Daylight in China will spell the break-up of PRC: CPM chinatern jaalra-s to note.
I am posting this on this CPM blog because CPM is part of china-tern and consists of China patriots. Exposing PRC to the external world in the wake of an earthquake devastation may spell the beginning of the end -- the break-up of PRC as it happened with the erstwhile Soviet Union. Karats may have nowhere to go for their pseudo-commie ideology tutorials.
kalyan
From Russia with love
New York Times
Posted online: Monday, May 26, 2008 at 0246 hrs IST
Two decades ago, Mikhail Gorbachev’s campaign to inject some daylight into Soviet society doubled back on him like a heat-seeking missile.
Now China’s leaders are playing with the same volatile political chemistry as they allow the world an unexpectedly vivid look at the earthquake devastation in the nation’s southwest regions. The rulers of cyclone-battered Myanmar, by contrast, are limiting access and even aid to the stricken delta region.
“When you start opening up and loosen controls, it becomes a slippery slope,” said Jack F. Matlock Jr., the American ambassador to Moscow during much of the Gorbachev period, as he watched the events in China. “You quickly become a target for everyone and before long, people go after the whole system.”
China has taken a different reform path from Russia, offering its people robust economic growth, in exchange for continued one-party rule. Playing up the response to the earthquake while restricting coverage of repression in Tibet, could prove a shrewd move, rather than one that cascades into instability.
Still, it is worth recalling a time when a little openness flew out of control.
As a correspondent and bureau chief for The New York Times in Moscow in the late 1980s, I had a ringside seat to observe the slow disintegration of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. The collapse of the Soviet empire and dissolution of the Communist Party were not exactly what he had in mind when he took power in 1985 and launched his twin policies of glasnost (greater openness) and perestroika (political reform).
But he had no inkling of where his initiatives were headed when, shortly after taking office, he broke new ground for a Kremlin leader by mingling with citizens in Leningrad and giving unscripted interviews.
In those early days of glasnost, it was hard to tell whether the changes were purely superficial or the start of something more profound.
One day in late 1985, Allen Ginsberg, the American beat poet, unexpectedly turned up at the Moscow bureau of The Times, bearing a package from Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the Soviet poet. It was the text of a speech that Yevtushenko had given to the Writer’s Union.
Serge Schmemann, my colleague, described it in a front-page story: “The poet’s strong words against distortion of history, against censorship, self-flattery, silence and privilege in the world of letters were strikingly bold.”
As glasnost gathered force in the years that followed, it ripped away the layers of deceit that were the foundation of the Soviet state.
The explosion of a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in April 1986 shattered the Kremlin’s credibility — and gave a powerful impetus to glasnost. The Kremlin seemed paralysed by the accident. The first government announcement — an innocuous 44 words — came more than a day after the reactor meltdown, and hours after Sweden detected alarming levels of radiation in its air, 800 miles north of Chernobyl.
Gorbachev, embarrassed by the debacle, redoubled his efforts to make the government and party more transparent.
The truth about Stalin’s brutality, and even Lenin’s, was exposed. Newspapers and journals wrote honestly for the first time about government corruption and mismanagement. Artists, playwrights, filmmakers and writers looked unsparingly at the abuses of the Soviet system.
Unflinching coverage of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in Ogonyok, a spirited magazine, gave Russians their first glimpse of a ruinous conflict. It was not long before opposition to the war began to grow.
A striking moment of glasnost came with the killer earthquake in Armenia in December 1988. Faced with the deaths of tens of thousands of Soviet citizens, and desperate for outside aid, the Kremlin lifted restrictions on travel to Armenia. Foreign relief flights, including American military planes carrying food, water and medical supplies, were welcomed in Yerevan, the Armenian capital. Sounds a lot like China today.
Gorbachev wasn’t prepared for the assault of long-repressed political forces let loose by his reforms. The most potent was nationalism in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia; Armenia and Georgia; and throughout Eastern Europe.
Once uncorked, nationalism essentially overwhelmed Gorbachev. Within months, of the 1991 coup attempt, the Soviet Union dissolved and Mr. Gorbachev was out of work.
Russia today, despite Vladimir Putin autocratic ways, enjoys a degree of freedom inconceivable at the height of Communist rule. Glasnost helped make it that way.
China’s leaders may not take comfort in that thought.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/314596.html
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
CPM says: "...they will make them all Radharani" -- Mahasweta Devi
CPM says: "...they will make them all Radharani" -- Mahasweta Devi
CPI-M violence continues in Nandigram: Mahasweta Devi
Saturday, 24.05.2008, 12:39pm (GMT)
Kozhikode, May 24 West Bengal's ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) continues to unleash violence in Nandigram even after they lost local bodies elections in the trouble-torn region last week, Bengali novelist and rights activist Mahasweta Devi has said.
"They are going around burning houses and raping women," she said.
Mahasweta Devi was delivering the inaugural address at a meeting of the Adhinivesha Prathirodha Samiti (Committee against the invasion of imperialists) here Saturday.
Nandigram, about 150 km from Kolkata in East Midnapore district, flared up in January last year over land acquisition plans for a proposed special economic zone (SEZ). At least 35 people were killed in 2007 in intermittent violence with activists of the CPI-M, which leads the state's ruling coalition, and opposition Trinamool Congress-backed farmers fighting pitched battles.
"The CPI-M cadres are saying it is their duty. They are threatening women who are protesting against the project. They say that they will make them all Radharani," Mahasweta Devi said. Radharani Ari, a villager from Nandigram, was raped allegedly by CPI-M activists.
Mahasweta Devi said the rural West Bengal badly needs development. "Indoctrination will not end people's misery. Now, crores of rupees are spent through panchayats, but not a single road has been constructed in West Bengal by panchayats."
Commenting on the CPI-M-led government in Kerala, she said it should listen to people.
Two months ago, the writer had addressed two open letters to Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan on the plight of the landless in the state.
"Achuthanandan thinks I write for vested interests. I only fight to bring basic human values," she said.
http://www.insidekerala.com/n/article/MainNews/17781/
CPI-M violence continues in Nandigram: Mahasweta Devi
Saturday, 24.05.2008, 12:39pm (GMT)
Kozhikode, May 24 West Bengal's ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) continues to unleash violence in Nandigram even after they lost local bodies elections in the trouble-torn region last week, Bengali novelist and rights activist Mahasweta Devi has said.
"They are going around burning houses and raping women," she said.
Mahasweta Devi was delivering the inaugural address at a meeting of the Adhinivesha Prathirodha Samiti (Committee against the invasion of imperialists) here Saturday.
Nandigram, about 150 km from Kolkata in East Midnapore district, flared up in January last year over land acquisition plans for a proposed special economic zone (SEZ). At least 35 people were killed in 2007 in intermittent violence with activists of the CPI-M, which leads the state's ruling coalition, and opposition Trinamool Congress-backed farmers fighting pitched battles.
"The CPI-M cadres are saying it is their duty. They are threatening women who are protesting against the project. They say that they will make them all Radharani," Mahasweta Devi said. Radharani Ari, a villager from Nandigram, was raped allegedly by CPI-M activists.
Mahasweta Devi said the rural West Bengal badly needs development. "Indoctrination will not end people's misery. Now, crores of rupees are spent through panchayats, but not a single road has been constructed in West Bengal by panchayats."
Commenting on the CPI-M-led government in Kerala, she said it should listen to people.
Two months ago, the writer had addressed two open letters to Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan on the plight of the landless in the state.
"Achuthanandan thinks I write for vested interests. I only fight to bring basic human values," she said.
http://www.insidekerala.com/n/article/MainNews/17781/
Exeunt...CPM shooting at theatre movement
Exeunt...CPM shooting at theatre movement
Exeunt...
Author: Jaideep Mazumdar
Publication: Outlook
Date: June 2, 2008
URL:
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080602&fname=Theatre+%28F%29&sid=1
Introduction: Post Nandigram firing, the Communists are shooting at
another movement: the theatre
If you can't silence them, starve them of work. That seems to be the
credo of the CPI(M) in West Bengal.
Its target: theatre personalities who were vocal in their opposition to
the CPI(M)'s depredations in Nandigram. Over the past year, dissenting
directors and artistes have seen 'call shows' (invitations for staging
plays) decline to a trickle and have found it impossible to hire
government-owned auditoriums. Plays by directors like Kaushik Sen and
Arpita Ghosh, who have been in the forefront of Nandigram-related
protests, have witnessed last-minute cancellations. Faced with imminent
financial ruin, many directors are openly contemplating switching to
other creative pursuits.
Successful director Bratya Basu is one of the CPI(M)'s targets. He told
Outlook: "All my earlier plays received a surfeit of call shows. But
over the past one year, such invites have dipped to some two per cent of
what I used to receive-that's soon after I started speaking out against
what happened at Nandigram. I've been advised to stop criticising the
government and concentrate only on my theatre."
Call shows are the lifeline of theatre groups. The invitations come from
educational institutions, local clubs and cultural associations. Notes
Bibhas Chakraborty, who resigned as Paschim Banga Natya Akademi
president, protesting the police firing in Nandigram in March 14 last
year: "The CPI(M) operates at various levels-often in an insidious
manner. It is well known that the party dominates the state's cultural
sphere. It has been using its clout to stop invites coming to people
like us."
