a Hope for Peace..

 

Oh! Mother, Let me be blessed on the sacred shore of the Sea,

Where the World has gathered to pay reverence to Thee,

With outstretched hands we bow to Divinity,

With Supreme felicity Mother, We worship Thee..

No-one knows who invoked them all,

Who have gathered like currents of mighty rivers,

That dissolve themselves in the Divine Ocean,

Where Aryas-Dravids-Mongols-Pathans detach their Individuality.

Where our heart-strings play an endless tune of Omkar, 

In search of the Supreme, we've penanced for ages,

And oblated our Ego, in the Holy fire,

Throwing away differences, We emerge into Universality.

Come Aryas, Non-Aryas; Hindus and Muslims,

Come Englishmen; Come Christians and Buddhists,

Purify your hearts, Hold hands of the Out-castes.

For the Coronation of our Mother, by this sacred shore of the Sea. 

Jai Hind!

Kenya - Terror spreads Tentacles

Religious terrorism has again raised its ugly head and this time, has struck bang in the middle of a bustling city in East Africa. As the toll of Indians dying in this Kenyan replay of 26/11 reaches 3, the total number of dead has climbed to 68 amongst whom are many of Indian origin as well!

Westgate Mall, Nairobi

The tragedy is somehow more personal as it brought back memories from the time I had stayed in Nairobi in a service apartment right next to the Westgate mall. It also brought back terrible memories of being holed up inside the house for three days when Mumbai was under a similar attack from Pakistani terrorists!! Kenya has a sizeable Indian population and the images captured from this incident could very well have belonged to any Indian metro!

This is how the incident took shape - Masked gunmen stormed into a crowded mall in Nairobi on Saturday and shot dead at least 68 people and wounded more than 175 in one of the most chilling terrorist attacks in East Africa.

The mall, called Westgate, is an impressive five-story building where Kenyans shop for expensive stuff and is also popular with expatriates. A cooking competition was taking place at the mall at the time, and hosting the contest and among the dead was Ruhila Adatia-Sood, a Nairobi local who was a popular TV and radio presenter.

Sood was six months pregnant and posing happily for Instagram photos in the minutes before the attack. One of these showed her with the popular Indian Radio-Africa journalist Kamal Kaur. Kaur, who was with her own two young children, said the attackers threw a grenade at the crowd before shooting. One bullet narrowly missed her son before ricocheting off a wall and killing another child next to her.

Several witnesses said the attackers had shouted for Muslims to run away while they picked off other shoppers, executing them one by one.  

Parents hurled their bodies over their children, people jumped into ventilation shafts to save themselves, and shoppers huddled behind the plastic mannequins of designer clothing stores as two squads of gunmen moved through the mall, shooting shoppers in the head. Hours later, the mall’s gleaming floors were smeared with blood as police officers dashed through the corpse-strewn corridors, trying to find the assailants. 

 

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/kenya-mall-attack-third-indian-found-killed/1/311457

"Al Shabab", an Islamist militant group based in Somalia, took responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for Kenya’s military operations in Somalia against the group, which is al Qaeda's proxy in Somalia.

The Shabab, used to control large parts of Somalia, imposing a harsh and often brutal version of Islam in their territory. They have beheaded civilians and buried teenage girls up to their necks in sand and stoned them to death!! But in the past two years, the African Union forces, including the Kenyans, have pushed the Shabab out of most of their strongholds. The worry now, current and former American officials said that this attack could be the start of a comeback. 

Until the Westgate attack, the group made no effort to spare Muslim civilians, hitting packed restaurants, bus stations and a government building where hundreds of students were awaiting test results. And until his death in 2011, Osama bin Laden refused to allow Shabab into the Al Qaeda network, according to letters retrieved from his safehouse in Pakistan.

In a letter to Shabab in 2010, bin Laden politely advised the Somali-based fighters to review their operations "in order to minimize the toll to Muslims." Shabab did not get the green light to join Al Qaeda until February 2012, almost a year after bin Laden's death. In an email exchange this week with The Associated Press, it made its intentions clear: "The Mujahideen carried out a meticulous vetting process at the mall and have taken every possible precaution to separate the Muslims from the Kuffar before carrying out their attack."

In the bizarre game of life or death, they killed those who failed to name the Prophet Muhammed’s mother and spared those who could!! 