Kaushik Sen tops the list of those marked out by the CPI(M). Perhaps the
most vociferous critic of the party among theatre personalities, Kaushik
felt the backlash immediately after his post-March 14 protests. "A
school invited my theatre group. I told them I'd stage Tagore's famous
Dakghar, but they told me it had political overtones. I then decided on
Satyajit Ray's apolitical Bonkubabur Bandhu. Even so, the show got
cancelled. I came to know they were pressured by the local CPI(M) MLA.
Ever since, I haven't been receiving invitations to stage my plays,"
Kaushik told Outlook.
Shaonli Mitra's group Pancham Baidik has also been blacklisted. Ever
since Shaonli and her associates like Arpita Ghosh hit the streets on
Nandigram, they have been rendered jobless. Belghoria Ethic, a theatre
group from a Calcutta suburb, launched an anti-genocide forum, Ganahatya
Birodhi Nagarik Mancha, post Nandigram. It organised a convention on the
subject; this led a library that was its chief patron to sever all links
with the group. "The library's action was dictated by local CPI(M)
leaders," says Ethic's Debashish Sengupta.
The experiences of two prominent theatre directors are revealing. Manoj
Mitra and Meghnad Bhattacharya, who resigned along with others from the
Natya Akademi after the Nandigarm killings, had their shows at a college
at Raniganj and in Cooch Behar cancelled abruptly. "I was shocked to
hear about the cancellation, especially since I had been associated with
Raniganj College for decades. Luckily a senior CPI(M) leader intervened
and the cancellation was withdrawn," Manoj told Outlook. The senior
CPI(M) leader was industries minister Nirupam Som.
In Meghnad's case, it was chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya's
intervention that led to the organisers reissuing the invitation to
him."The fact that the CM and the industries minister intervened proves
that withdrawing the invitations was the handiwork of the CPI(M). Why
should theatre directors at all have to depend on ministers for
survival?" wonders Bibhas Chakraborty.
Meghnad, who heeded the CM's request to rejoin the Natya Akademi,
unwittingly admitted the CPI(M)'s sinister role. "All this is the
handiwork of lower-level CPI(M) functionaries. The CM himself admitted
he has no control over such people," Meghnad told Outlook in defence of
the CM.
A spate of cancellations has led to directors like Bratya Basu thinking
of exploring other options. "At this rate, I doubt if I can continue in
theatre," he says. Others like Debesh Chattopadhyay are also thinking of
giving up. If people like Bratya and Debesh were to quit, the CPI(M)
would have achieved its motto of sending the message that there's a
price to pay for dissent. But that would be at the cost of throttling
Bengal's culturally important art form-the theatre.
Exeunt...
Author: Jaideep Mazumdar
Publication: Outlook
Date: June 2, 2008
URL:
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080602&fname=Theatre+%28F%29&sid=1
Introduction: Post Nandigram firing, the Communists are shooting at
another movement: the theatre
If you can't silence them, starve them of work. That seems to be the
credo of the CPI(M) in West Bengal.
Its target: theatre personalities who were vocal in their opposition to
the CPI(M)'s depredations in Nandigram. Over the past year, dissenting
directors and artistes have seen 'call shows' (invitations for staging
plays) decline to a trickle and have found it impossible to hire
government-owned auditoriums. Plays by directors like Kaushik Sen and
Arpita Ghosh, who have been in the forefront of Nandigram-related
protests, have witnessed last-minute cancellations. Faced with imminent
financial ruin, many directors are openly contemplating switching to
other creative pursuits.
Successful director Bratya Basu is one of the CPI(M)'s targets. He told
Outlook: "All my earlier plays received a surfeit of call shows. But
over the past one year, such invites have dipped to some two per cent of
what I used to receive-that's soon after I started speaking out against
what happened at Nandigram. I've been advised to stop criticising the
government and concentrate only on my theatre."
Call shows are the lifeline of theatre groups. The invitations come from
educational institutions, local clubs and cultural associations. Notes
Bibhas Chakraborty, who resigned as Paschim Banga Natya Akademi
president, protesting the police firing in Nandigram in March 14 last
year: "The CPI(M) operates at various levels-often in an insidious
manner. It is well known that the party dominates the state's cultural
sphere. It has been using its clout to stop invites coming to people
like us."
Kaushik Sen tops the list of those marked out by the CPI(M). Perhaps the
most vociferous critic of the party among theatre personalities, Kaushik
felt the backlash immediately after his post-March 14 protests. "A
school invited my theatre group. I told them I'd stage Tagore's famous
Dakghar, but they told me it had political overtones. I then decided on
Satyajit Ray's apolitical Bonkubabur Bandhu. Even so, the show got
cancelled. I came to know they were pressured by the local CPI(M) MLA.
Ever since, I haven't been receiving invitations to stage my plays,"
Kaushik told Outlook.
Shaonli Mitra's group Pancham Baidik has also been blacklisted. Ever
since Shaonli and her associates like Arpita Ghosh hit the streets on
Nandigram, they have been rendered jobless. Belghoria Ethic, a theatre
group from a Calcutta suburb, launched an anti-genocide forum, Ganahatya
Birodhi Nagarik Mancha, post Nandigram. It organised a convention on the
subject; this led a library that was its chief patron to sever all links
with the group. "The library's action was dictated by local CPI(M)
leaders," says Ethic's Debashish Sengupta.
The experiences of two prominent theatre directors are revealing. Manoj
Mitra and Meghnad Bhattacharya, who resigned along with others from the
Natya Akademi after the Nandigarm killings, had their shows at a college
at Raniganj and in Cooch Behar cancelled abruptly. "I was shocked to
hear about the cancellation, especially since I had been associated with
Raniganj College for decades. Luckily a senior CPI(M) leader intervened
and the cancellation was withdrawn," Manoj told Outlook. The senior
CPI(M) leader was industries minister Nirupam Som.
In Meghnad's case, it was chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya's
intervention that led to the organisers reissuing the invitation to
him."The fact that the CM and the industries minister intervened proves
that withdrawing the invitations was the handiwork of the CPI(M). Why
should theatre directors at all have to depend on ministers for
survival?" wonders Bibhas Chakraborty.
Meghnad, who heeded the CM's request to rejoin the Natya Akademi,
unwittingly admitted the CPI(M)'s sinister role. "All this is the
handiwork of lower-level CPI(M) functionaries. The CM himself admitted
he has no control over such people," Meghnad told Outlook in defence of
the CM.
A spate of cancellations has led to directors like Bratya Basu thinking
of exploring other options. "At this rate, I doubt if I can continue in
theatre," he says. Others like Debesh Chattopadhyay are also thinking of
giving up. If people like Bratya and Debesh were to quit, the CPI(M)
would have achieved its motto of sending the message that there's a
price to pay for dissent. But that would be at the cost of throttling
Bengal's culturally important art form-the theatre.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Does CPM know the art of damage control? Let CPM lick its wounds.
Does CPM know the art of damage control? Let CPM lick its wounds.
Kolkata, Telegraph, Issue Date: Saturday , May 24 , 2008
Panchayat cloud on 10 LS seats of Left
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Calcutta, May 23: If voting patterns in the Lok Sabha polls due in a year follow the panchayat trend, the Left would lose around 10 seats, snipping its tally to 25, below the score in 1984 that remains the lowest point in the past 30 years.
After a preliminary study of the panchayat results, where the gap at the lowest level of the three-tier system has narrowed dramatically from over 1500 to just above 200, the CPM fears the Left will lose eight to 10 seats. Trinamul believes the Opposition can wrest 11.
An MP and a central committee member of the CPM said: “Looking at the panchayat results, there could be a possibility of losing between eight and 10 parliamentary seats. But a detailed study has to be made.”
At the gram panchayat — the lowest— level, the CPM’s tally stands at 1,562 panchayats and the Opposition’s at 1,340, according to figures collected individually from district magistrates today.
The numbers mentioned in yesterday’s edition were given to the media by CPM state secretary Biman Bose. There are differences between the two sets of figures but they do not change the fundamental lesson emerging from the results: that the Left has taken a hard knock.
The CPM has estimated the possible loss of Lok Sabha seats from Trinamul’s massive victories in East Midnapore and South 24 Parganas and what it calls an “inexplicable’’ rise in the number of panchayat samiti seats won by that party in North 24 Parganas, Nadia and Howrah — all in south Bengal.
Hannan Mollah, an MP of the CPM, admitted that the party could lose some Lok Sabha seats “but there won’t be any sea change as the Trinamul Congress thinks. Moreover, panchayat polls should not be compared with parliamentary elections.”
It may be true that voters’ considerations in a parliamentary poll are different but Trinamul is claiming a “major swing against the CPM’’. Partha Chatterjee, the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, said: “We (Trinamul) have won several panchayat samiti and gram panchayat seats in areas where our party had not been able to penetrate for years. We think that at least 11 Lok Sabha seats can be wrested from the Left.”
Poll researcher Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya agreed that voters do not treat Assembly or Lok Sabha polls the way they do local bodies elections. “The vote shares have to be seen to find out whether there would be any change in the ruling party’s strength.”
The CPM has based its extrapolation of the panchayat results to the Lok Sabha by calculating the vote shares of the Left and the Opposition in every polling booth where Trinamul has fared well or put up a “respectable performance”, said a party leader.
Having worked out the percentage shares of the Left and the Opposition, the CPM has allotted the votes according to Lok Sabha constituencies to see the impact.
CPM state committee member Rabin Deb said the party conducted a booth-wise survey of votes secured by the Left and the Opposition after every election.
“A preliminary study of the districts where the Opposition met with success can be an indication of future trends. But Lok Sabha polls are a long way off and it would be premature to comment on our party’s prospects.”
The Lok Sabha constituencies that Trinamul is eyeing, encouraged by the panchayat results, are Barasat, Basirhat, Contai, Tamluk, Diamond Harbour, Mathurapur, Jadavpur, Joynagar, Krishnagar, Uluberia and Nabadwip.
A CPM central committee member admitted that these constituencies could pose problems for the Left but expected the situation to change as “our party knows the art of damage control”.
http://telegraphindia.com/1080524/jsp/frontpage/story_9314602.jsp#
GP results rub it in
Statesman News Service (May 24, 2008)
KOLKATA, May 23: For the first time since the Left Front introduced the panchayati raj system in the state in 1978, it lost control of nearly 50 per cent of the gram panchayats this time, signifying that nearly half of rural Bengal has turned its face away from the Marxist-led regime.
A clear picture emerged today as results of the 3,220 gram panchayats were declared. The LF won 1,585 GPs while the Opposition dramatically surged ahead notching up a victory in 1,498 GPs. The results in 137 GPs have been either a tie or hung.
The LF had won 2,303 GPs in the 2003 elections routing the Opposition which managed to bag only 897 GPs, whereas the number of GPs where the results were a tie or hung was only 20. The LF's lowest tally of GPs before was 56 per cent in 1998 and the highest 72 per cent in 1988. Its share ranged between 56 and 70 per cent during the six consecutive terms that it held sway over the panchayats.
The comfort that the CPI-M drew from its victory in 13 of the 17 Zilla Parishads when the results first started pouring in two days back, was eroded by serious worries yesterday when the Opposition won 89 panchayat samities against the LF tally of 189, showing that the ruling combine's grip on the rural vote bank was loosening.
But today, the illusory success in the ZPs turned into a nightmare with the GP results making it clear that nearly half the political space in rural Bengal ~ which has hitherto been the LF's mainstay ~ has been captured by the Opposition. The results sent such shock-waves down the spine of the CPI-M that its state leadership immediately started wooing the junior partners whom it had treated shabbily and insolently during the run-up to the poll.
State industries minister Mr Nirupam Sen was summoned to Alimuddin Street in the afternoon. It was the duo of Mr Sen and the chief minister who were the chief architects of the skewed industrialisation policy that has proved the LF's undoing in the rural poll.
The CPI-M state secretary and LF chairman, Mr Biman Bose, had even taunted that the junior partners saying that it was misplaced confidence that was spurring them
http://thestatesman.org/page.news.php?clid=1&theme=&usrsess=1&id=205233
Kolkata, Telegraph, Issue Date: Saturday , May 24 , 2008
Panchayat cloud on 10 LS seats of Left
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Calcutta, May 23: If voting patterns in the Lok Sabha polls due in a year follow the panchayat trend, the Left would lose around 10 seats, snipping its tally to 25, below the score in 1984 that remains the lowest point in the past 30 years.
After a preliminary study of the panchayat results, where the gap at the lowest level of the three-tier system has narrowed dramatically from over 1500 to just above 200, the CPM fears the Left will lose eight to 10 seats. Trinamul believes the Opposition can wrest 11.
An MP and a central committee member of the CPM said: “Looking at the panchayat results, there could be a possibility of losing between eight and 10 parliamentary seats. But a detailed study has to be made.”
At the gram panchayat — the lowest— level, the CPM’s tally stands at 1,562 panchayats and the Opposition’s at 1,340, according to figures collected individually from district magistrates today.
The numbers mentioned in yesterday’s edition were given to the media by CPM state secretary Biman Bose. There are differences between the two sets of figures but they do not change the fundamental lesson emerging from the results: that the Left has taken a hard knock.
The CPM has estimated the possible loss of Lok Sabha seats from Trinamul’s massive victories in East Midnapore and South 24 Parganas and what it calls an “inexplicable’’ rise in the number of panchayat samiti seats won by that party in North 24 Parganas, Nadia and Howrah — all in south Bengal.
Hannan Mollah, an MP of the CPM, admitted that the party could lose some Lok Sabha seats “but there won’t be any sea change as the Trinamul Congress thinks. Moreover, panchayat polls should not be compared with parliamentary elections.”
It may be true that voters’ considerations in a parliamentary poll are different but Trinamul is claiming a “major swing against the CPM’’. Partha Chatterjee, the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, said: “We (Trinamul) have won several panchayat samiti and gram panchayat seats in areas where our party had not been able to penetrate for years. We think that at least 11 Lok Sabha seats can be wrested from the Left.”
Poll researcher Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya agreed that voters do not treat Assembly or Lok Sabha polls the way they do local bodies elections. “The vote shares have to be seen to find out whether there would be any change in the ruling party’s strength.”
The CPM has based its extrapolation of the panchayat results to the Lok Sabha by calculating the vote shares of the Left and the Opposition in every polling booth where Trinamul has fared well or put up a “respectable performance”, said a party leader.
Having worked out the percentage shares of the Left and the Opposition, the CPM has allotted the votes according to Lok Sabha constituencies to see the impact.
CPM state committee member Rabin Deb said the party conducted a booth-wise survey of votes secured by the Left and the Opposition after every election.
“A preliminary study of the districts where the Opposition met with success can be an indication of future trends. But Lok Sabha polls are a long way off and it would be premature to comment on our party’s prospects.”
The Lok Sabha constituencies that Trinamul is eyeing, encouraged by the panchayat results, are Barasat, Basirhat, Contai, Tamluk, Diamond Harbour, Mathurapur, Jadavpur, Joynagar, Krishnagar, Uluberia and Nabadwip.
A CPM central committee member admitted that these constituencies could pose problems for the Left but expected the situation to change as “our party knows the art of damage control”.
http://telegraphindia.com/1080524/jsp/frontpage/story_9314602.jsp#
GP results rub it in
Statesman News Service (May 24, 2008)
KOLKATA, May 23: For the first time since the Left Front introduced the panchayati raj system in the state in 1978, it lost control of nearly 50 per cent of the gram panchayats this time, signifying that nearly half of rural Bengal has turned its face away from the Marxist-led regime.
A clear picture emerged today as results of the 3,220 gram panchayats were declared. The LF won 1,585 GPs while the Opposition dramatically surged ahead notching up a victory in 1,498 GPs. The results in 137 GPs have been either a tie or hung.
The LF had won 2,303 GPs in the 2003 elections routing the Opposition which managed to bag only 897 GPs, whereas the number of GPs where the results were a tie or hung was only 20. The LF's lowest tally of GPs before was 56 per cent in 1998 and the highest 72 per cent in 1988. Its share ranged between 56 and 70 per cent during the six consecutive terms that it held sway over the panchayats.
The comfort that the CPI-M drew from its victory in 13 of the 17 Zilla Parishads when the results first started pouring in two days back, was eroded by serious worries yesterday when the Opposition won 89 panchayat samities against the LF tally of 189, showing that the ruling combine's grip on the rural vote bank was loosening.
But today, the illusory success in the ZPs turned into a nightmare with the GP results making it clear that nearly half the political space in rural Bengal ~ which has hitherto been the LF's mainstay ~ has been captured by the Opposition. The results sent such shock-waves down the spine of the CPI-M that its state leadership immediately started wooing the junior partners whom it had treated shabbily and insolently during the run-up to the poll.
State industries minister Mr Nirupam Sen was summoned to Alimuddin Street in the afternoon. It was the duo of Mr Sen and the chief minister who were the chief architects of the skewed industrialisation policy that has proved the LF's undoing in the rural poll.
The CPI-M state secretary and LF chairman, Mr Biman Bose, had even taunted that the junior partners saying that it was misplaced confidence that was spurring them
http://thestatesman.org/page.news.php?clid=1&theme=&usrsess=1&id=205233
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
...etai CPM-er sesher suru -- Mamata
Ashis Chakrabarti's article on panchayat election 2008 results in Telegraph, Kolkata, 23 May 2008 ignores facts:
Gram Panchayats: 1479 oppn., 1597 LF (2303 in 2003 elections)
Panchayat Samitis: 126 oppn, 183 LF (265 in 2003 elections)
Editor of Telegraph should ask Ashis should learn arithmetic.
http://telegraphindia.com/1080523/jsp/frontpage/story_9309640.jsp
kalyan
...etai CPM-er sesher suru -- Mamata
How CPM captured, and holds on to rural Bengal
By Nitish Sengupta (Deccan Chronicle, 22 May 2008)
In the past week or so, during the panchayat elections in West Bengal, the CPI(M) cadre in Nandigram, Khejuri, Keshpur and many other pockets in the state have gone crazy violating criminal laws and constitutional rights in order to retain their physical control over their areas of influence. The CPI(M) men committed murders, raped women on a very visible scale and physically prevented independent intellectuals and human rights workers from visiting Nandigram — including such well-known persons as filmstars Aparna Sen and Saoli Mitra, not to speak of political leaders like Mamata Banerjee. The CPI(M)’s Lok Sabha MP for that region has openly entered into verbal confrontation with the commanding officer of the CRPF in the area, actually threatening him in the face of television cameras. They have physically beaten large numbers of men and women, snatched their voter identity cards and confined them to their homes in an attempt to prevent them from going to the polling booths to cast their votes. All this has happened in the open, with the CPI(M) leadership not showing any sign of remorse or regret, or even trying to reassert control over their belligerent cadre.