A 14-year-old boy saved himself by jumping off the mall's roof, after learning from friends inside that they were quizzed on names of the Prophet Muhammad's relatives. A Jewish man scribbled a Quranic scripture on his hand to memorize, after hearing the terrorists were asking captives to recite specific verses. As the gunmen opened fire with assault rifles, Westgate was plunged into mayhem and carnage. People ran out screaming, and victims soaked in their own blood were wheeled out in shopping carts. They showed no mercy to even pregnant women and slaughtered a young couple just two weeks before their first child was to be born along with the yet-to-be-born baby!

Time and again religious fundamentalism hits unsuspecting innocent people all over the globe. Yet, there is a reluctance among people to label it as RELIGIOUS terrorism and instead just use the latter term. I find it surprising that even in today's age of information and education, people are STILL unwilling to recognize this violence for what it is!

The attack has come at a time when several violent Islamist groups all espousing an anti-Western, anti-Christian creed are striking at state authority and international interests in many countries in Africa. The three Indians who lost their lives - Sudharshan B. Nagaraj from Bangalore, Sridhar Natarajan from Tamil Nadu and the 8 year old Paramshu Jain were all victims of a travesty that has NO PLACE in a civilized world!

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/kenya-mall-attack-third-indian-found-killed/1/311457.html

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/kenya-mall-attack-third-indian-found-killed/1/311457.html

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/kenya-mall-attack-third-indian-found-killed/1/311457.html,

The ripples from the attack reached as far as Trinidad, with a research economist called Ravindra Ramrattan named among the dead. The winner of a presidential gold medal in Trinidad for his academic prowess, Ramrattan, succumbed to the bullets of terrorists. The most high profile victim, and among the first to be named, was Kofi Awoonor, a Ghanaian poet and academic, and former diplomat. The Kenyan president's nephew was also one of the casualties in the dastardly attack!

At least 175 people were wounded or injured in the attack, including 11 Kenyan soldiers, and about 1,000 were rescued. Bodies were still sprawled on the mall’s front steps hours afterward, and woozy shoppers continued to emerge from the stores where they had been hiding to save their lives.

 

 

Whether one accepts it or not, RELIGIOUS TERRORISM is a reality and no one can just wish it away. And it's not limited to one religion alone; every religion in the world has practiced it at some point in its history. 

The Romans persecuted early Christians; Christians prosecuted Jews; Invading Muslims destroyed Hindu temples and killed Hindus/Sikhs/Buddhists/Jains in thouands while Buddhists in Myanmar are today persecuting the Rohingya muslims!!

All over the world there is growing intolerance for others' religion and ethnicity. Post 9/11, the suspicion with which every BROWN man or woman was seen in the US was scary to say the least! For a while it seemed only White Christians were above suspicion in the world! Many Sikhs faced brutality in their mistaken identity of being an Arab (because of their turbans) in US as well as UK.

More recently, when an American girl of Indian origin won the Miss America title, there were racial slurs calling her an Arab and a terrorist!!

And the grass isn't greener on the other side of this fence! The hatred of America and the 'West' has become so visceral in the Muslim world that their is complete REFUSAL to accept any responsibility for what's happening in the name of Islam! Any news that comes out of torture or destruction by Jihadi forces is immediately termed as American propaganda without any attempt to self-analyze what's going wrong with the Muslim youth.

Worst still, it may even be seen as justified on the premise that US has killed so many innocent civilians in its drone attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

But people forget that whoever is responsible, it is the INNOCENTS who die! You can't justify your vendetta of killing innocents based on a grievance cause by twisted political agendas. Let religion and politics be separate for the sake of our future! Just two days back, there was a blast in a historical Church in Pakistan which took the life of 78 people who were targeted by Islamic terrorists!

Victims of Peshawar's Church blast

 

This FUNDAMENTALISM should be recognized as a genuine problem if we REALLY wish to find a solution to it. Denying its existence would be behaving like the proverbial pigeon who closes its eyes and hopes the cat would disappear! It is disappointing that today's educated youth instead of following the true principles of religion choose to follow the extremist fanaticism that many believe will open the gates of heaven for them in the after-life.

If you can't even love your fellow beings and live your life spreading vitriol in this world, what guarantee do you have of even REACHING Heaven in the first place, let alone being happy there! 

The only solution it seems in current circumstances is to give less importance to RELIGION and more to HUMANITY! Denial WILL NOT give us Safety. Hoping for an open debate on this issue so that we can save more innocents in the future from such meaningless violence in the name of religion!