People often wonder how the CPI(M) has been able to retain control over rural West Bengal for as long as three decades. The answer lies in the fact that they have been making full use of the resources of the panchayati raj institutions gifted to them unwittingly by Rajiv Gandhi, who introduced the practice of giving direct finances from the Centre to the panchayats and even amended the Constitution for this purpose. Since that time the CPI(M) has retained full control on the panchayat elections so that they can directly gain access to its great resources and can claim that all the welfare and development measures undertaken by the panchayats, many of them coming from the Centre, are actually being done by their party. Unlike most other states, the CPI(M), after coming to power in West Bengal during a phase of absent-mindedness by the people in 1977, started the practice of fighting panchayat elections on a political basis and getting control over the panchayats, which they have not given up since then. To help them to win elections they resorted to making their cadre take physical control over vast rural areas. Ordinary voters are simply not allowed to vote. At times non-CPI(M) candidates are prevented by physical force from submitting their nominations, thereby ensuring the election of a large number of CPI(M) candidates unopposed. In order to retain this physical control, the cadre has been armed to the hilt, having their own guns, bombs, swords, spears and other weapons, which they use without any restraint against their political opponents. The police force has been politicised to an extent unknown anywhere else in this country. Most of the policemen recruited in West Bengal over the last two decades are CPI(M) cardholders or at least CPI(M) sympathisers, as are schoolteachers in the districts. Politically subservient station house officers have been posted in all thanas. They do not register any criminal complaint without a nod from the local CPI(M) boss. They even refuse to register FIRs in the normal course, although they are under obligation to do so under the Criminal Procedure Code. It is the secretary of the local CPI(M) unit, popularly known as the LCS, who is the main power centre in rural areas. Even ministers look for his recommendation in most cases. There has thus been a massive politicisation and criminalisation in rural areas of West Bengal. In every parliamentary constituency, the CPI(M) takes care to retain one Assembly segment under its tight physical control so that no matter how voters elsewhere vote, nearly 100 per cent polling in favour of their candidate in this segment usually ensures the victory of the CPI(M) candidate.
Strangely enough, the leadership of the CPI(M) in West Bengal, outwardly known as bhadralok leaders for their culture and intellect, choose to turn a blind eye towards the criminal activities of their cadre and the widespread violation of constitutional provisions and fundamental rights, as well as the usual provisions in our criminal law ensuring human rights. This explains why, unlike their counterparts in Kerala who know how to court defeat once every five years or so, the CPI(M) in West Bengal has never known defeat and has been uniformly successful in all elections to the Lok Sabha, the Assembly and panchayats over the last three decades. It is an amazing case where the proletariat of Karl Marx fell victim to Lenin’s party, and Lenin’s party in turn fell victim to the Stalinist and Maoist cadre. One does not know when West Bengal is going to be rescued from this captivity, which has destroyed its spirit, intellect and culture for several generations, not to speak of the steady economic decline which has downgraded what was once the foremost state of India during the halcyon days of Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy into one of the most backward states in the country.
Today the CPI(M) stands isolated not only from the intellectuals, artists and other right-thinking sections of the people, but also from its own political allies like the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Forward Bloc within the Left Front. Even the CPI(M) patriarch, Jyoti Basu, who built the United Front from scratch, lamented that the Left Front today is as good as non-existent. There are reports of armed clashes between the CPI(M) on the one hand and its allies in the Left Front on the other, leading to the death of people and destruction of property. It is only the CPI(M)’s cadre in the rural areas, a law unto themselves, who are sustaining their political party in power.
Dr Nitish Sengupta, an academic and an author, is a former Member of Parliament and a former secretary to the government of India
http://deccan.com/Columnists/Columnists.asp?#How CPM captured, and holds on to rural Bengal
Issue Date: Thursday , May 22 , 2008
Nandi Payback
CPM bleeds in land-and-minority backlash; loses 3 councils, gains 1
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Calcutta, May 21: The Left today suffered the biggest poll jolt since the 2001 Assembly verdict as it lost two districts to Mamata Banerjee and one to the Congress in the panchayat polls, raising the question whether land acquisition for industry was exacting a heavy political cost.
Shaken though it was by the loss of Nandigram-scarred East Midnapore and South 24-Parganas, the CPM announced: “There will be no going back on the policy of industrialisation.”
Murshidabad was its sole — and big — revenge on the Opposition as it won the district back from the Congress, but it had only 13 of the 17 zilla parishads (district councils) in the bag compared with 15 in 2003.
Land acquisition for industry was an issue in the two south Bengal districts of East Midnapore and South 24-Parganas, though not in North Dinajpur, where the Left could not forge unity among its constituents.
In East Midnapore and South 24-Parganas, both heavily minority-dominated districts, fears over losing land took a religious colour, fed by the discontent among the minorities brought out by the Sachar Committee report.
East Midnapore gained notoriety because of the prolonged violence in Nandigram over an aborted land acquisition attempt while South 24-Parganas will be the site for large projects to be built by the Indonesian Salim group.
In neighbouring North 24-Parganas, which the Salim road project will touch and where notices for land acquisition have been issued, the Left won by the thin margin of three, with Mamata’s score having soared from two to 16.
The results in West Midnapore, Burdwan, Bankura and Purulia, where too large tracts of land have been taken over for industry, are a warning against jumping to the conclusion that the panchayat verdict is a slap in the face of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government’s industrialisation drive.
In all four districts, the CPM has not only won but has posted huge victories, even improving on its 2003 tally in some cases. The difference, however, is that in these four districts, there was no controversy over acquiring land.
Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee refused comment on the results.
Benoy Konar, the CPM state secretariat member who addressed the media today instead of the party’s Bengal secretary Biman Bose, said: “It will be simplistic to infer that people voted against industrialisation. We failed to convince farmers in these two districts (East Midnapore and South 24-Parganas) where people have apprehensions about losing land.”
The apprehensions overrode expectations of benefits from the showpiece Tata small-car project at Singur, where the CPM lost all three zilla parishad seats to Trinamul. In 2003, the CPM had won the three but had lost the Assembly seat to Trinamul in 2006.
If Nandigram led to the loss of East Midnapore for the CPM, the party won Hooghly, of which Singur is a part, though not with the ease of 2003. Trinamul opened its account in the district, grabbing 11 seats.
Mamata was distributing rasogollas after the results became known, finding a reason to smile after two consecutive routs in the 2004 Lok Sabha and the 2006 Assembly polls, which halved her 2001 MLA count of 60.
“Jene rakhoon, etai CPM-er sesher suru (Make no mistake, this is the beginning of the CPM’s end),” she said.
“In 2003, we had only 16 zilla parishad seats. But this time we have been able to wrest not only two zilla parishads on our own but even won over 120 zilla parishad seats.”
Mamata interpreted the results as a “mandate against state-sponsored terrorism”, but added that the people had also voiced their protest against the move to “grab farmland from the poor in the name of industrialisation”.
The chief minister can expect more trouble arising out of this conclusion for his industrialisation programme. Trinamul said it would not “allow the administration to take away an inch of land from unwilling farmers”.
Although the Congress lost Murshidabad, the victory in North Dinajpur was being seen as an achievement for Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, the Union minister who had called on Congress supporters to vote for the strongest candidate in their areas, even if it meant backing Trinamul.
If this led to an informal coming together of anti-Left forces in North Dinajpur, the Left itself was bitterly divided in the district, as it was also in South 24-Parganas.
http://telegraphindia.com/1080522/jsp/frontpage/story_9304845.jsp
Not just Singur and Nandigram, CPM gets battered across rural West Bengal
Bidyut Roy
Posted online: Friday, May 23, 2008 at 0044 hrs IST
Kolkata, May 22
The CPM is facing an unprecedented dent in what it has long taken for granted, its support in the rural areas in West Bengal. The trickle of defeat during Wednesday’s counting of the panchayat polls at the Zilla Parishad (district council) level turned into a flood today when results of the lower tiers emerged.
The battering of the CPM was not restricted to Nandigram or Singur but was evident across the state. In Nandigram, it lost not only the Zilla Parishads but all the ten Gram Panchayat (GP) seats to the Trinamool and of the 16 GP seats in Singur, the Trinamool has won 15 and only one has gone to the CPM. In both these places, the CPM was dominant the last time.
By late tonight, the verdict was clear: although the Left has kept its control over a majority of the seats at all levels, it has received its worst setback ever. The Left Front won 1,633 of the 3,220 Gram Panchayats in the state, down from its 2003 tally of 2303.
The Opposition won 1,463 GPs , with the Trinamool bagging the major share, almost three-quarters. In the 2003 Panchayat elections, the Opposition had got barely 917 GPs.
Of the 329 Panchayat samitis (the middle tier), the Left Front had won 284 and the Opposition 45 in 2003. This year, however, the Left’s tally shrunk to 189 while the Opposition surged to 140.
A stunned CPM was groping for answers. Said Left Front chairman and CPM veteran Biman Bose: “We have to discuss why this grievance accumulated to such an extent...Our arrogance, ego and deviations —- we must study if these were factors...We will review whether the functioning of our Panchayats is to blame for the results. There may have been some deviations.”
“People have not liked our style of functioning and we will have to take a lesson, but that does not mean they have voted against industrialisation,” Minister for Commerce and Industries Nirupam Sen said today. “There is no rollback in our industrialisation policy but we have been unable to communicate properly the benefits of industrialisation. People misunderstood us. However, we have begun rectifying it and the process started much before the panchayat results. This is a long process and we are taking several measures to address this.”
So strong was the anti-incumbency that Trinamool Congress won in several areas where it didn’t campaign, including districts where Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee didn’t visit.
For example, three “Sabhadhipatis” lost elections in Nadia, North and South Dinajpur districts. The “Sabhadhipatis” are the chairmen of the Zilla Parishad and an epitome of power, authority and clout. Normally, top district level party leaders occupy the chair.
The anti-incumbency factor was also visible in far-off areas like Coochbehar or closer to home in Howrah and Birbhum. In Coochbehar, two panchayat samitis were won by the Trinamool for the first time. Similarly in Birbhum, considered a traditional Left bastion, the Opposition wrested five Panchayat Samitis from the ruling Left. On an average, one panchayat samiti controls about 10 Gram Panchayats.
In Howrah, though the CPM managed to retain control of the Zilla Parishad, it suffered a huge setback in the middle tier. Of a total of 14 Panchayat Samitis in the district, the Trinamool won 10.
A jubilant Mamata, who had not expected such results, said: “The results show how much the people are angry with them. The people have taught them a lesson, but they never learn.”
Zilla Parishads Oppn. 230 LF 518 (622 in 2003)
Panchayat Samitis Oppn. 140 LF 189 (284 in 2003)
Gram Panchayats Oppn. 1463 LF 1633 (2303 in 2003)
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/313423.html
CPM routed in Nandigram, Singur panchayat polls
Slap for CPM in Singur and Nandigram
Saugar Sengupta | Kolkata
Trinamool wrests Red bastions
The CPI(M) suffered its biggest electoral defeat in panchayat polls ever since it came to power 30 years ago. The party conceded four district boards to an Opposition that was still divided. Trinamool Congress and the Congress shared the win clinching two boards each. That the Marxists picked up 13 was no solace as they had lost two of their strongest citadels.
Counting for the gram panchayat and panchayat samiti seats had started when the reports last came in. While East Midnapore farmers avenged the police firing in Nandigram by banishing the Marxists from the board, Nandigram proper saw three out of four seats going to the Trinamool Congress. Left Front got 17 to Trinamool's 36 seats in East Midnapore. The Left Front had won all but one seat from the district in 2003.
It would be difficult to gauge the anti-CPI(M) wave from the mere number of boards the Opposition wrested from the ruling party. This because even the Opposition polled whopping 32 per cent votes, seven per cent higher than what it got after the death of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.
Interestingly, the CPI(M) lost all the three seats from Haldia -- bastion of MP and party strongman Lakshman Seth, leading Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee to assert: "It is a farmers' mandate and it is not the Trinamool Congress but Bengal's farmers who have won." She added the result would have been better had there been no rigging in the areas.
Similarly, Singur in Hooghly district where the anti-land acquisition movement started shoved the Marxists out with all four seats going to the Trinamool Congress. The district board, however, went to the Marxists who won it 31:10.
But more than Nandigram, East Midnapore and Singur, the thumping victory of the Trinamool Congress in South 24 Parganas seemed to take the observers by surprise. Here the Trinamool and its allies picked up 39 seats to Left Front's 31. The Congress won four.
The factor that the district has four Ministers, including Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, seemed to make the contest more interesting. "It is a victory of Mamata Banerjee over the Chief Minister," party MLA Sobhandeb Chattopdhayay said. Parts of the Trinamool chief's constituency fall in South 24 Parganas that had seen a bloody war between the Marxists and allies RSP leading to five deaths.
In North 24 Parganas, the Left Front won 26 seats while the Trinamool had bagged 17 and the Congress eight.
In North Bengal, Union Minister PR Dasmunsi did a face-saver for the Congress by snatching back North Dinajpur from the Left Front that was a divided house here. The tally was 14:8 in favour of the Congress. The party managed to retain Malda by winning 18 seats to LF's 15.
However, the Congress lost its prestige battle at Murshidabad that sent three of its MPs, including Pranab Mukherjee. The Left Front that fought unitedly against a divided Congress here wrested the district board winning 25 seats to Congress' 27.
Results coming in till late in the evening showed the LF winning 479 seats to Trinamool Congress' 110, Congress 99 and the rests 10. The total number of district board seats is 748.
The Marxists managed to keep other Left bastions winning Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar, Purulia, West Midnapore, Nadia, Coochbehar, Bankura, Birbhum, Howrah, Hooghly, Burdwan and South Dinajpur.
Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had gone about acquiring land from the farmers. Ironically however, Wednesday saw the very ground beneath the ruling CPI(M)'s feet slipping out fast.
The rural elections that took place in the backdrop of Singur-Nandigram face off literally found Marxists electorally stripped in their own backyard: rural Bengal.
Unfazed CPM guns for CRPF DIG
Kolkata: A couple of days after the Bengal IGP gave a clean chit to CRPF DIG Alok Raj in a molestation case filed against him by a woman at Nandigram in East Midnapore district, the Bengal police said there was no plan to drop charges against the "accused officer" as a police investigation was still in progress.
The CRPF officer was on peace-keeping duty in Nandigram, where the ruling CPI(M) and its police had been involved in a bloody fight against the opposition Trinamool Congress following a mass resistance against forced acquisition of agricultural lands by the Government for industrial purposes, when he was reportedly implicated in a molestation case by an alleged CPI(M) supporter.
The charges notwithstanding, Raj was found to be present at Nandigram police station during the time when the alleged crime took place. An IGP-level inquiry found Raj innocent and State Home Secretary Ashokmohan Chakrabarty even went on record conveying the IG's report. He, however, later claimed the media misinterpreted his statement.
SS Panda, SP (East Midnapore) however claimed the charges would not be dropped against Raj till the police probe was on. The CRPF officer's force is being probed in an assault case as well. Panda has been named by the opposition as a CPI(M) man of Keshpur-Garbeta fame.
"The matter will go to the court and a trial will take place," Panda said. Apparently his statement comes on the same day when the CPI(M) got a sound electoral drubbing at the hands of the Trinamool Congress.
Meanwhile, Raj is weighing his legal options, sources close to him said. "Though the FIRs are still there, I have heard that the inquiry report gave me a clean chit.... I will soon ask the Bengal Government to give me a copy of the complaints and the inquiry report. My force is supposed to be on duty at Nandigram, but I am being kept out. I have received no orders to go there on May 21," he said.
According to reports from Nandigram, the local CPI(M) was not favourably disposed towards the CRPF as it had been acting tough on the armed party cadre who were raiding Nandigram from the Khejuri side. Raj had a verbal duel with Haldia MP Laxman Seth, who reportedly directed him to stay back in his camp. But the officer snubbed him, saying he was not bound to take orders from the MP.
Meanwhile, Trinamool sources said they would stand by "an honest officer like Alok Raj who came to protect our lives but is now being framed by the CPI(M)".
http://dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=front%5Fpage&file_name=story1%2Etxt&counter_img=1
Indo-Asian News Service
Kolkata, May 21, 2008
First Published: 21:33 IST(21/5/2008)
Last Updated: 21:39 IST(21/5/2008)
CPI-M routed in Nandigram, Singur Panchayat polls
West Bengal's ruling Left Front on Wednesday maintained an overall lead in the elections to the local self-government bodies, but the Front's dominant partner Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) suffered defeat in several districts, including the troubled areas of Nandigram and Singur, as officials counted the votes.
The Front suffered a severe setback in East Midnapore district, besides suffering losses in North 24-Parganas and South 24-arganas districts. In Midnapore, the CPI-M lost control of the Zilla Parishad or district council, the top tier of the state's Panchayat system, for the first time after an uninterrupted reign of 30 years.
The Nandigram region, which saw violence after protests against the government's abortive bid for land acquisition for a chemical hub, comes under East Midnapore.
The main opposition Trinamool Congress, which spearheaded the agitation in Nandigram, made a clean sweep in the area, besides making impressive gains at Singur in Hooghly district, another flashpoint where the party had mobilized farmers against land acquisition for Tata Motors' small car project.
According to reports till afternoon, the communists' citadels of Burdwan, Purulia and Bankura remained intact, but the ruling coalition was engaged in a neck and neck race with the Congress for control of the Zilla Parishads (or district councils) in Murshidabad and Malda districts.
During the last elections in 2003, the Congress had won the two Zilla Parishads, and the Left Front emerged victorious in all other 15 districts.
The CPI-M suffered a further dent in its image as three of the incumbent zilla parishad chiefs, owing allegiance to the party, bit the dust in North Dinajpur, South Dinajpur and Nadia districts.
In Nandigram, the Trinamool Congress trounced the front in the gram Panchayat or village council and Panchayat Samiti polls, besides winning all the four Zilla Parishad seats in the area.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print.aspx?Id=bb822bd8-d05c-4482-bcaf-728ba06cb3ae
Nandigram, May 21 (PTI) CPI-M and Trinamool Congress activists threw bombs and exchanged fire in three areas in embattled Nandigram shortly after zila parishad election results were declared in the East Midnapore districtd today.
Though no casualty was reported, the police said bomb blasts and gunshots were heard at Sonachura, Gokulnagar and Garchakraberia in Nandigram.
Both Trinamool Congress and CPI-M workers traded bombs and gunshots.
There was no report of any victory processions here till this evening.