Praying for the souls of the slain Indians and people of other nationalities

May their souls Rest in peace..

Amen!

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/kenya-mall-attack-third-indian-found-killed/1/311457.h

Bamiyan-Burma-Bodhgaya-Bombay

In the post titled {From Assam to Azad Maidan}, I had discussed the reasons behind the massive protests in Mumbai against alleged atrocities on Muslims in Assam and Myanmar. I had shared in the above mentioned post how many doctored images were shared online to inflame passions and rouse Muslims to come out on the streets and most of the trouble makers were believed to be illegal Bangladeshis. 

In this post, we shall look at another angle of this problem of illegal immigrants in our neighboring country which is posing security problems for us as well. With the opening of media in Myanmar and removal of Army from the streets, more religious factions have started to exert their opinion. Whether they are instigated by some political faction or not remains to be seen but what is increasingly evident is the growing intolerance for Muslim minorities amongst certain Buddhists. I have visited the country many time but never seen aggression in the Buddhists so this comes as a surprise to me as well.

Me in Myanmar

It appears that small provocations and arguments have developed into full scale acts of arson and butchery with a devastating effect on the Human rights conditions. Perhaps the biggest incident that sparked the debate was in March 2013, when a Buddhist monk was attacked in the town of Meiktila, and later succumbed to his injuries in the hospital. 

What followed was a brutal hacking of 20 boys just outside the town center. This is not an isolated incident; there have been reports of mass killings and burnings of the minority population combined with a growing xenophobia amongst the Buddhist majority targeted against the Muslim community. But what has triggered this sudden persecution?

The same illegal immigrants that cross over to Indian territory of Assam are involved in the Myanmar scenario as well. The Rohingyas are referred to as ‘Bengals’ by the Burmese which clearly refers to their land of origin. Burmese have never really acknowledged these migrants as their own despite them being in the country since colonial times. The divide is not just ethnic but also political as the two communities supported different colonial powers at the time of the World War.

At the helm of the anti-Rohingya affairs is a seemingly calm 45 year old monk, Ashin Wirathu, who is based in a monastery at Mandalay. He is extremely vocal of his hatred for the community and accuses Muslim men of enticing Buddhist women into marriages and then imprisoning and turning them into sex slaves. Sounds eerily similar to what happens regularly to the minorities in Pakistan and even the 'Love-jihad' cases in India.

Ashin Wirathu - Two faces of the same coin

The reason for this sentiment perhaps is the history of Islam and its spread throughout the Asian continent. While Muslim preachers repeatedly stress that Islam is NOT the religion of force, the long history of brutal subjugation of the natives in India begs to differ. Medieval chronicles are full of accounts of persecution of Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs by invading foreigners who, irrespective of their nationalities, rode high on their own interpretation of what Islamic Jihad meant. 

Right from Mahmud Ghazni who attacked India multiple times to Nadir Shah who in his maiden attack massacred 10,000 Delhi residents, to the Mughals like Jahangir and Aurangzeb, intolerance and butchery have been hallmarks of the spread of Islam in the sub-continent.

It can be argued that any invading army would have done the same to its conquered territories; but what can not be easily justified is the zeal to wipe out the culture and traditions of the lands that were attacked. The breaking of temples and construction of mosques on their foundation has been well documented throughout the sub-continentaghay Barlas, known in the West as Tamerlane or "Timur the lame" himself recorded the invasions in his memoirs, collectively known as Tuzk-i-Timuri. It gives details of how villages, towns and entire cities were rid of their Hindu male population through systematic mass slaughters and genocide and their women and children forcefully converted en masse to Islam from Hinduism. In his own words, "Excepting the quarter of the saiyids, the 'ulama and the other Musalmans [sic], the whole city was sacked".

In recent times too, we have seen fanatics in the form of Taliban who did not hesitate to destroy their world famous National treasure of Bamiyan Buddhas in the name of destroying idolatory. The image that comes across to a non-Muslim is that of an insensitive, intolerant religion spread by the sword that wipes out the history and culture of any nation that it spreads to.

Bamiyan Buddha before destruction

 Bamiyan Buddhas today..

With this background, let us see the situation that is developing in Myanmar. Ashin Wirathu urges Buddhists all over the country to boycott Muslim businesses and gives an allegory to explain his concern – ‘When you let a seed grow in a pagoda, it seems so small at first. But you know you must cut it before it grows and turns into a tree and destroys the building.... You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog!’