Strict security measures were taken 200 metres around the counting centres.
Reports from other districts, however, said the situation had remained peaceful. PTI
http://www.ptinews.com/pti%5Cptisite.nsf/0/5974D6E618848EF465257450004F7494?OpenDocument
Saugar Sengupta | Kolkata
Trinamool wrests Red bastions
The CPI(M) suffered its biggest electoral defeat in panchayat polls ever since it came to power 30 years ago. The party conceded four district boards to an Opposition that was still divided. Trinamool Congress and the Congress shared the win clinching two boards each. That the Marxists picked up 13 was no solace as they had lost two of their strongest citadels.
Counting for the gram panchayat and panchayat samiti seats had started when the reports last came in. While East Midnapore farmers avenged the police firing in Nandigram by banishing the Marxists from the board, Nandigram proper saw three out of four seats going to the Trinamool Congress. Left Front got 17 to Trinamool's 36 seats in East Midnapore. The Left Front had won all but one seat from the district in 2003.
It would be difficult to gauge the anti-CPI(M) wave from the mere number of boards the Opposition wrested from the ruling party. This because even the Opposition polled whopping 32 per cent votes, seven per cent higher than what it got after the death of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.
Interestingly, the CPI(M) lost all the three seats from Haldia -- bastion of MP and party strongman Lakshman Seth, leading Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee to assert: "It is a farmers' mandate and it is not the Trinamool Congress but Bengal's farmers who have won." She added the result would have been better had there been no rigging in the areas.
Similarly, Singur in Hooghly district where the anti-land acquisition movement started shoved the Marxists out with all four seats going to the Trinamool Congress. The district board, however, went to the Marxists who won it 31:10.
But more than Nandigram, East Midnapore and Singur, the thumping victory of the Trinamool Congress in South 24 Parganas seemed to take the observers by surprise. Here the Trinamool and its allies picked up 39 seats to Left Front's 31. The Congress won four.
The factor that the district has four Ministers, including Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, seemed to make the contest more interesting. "It is a victory of Mamata Banerjee over the Chief Minister," party MLA Sobhandeb Chattopdhayay said. Parts of the Trinamool chief's constituency fall in South 24 Parganas that had seen a bloody war between the Marxists and allies RSP leading to five deaths.
In North 24 Parganas, the Left Front won 26 seats while the Trinamool had bagged 17 and the Congress eight.
In North Bengal, Union Minister PR Dasmunsi did a face-saver for the Congress by snatching back North Dinajpur from the Left Front that was a divided house here. The tally was 14:8 in favour of the Congress. The party managed to retain Malda by winning 18 seats to LF's 15.
However, the Congress lost its prestige battle at Murshidabad that sent three of its MPs, including Pranab Mukherjee. The Left Front that fought unitedly against a divided Congress here wrested the district board winning 25 seats to Congress' 27.
Results coming in till late in the evening showed the LF winning 479 seats to Trinamool Congress' 110, Congress 99 and the rests 10. The total number of district board seats is 748.
The Marxists managed to keep other Left bastions winning Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar, Purulia, West Midnapore, Nadia, Coochbehar, Bankura, Birbhum, Howrah, Hooghly, Burdwan and South Dinajpur.
Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had gone about acquiring land from the farmers. Ironically however, Wednesday saw the very ground beneath the ruling CPI(M)'s feet slipping out fast.
The rural elections that took place in the backdrop of Singur-Nandigram face off literally found Marxists electorally stripped in their own backyard: rural Bengal.
Unfazed CPM guns for CRPF DIG
Kolkata: A couple of days after the Bengal IGP gave a clean chit to CRPF DIG Alok Raj in a molestation case filed against him by a woman at Nandigram in East Midnapore district, the Bengal police said there was no plan to drop charges against the "accused officer" as a police investigation was still in progress.
The CRPF officer was on peace-keeping duty in Nandigram, where the ruling CPI(M) and its police had been involved in a bloody fight against the opposition Trinamool Congress following a mass resistance against forced acquisition of agricultural lands by the Government for industrial purposes, when he was reportedly implicated in a molestation case by an alleged CPI(M) supporter.
The charges notwithstanding, Raj was found to be present at Nandigram police station during the time when the alleged crime took place. An IGP-level inquiry found Raj innocent and State Home Secretary Ashokmohan Chakrabarty even went on record conveying the IG's report. He, however, later claimed the media misinterpreted his statement.
SS Panda, SP (East Midnapore) however claimed the charges would not be dropped against Raj till the police probe was on. The CRPF officer's force is being probed in an assault case as well. Panda has been named by the opposition as a CPI(M) man of Keshpur-Garbeta fame.
"The matter will go to the court and a trial will take place," Panda said. Apparently his statement comes on the same day when the CPI(M) got a sound electoral drubbing at the hands of the Trinamool Congress.
Meanwhile, Raj is weighing his legal options, sources close to him said. "Though the FIRs are still there, I have heard that the inquiry report gave me a clean chit.... I will soon ask the Bengal Government to give me a copy of the complaints and the inquiry report. My force is supposed to be on duty at Nandigram, but I am being kept out. I have received no orders to go there on May 21," he said.
According to reports from Nandigram, the local CPI(M) was not favourably disposed towards the CRPF as it had been acting tough on the armed party cadre who were raiding Nandigram from the Khejuri side. Raj had a verbal duel with Haldia MP Laxman Seth, who reportedly directed him to stay back in his camp. But the officer snubbed him, saying he was not bound to take orders from the MP.
Meanwhile, Trinamool sources said they would stand by "an honest officer like Alok Raj who came to protect our lives but is now being framed by the CPI(M)".
http://dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=front%5Fpage&file_name=story1%2Etxt&counter_img=1
Indo-Asian News Service
Kolkata, May 21, 2008
First Published: 21:33 IST(21/5/2008)
Last Updated: 21:39 IST(21/5/2008)
CPI-M routed in Nandigram, Singur Panchayat polls
West Bengal's ruling Left Front on Wednesday maintained an overall lead in the elections to the local self-government bodies, but the Front's dominant partner Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) suffered defeat in several districts, including the troubled areas of Nandigram and Singur, as officials counted the votes.
The Front suffered a severe setback in East Midnapore district, besides suffering losses in North 24-Parganas and South 24-arganas districts. In Midnapore, the CPI-M lost control of the Zilla Parishad or district council, the top tier of the state's Panchayat system, for the first time after an uninterrupted reign of 30 years.
The Nandigram region, which saw violence after protests against the government's abortive bid for land acquisition for a chemical hub, comes under East Midnapore.
The main opposition Trinamool Congress, which spearheaded the agitation in Nandigram, made a clean sweep in the area, besides making impressive gains at Singur in Hooghly district, another flashpoint where the party had mobilized farmers against land acquisition for Tata Motors' small car project.
According to reports till afternoon, the communists' citadels of Burdwan, Purulia and Bankura remained intact, but the ruling coalition was engaged in a neck and neck race with the Congress for control of the Zilla Parishads (or district councils) in Murshidabad and Malda districts.
During the last elections in 2003, the Congress had won the two Zilla Parishads, and the Left Front emerged victorious in all other 15 districts.
The CPI-M suffered a further dent in its image as three of the incumbent zilla parishad chiefs, owing allegiance to the party, bit the dust in North Dinajpur, South Dinajpur and Nadia districts.
In Nandigram, the Trinamool Congress trounced the front in the gram Panchayat or village council and Panchayat Samiti polls, besides winning all the four Zilla Parishad seats in the area.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print.aspx?Id=bb822bd8-d05c-4482-bcaf-728ba06cb3ae
Nandigram, May 21 (PTI) CPI-M and Trinamool Congress activists threw bombs and exchanged fire in three areas in embattled Nandigram shortly after zila parishad election results were declared in the East Midnapore districtd today.
Though no casualty was reported, the police said bomb blasts and gunshots were heard at Sonachura, Gokulnagar and Garchakraberia in Nandigram.
Both Trinamool Congress and CPI-M workers traded bombs and gunshots.
There was no report of any victory processions here till this evening.
Strict security measures were taken 200 metres around the counting centres.
Reports from other districts, however, said the situation had remained peaceful. PTI
http://www.ptinews.com/pti%5Cptisite.nsf/0/5974D6E618848EF465257450004F7494?OpenDocument
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Fight against terror in Nandigram
Fight Against the Terror in Nandigram, Build Your Own Independent & United Struggle
18 May, 2008
by the Sramik Sangram Committee, translated and published in Sanhati 18 May 2008, republished by Hydrarchy 18 May 2008
A fugitive criminal is ruling roost in Nandigram, directing a huge armed force of party cadres. A police officer waves and gives a beaming smile to the criminal while passing by in his jeep — a picture familiar in today’s ‘peaceful’ Nandigram. A group of socially established intellectuals were prohibited from proceeding towards Nandigram on the basis of Government’s directive a day before the Panchayat polls. If this is the treatment meted out to the people belonging to the higher ranks of social hierarchy, one can easily imagine the tremendous threatening, intimidating and terrorized situation in which the toiling masses of Nandigram are striving to live. You have to work for CPIM, participate in their party processions and if you defy, you will be confined in your home with broken limbs. If one dares to raise a voice of protest, houses will be set to fire, the protesting people will simply ‘disappear’.
There seems to be no other way with both the police and the administration not merely being silent observers but party to this mayhem organized by CPIM. The women are pleading desperately to the central army and the CRPF officers for protection. What a picture of Nandigram are we witnessing! Today’s Nandigram is indeed terrorized by the nexus of CPIM, police and administration. What we witnessed during the Panchayat elections is just a continuation of the terror unleashed since last November. Even the CRPF officers have not been spared from the threats by CPIM leaders. The continuous description of terror, beatings, violence, rapes .…wails, screams and groans — is this the only picture that characterize Nandigram?
No, the above picture is just one aspect of Nandigram. Nandigram signifies protests; it signifies spontaneous resistance by the peasantry. Nandigram stands as a symbol of resistive struggle against the attack of the ruling class. One has to remember that Nandigram is not merely represented by the incident of 14th of March, 2007. The real Nandigram revealed itself when a small procession of 40-50 people with a martyr’s dead body turned spontaneously into a 40-45 thousand odd peoples’ spontaneous protest rally on the 16th of March that drove out the perpetrators of violence, the party vandals from Sonachura and gained control over the village. The CPIM thugs who are on the carnage today had to flee to save themselves; the police were forced to escape and take shelter in the confines of school premises. The government was forced to bow down in the wake of this united resistance by thousands of land labourers and peasants. Where has that Nandigram disappeared?
Has that Nandigram been completely vanquished by the terror of CPIM? No, Nandigram is struggle and resistance personified — it can never die. The struggle continues to live within the fighting people, amidst the workers, peasants and toiling masses. Yet a question looms — why did such a situation evolve?
It has to be understood that the fighting mass of Nandigram failed to retain their power of united resistance within their control. The struggling people started losing their power and ability out of their own volition, from the moment they started submitting themselves in the hands of the parties. Perhaps they were under the illusion that it would be possible to re-exert themselves through the power of the parties in the forthcoming Panchayat elections. This marks the reason for their failure, the reason for backtracking — not exposed earlier but has become clear in this phase of ongoing bloody violence. However, this is not the end, this cannot be the end. People of Nandigram will definitely take lessons from history to revive and restore their unity and struggle.
Friends, CPIM has compelled us to chose between parties — either you are on ‘our’ side or ‘theirs’ which simply means that either you belong to CPIM or to the Trinamul. Are we such powerless, inanimate pawns in the hands of the stinking representatives of the ruling class? No, not at all. CPIM, Trinamul, Congress and the various other horses of the same stable do not represent West Bengal. Within this West Bengal an embryo of a new West Bengal, a new India is gradually emerging from the struggle of the workers, peasants and the toiling masses. A West Bengal of workers and peasants is burgeoning from the fights that are striving to establish an independent and autonomous struggle and organisation by completely detaching from the clutches of the established old parties. The ruling class and CPIM are scared of this spontaneous resistance by the workers and peasants and that is why they are determined to bulldoze these struggles. This explains the continued violence in Nandigram.
Raise your voice of protest against the terror unleashed by the CPIM in connivance with the police and administration. However, it is just not enough to protest against the terror, murders, rapes and inhuman torture. One has to stand for the new socio-political awakening, extend active support towards the emerging struggle and organization of workers and peasants. You will have to be an architect in building your own organization, in your factories or farmlands. Gather strength to fight against each and every onslaught of the ruling class; build up the power to resist. And this is how you can give a fitting reply to the onslaught of violence in Nandigram.
Sramik Sangram Committee
http://strugglesnews.wordpress.com/2008/05/18/fight-against-the-terror-in-nandigram-build-your-own-independent-united-struggle/
18 May, 2008
by the Sramik Sangram Committee, translated and published in Sanhati 18 May 2008, republished by Hydrarchy 18 May 2008
A fugitive criminal is ruling roost in Nandigram, directing a huge armed force of party cadres. A police officer waves and gives a beaming smile to the criminal while passing by in his jeep — a picture familiar in today’s ‘peaceful’ Nandigram. A group of socially established intellectuals were prohibited from proceeding towards Nandigram on the basis of Government’s directive a day before the Panchayat polls. If this is the treatment meted out to the people belonging to the higher ranks of social hierarchy, one can easily imagine the tremendous threatening, intimidating and terrorized situation in which the toiling masses of Nandigram are striving to live. You have to work for CPIM, participate in their party processions and if you defy, you will be confined in your home with broken limbs. If one dares to raise a voice of protest, houses will be set to fire, the protesting people will simply ‘disappear’.
There seems to be no other way with both the police and the administration not merely being silent observers but party to this mayhem organized by CPIM. The women are pleading desperately to the central army and the CRPF officers for protection. What a picture of Nandigram are we witnessing! Today’s Nandigram is indeed terrorized by the nexus of CPIM, police and administration. What we witnessed during the Panchayat elections is just a continuation of the terror unleashed since last November. Even the CRPF officers have not been spared from the threats by CPIM leaders. The continuous description of terror, beatings, violence, rapes .…wails, screams and groans — is this the only picture that characterize Nandigram?
No, the above picture is just one aspect of Nandigram. Nandigram signifies protests; it signifies spontaneous resistance by the peasantry. Nandigram stands as a symbol of resistive struggle against the attack of the ruling class. One has to remember that Nandigram is not merely represented by the incident of 14th of March, 2007. The real Nandigram revealed itself when a small procession of 40-50 people with a martyr’s dead body turned spontaneously into a 40-45 thousand odd peoples’ spontaneous protest rally on the 16th of March that drove out the perpetrators of violence, the party vandals from Sonachura and gained control over the village. The CPIM thugs who are on the carnage today had to flee to save themselves; the police were forced to escape and take shelter in the confines of school premises. The government was forced to bow down in the wake of this united resistance by thousands of land labourers and peasants. Where has that Nandigram disappeared?
Has that Nandigram been completely vanquished by the terror of CPIM? No, Nandigram is struggle and resistance personified — it can never die. The struggle continues to live within the fighting people, amidst the workers, peasants and toiling masses. Yet a question looms — why did such a situation evolve?
It has to be understood that the fighting mass of Nandigram failed to retain their power of united resistance within their control. The struggling people started losing their power and ability out of their own volition, from the moment they started submitting themselves in the hands of the parties. Perhaps they were under the illusion that it would be possible to re-exert themselves through the power of the parties in the forthcoming Panchayat elections. This marks the reason for their failure, the reason for backtracking — not exposed earlier but has become clear in this phase of ongoing bloody violence. However, this is not the end, this cannot be the end. People of Nandigram will definitely take lessons from history to revive and restore their unity and struggle.
Friends, CPIM has compelled us to chose between parties — either you are on ‘our’ side or ‘theirs’ which simply means that either you belong to CPIM or to the Trinamul. Are we such powerless, inanimate pawns in the hands of the stinking representatives of the ruling class? No, not at all. CPIM, Trinamul, Congress and the various other horses of the same stable do not represent West Bengal. Within this West Bengal an embryo of a new West Bengal, a new India is gradually emerging from the struggle of the workers, peasants and the toiling masses. A West Bengal of workers and peasants is burgeoning from the fights that are striving to establish an independent and autonomous struggle and organisation by completely detaching from the clutches of the established old parties. The ruling class and CPIM are scared of this spontaneous resistance by the workers and peasants and that is why they are determined to bulldoze these struggles. This explains the continued violence in Nandigram.
Raise your voice of protest against the terror unleashed by the CPIM in connivance with the police and administration. However, it is just not enough to protest against the terror, murders, rapes and inhuman torture. One has to stand for the new socio-political awakening, extend active support towards the emerging struggle and organization of workers and peasants. You will have to be an architect in building your own organization, in your factories or farmlands. Gather strength to fight against each and every onslaught of the ruling class; build up the power to resist. And this is how you can give a fitting reply to the onslaught of violence in Nandigram.
Sramik Sangram Committee
http://strugglesnews.wordpress.com/2008/05/18/fight-against-the-terror-in-nandigram-build-your-own-independent-united-struggle/
Friday, May 16, 2008
Chomsky's hypocricy over Marxist terror in Nandigram
The hypocrisy of Chomsky over Nandigram
Noam Chomsky, the intellectual icon, is the biggest draw for a cause the Leftists all over the world hold dear. That is why when the left-wing intellectuals -- who were protesting the other day on the streets of Kolkata against the brutalities of the Left Front government in Nandigram -- read out an e-mail message of support from Noam Chomsky, they must have thought that it was a big chastisement for Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the chief minister.
But some rearguard action by the Left Establishment in India seems to have done the trick. An open letter written by Chomsky and some other intellectuals to 'Our Friends in Bengal (published in the Hindu dated November 22) has virtually taken the case away from the Left critics and reinforced the hands of the Left Establishment.
Take, for instance, how deftly the letter is framed. It begins like this: "News travels to us that events in West Bengal have overtaken the optimism that some of us have experienced during trips to the state. We are concerned about the rancour that has divided the public space, created what appear to be unbridgeable gaps between people who share similar values. It is this that distresses us. We hear from people on both sides of this chasm, and we are trying to make some sense of the events and the dynamics. Obviously, our distance prevents us from saying anything definitive. We continue to trust that the people of Bengal will not allow their differences on some issues to tear apart the important experiments in the state (land reforms, local self-government)."
This 'unity of the Left' principle, come what may, is the bane of the Chomskian intellectual paradigm. Chomsky himself has said: "It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies." And that is exactly what the intellectuals, who have been friends of the Left politics in the state for decades, were doing on the streets of Kolkata and other cities.