But the question is who decides the definition of insanity?? The studied silence of Aung San Suu Kyi regarding these killings is also being questioned by some.

While the history of the spread of Islam is littered with bloodshed and subjugation, is it correct for us to become the perpetrators of these same crimes for revenge? This  is the question we all need to ask ourselves today. Should we behave the same way that our ancestors' subjugators did or can we find a better way to deal with the situation. 

Whatever the provocation, we know from India's own experiences that an issue this complicated can never be resolved through mindless violence and diplomatic negotiations are any day more productive than the use of force. Physical violence would only serve to give a justified reason for the growth of terrorism in coming generations, which is something no one wants.

Also, it may give rise to a backlash against Buddhists in other parts of the world, especially India and the 2013 attack on the Mahabodhi Temple in Gaya, Bihar could be a case in point! The Rohingya refugees coming to India can also become a huge demographic problem in the future.

The Indian Mujahidin Twitter Account that was suspended

We hope the emerging democracy of Myanmar does not run into the brick wall of intolerance like Pakistan and Afghanistan. We have to rise above the follies of the past generations in order to have a better tomorrow for the generations ahead. The only way forward for this world to exist peacefully is to embrace TRUE SECULARISM by stopping minority appeasement while at the same time safeguarding against majority totalitarianism.

As Mahatma Gandhi had once famously observed – An eye for an eye, only makes the world blind.

Jai Hind!

Rumble in Afghanistan

America is withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and India is worried.

The recent visit of U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry has done little to assuage the fears of Indian authorities and quite justifiably so, since the US pullout will leave the stage open for the resurgence of Taliban leading to another civil war between the elected Hamid Karzai government and the Pakistan backed terrorists.

Most political analysts don’t find the fears exaggerated considering the latest developments regarding Taliban. What was earlier a banned military outfit composed of fanatical, brain-washed mercenaries, has now opened a POLITICAL OFFICE (!) in Doha, Qatar and have even labelled it as an outpost of the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’!!

To add fuel to fire, after they pusted them in 2001, the US has today agreed to meet them for talks putting the Afghan Govt in a predicament! After President Karzai expressed displeasure, the Americans have asked the Taliban to take down the flag and the plaque as a pre-condition to talks.

Someone has truly said - Life is full of ironies. With Taliban, the Americans have come a full circle.

• They armed the tribals in Afghanistan and created a proxy army to fight for them when the Russians seemed to be gaining influence there. 
• When Russia collapsed, the same armed militia turned against its own creator culminating in the tragic incident of 9/11.
• US vowed to take revenge and attacked with all its might to push Taliban out of Afghanistan and finally managed to kill its leader Osama-bin-laden.
• Yet, all these efforts just pushed Taliban underground and gave them an opportunity to find new sponsors besides of course the old allies Pakistan.
• And now, the US is gonna sit and negotiate with them in a round-table conference!

William Dalrymple, the bestselling writer and acclaimed British historian, ominously writes in his essay {A Deadly Triangle: Afghanistan, Pakistan and India} that in reality, the US, UK and NATO are playing little more than bit-parts and would pretty soon exit from the scene. 

At its heart, the conflict will remain entrenched between the nefarious policies followed by Pakistan and its paranoia about getting trapped in a pincer hook if India has influence over Afghanistan. The problem gets compounded because the ethnic races of Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially the Pashtuns, overlap to a considerable degree.

Pashtun/pathan distribution across Afghanistan-Pakistan

 

While President Karzai is pro-India and belongs to the dominant Pashtun clan, there are ethnic inequalities within the Afghan people. Taliban is formed of predominantly PASHTUN tribes and the Karzai government is seen as being more biased towards the other ethnicities of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. According to Dalrymple, 70 % of Afghan army officers today are Tajiks and the Pashtuns who form 40 % of the population are not very happy with the condition even if they do not express it openly.

India is doing a lot of good work in Afghanistan - building hospitals, roads, the Parliament, even to the extent of developing a rail route between Iran and Afghanistan so that its dependency on Pakistan can go down. Needless to say, Pakistan would not take this lying down and we can expect fireworks sooner or later. The newly elected Nawaz Sharif Govt. too will not leave any stone unturned in turning the situation in its favour.

Let’s hope Indian Govt, for once can show some mettle while dealing with its rogue neighbors and help establish the democratic government in Afghanistan firmly. Only then, the region would be able to stem this tide of failing states and move towards peace and prosperity.

Jai Hind!