Yes, they shared the values represented by the Left. But when they found a political party, which is supposed to be the vanguard of the Left politics, resorted to thuggish methods of an arch reactionary outfit. They had no other option but to give vent to their anger. And they did it, not by wreaking havoc on the streets, as the Left and the Right hoodlums often tend to do; their silence spoke their angst.
Instead of giving moral support to their cause, what Chomsky et al are doing? They are exhorting the presumably misguided Left activists not to 'tear apart the important experiments undertaken in the state land reforms, local self-government).'
And, pray, who is Chomsky reminding about the milestones of the Left Front government's achievements in West Bengal? People like Mrinal Sen, the celebrated filmmaker and a friend of Buddhadeb over half a century, who despite his ripe old age, took to the streets to register his protest. Sankha Ghosh, the poet, who till the other day was an integral part of the Left Establishment in Bengal (he was the vice president of the Bangla Academy), Medha Patkar who has been championing the cause of the marginalized for years, Sumit Chakravarty, the Editor of 'Mainstream'
which remains an uncompromised platform for leftist ideas, Praful Bidwai whose passionate critique of the Indo-US nuclear deal in his writings earned him the derisory remarks of being a 'Leftist hack'. The list is long, as many who had for long earned the epithets of 'Left intellectuals' were found crossing the swords with the Left government over Nandigram issue.
By asking them not to 'allow their differences on some issues to tear apart the important experiments undertaken in the state', Chomsky and his fellow writers have virtually thrown their weight on the side of the Left government.
For, in the entire letter, there is not a single indictment of the government, but there are a whole lot of endorsements. There is one vague statement: 'We send our fullest solidarity to the peasants who have been forcibly dispossessed'. Dispossessed by whom? By implication, the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee, which is accused by the CPI (M) of evicting its cadre during the seven months it laid siege to the area.
But Chomsky is very definitive about who deserves the praise. 'We understand that the government has promised not to build a chemical hub in the area around Nandigram. We understand that those who had been dispossessed by the violence are now being allowed back to their homes, without recrimination. We understand that there is now talk of reconciliation. This is what we favour.'
Clearly, in Chomsky's assessment, the Left government in West Bengal is doing all the right things. It is the Left critics who need to be chastised. Chomsky sets out the reasons in the next paragraph: 'the balance of forces in the world is such that it would be impetuous to split the Left. We are faced with a world power that has demolished one state (Iraq) and is now threatening another (Iran). This is not the time for division when the basis of division no longer appears to exist.'
So Chomsky, as his wont, uses the American bogeyman to silence the Left critics. Yes, the US is an Evil Empire. It is the duty of every Left intellectual to stand up to thwart its evil designs. But does that mean that the Leftists blink at all the misdeeds of what calls itself a Left government? Shouldn't the intellectuals speak the truth and expose the lies of even a Left government? Or, their ire should only be targeted against the governments that don't call themselves leftist?
Chomsky would opt for the first and third option and dump the second, as he has done in the past. He wrote and spoke eloquently and rightly about the Indonesian terror in East Timor, but downplayed and rationalized,
hypocritically, the brutalities committed by Pol Pot in Cambodia just because he rode to power on a Left platform.
The Left is morally superior because it is humane; but when monsters are masquerading as Leftists, it is the job of the Left intellectuals to expose them. But Chomsky would rather defend them. He perhaps has a rationalization for the CPI (M)'s Nandigram terror, as he had about the terror unleashed by the National Liberation Front (NFL, the communist outfit of North Vietnam) while trying to take control of South Vietnam.
He had said: "I can't accept the view that we can just condemn the NFL terror, because it was so horrible… If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines [this was the rationale put out by the NFL] I think the use of terror would be justified." Had there not been the Left intellectuals in the forefront against the government in West Bengal, Chomsky would have promptly issued an NFL-like justification of official terror by the Buddhadeb government.
This double standard is the bane of Chomskian legacy. The Leftist intellectuals in India will have to carry on their struggle fully aware that Chomsky's sympathies lie on the Establishment side of the Left divide.
http://indiainteracts.com/columnist/2007/11/24/The-hypocrisy-of-Chomsky-over-Nandigram/
Noam Chomsky, the intellectual icon, is the biggest draw for a cause the Leftists all over the world hold dear. That is why when the left-wing intellectuals -- who were protesting the other day on the streets of Kolkata against the brutalities of the Left Front government in Nandigram -- read out an e-mail message of support from Noam Chomsky, they must have thought that it was a big chastisement for Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the chief minister.
But some rearguard action by the Left Establishment in India seems to have done the trick. An open letter written by Chomsky and some other intellectuals to 'Our Friends in Bengal (published in the Hindu dated November 22) has virtually taken the case away from the Left critics and reinforced the hands of the Left Establishment.
Take, for instance, how deftly the letter is framed. It begins like this: "News travels to us that events in West Bengal have overtaken the optimism that some of us have experienced during trips to the state. We are concerned about the rancour that has divided the public space, created what appear to be unbridgeable gaps between people who share similar values. It is this that distresses us. We hear from people on both sides of this chasm, and we are trying to make some sense of the events and the dynamics. Obviously, our distance prevents us from saying anything definitive. We continue to trust that the people of Bengal will not allow their differences on some issues to tear apart the important experiments in the state (land reforms, local self-government)."
This 'unity of the Left' principle, come what may, is the bane of the Chomskian intellectual paradigm. Chomsky himself has said: "It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies." And that is exactly what the intellectuals, who have been friends of the Left politics in the state for decades, were doing on the streets of Kolkata and other cities.
Yes, they shared the values represented by the Left. But when they found a political party, which is supposed to be the vanguard of the Left politics, resorted to thuggish methods of an arch reactionary outfit. They had no other option but to give vent to their anger. And they did it, not by wreaking havoc on the streets, as the Left and the Right hoodlums often tend to do; their silence spoke their angst.
Instead of giving moral support to their cause, what Chomsky et al are doing? They are exhorting the presumably misguided Left activists not to 'tear apart the important experiments undertaken in the state land reforms, local self-government).'
And, pray, who is Chomsky reminding about the milestones of the Left Front government's achievements in West Bengal? People like Mrinal Sen, the celebrated filmmaker and a friend of Buddhadeb over half a century, who despite his ripe old age, took to the streets to register his protest. Sankha Ghosh, the poet, who till the other day was an integral part of the Left Establishment in Bengal (he was the vice president of the Bangla Academy), Medha Patkar who has been championing the cause of the marginalized for years, Sumit Chakravarty, the Editor of 'Mainstream'
which remains an uncompromised platform for leftist ideas, Praful Bidwai whose passionate critique of the Indo-US nuclear deal in his writings earned him the derisory remarks of being a 'Leftist hack'. The list is long, as many who had for long earned the epithets of 'Left intellectuals' were found crossing the swords with the Left government over Nandigram issue.
By asking them not to 'allow their differences on some issues to tear apart the important experiments undertaken in the state', Chomsky and his fellow writers have virtually thrown their weight on the side of the Left government.
For, in the entire letter, there is not a single indictment of the government, but there are a whole lot of endorsements. There is one vague statement: 'We send our fullest solidarity to the peasants who have been forcibly dispossessed'. Dispossessed by whom? By implication, the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee, which is accused by the CPI (M) of evicting its cadre during the seven months it laid siege to the area.
But Chomsky is very definitive about who deserves the praise. 'We understand that the government has promised not to build a chemical hub in the area around Nandigram. We understand that those who had been dispossessed by the violence are now being allowed back to their homes, without recrimination. We understand that there is now talk of reconciliation. This is what we favour.'
Clearly, in Chomsky's assessment, the Left government in West Bengal is doing all the right things. It is the Left critics who need to be chastised. Chomsky sets out the reasons in the next paragraph: 'the balance of forces in the world is such that it would be impetuous to split the Left. We are faced with a world power that has demolished one state (Iraq) and is now threatening another (Iran). This is not the time for division when the basis of division no longer appears to exist.'
So Chomsky, as his wont, uses the American bogeyman to silence the Left critics. Yes, the US is an Evil Empire. It is the duty of every Left intellectual to stand up to thwart its evil designs. But does that mean that the Leftists blink at all the misdeeds of what calls itself a Left government? Shouldn't the intellectuals speak the truth and expose the lies of even a Left government? Or, their ire should only be targeted against the governments that don't call themselves leftist?
Chomsky would opt for the first and third option and dump the second, as he has done in the past. He wrote and spoke eloquently and rightly about the Indonesian terror in East Timor, but downplayed and rationalized,
hypocritically, the brutalities committed by Pol Pot in Cambodia just because he rode to power on a Left platform.
The Left is morally superior because it is humane; but when monsters are masquerading as Leftists, it is the job of the Left intellectuals to expose them. But Chomsky would rather defend them. He perhaps has a rationalization for the CPI (M)'s Nandigram terror, as he had about the terror unleashed by the National Liberation Front (NFL, the communist outfit of North Vietnam) while trying to take control of South Vietnam.
He had said: "I can't accept the view that we can just condemn the NFL terror, because it was so horrible… If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines [this was the rationale put out by the NFL] I think the use of terror would be justified." Had there not been the Left intellectuals in the forefront against the government in West Bengal, Chomsky would have promptly issued an NFL-like justification of official terror by the Buddhadeb government.
This double standard is the bane of Chomskian legacy. The Leftist intellectuals in India will have to carry on their struggle fully aware that Chomsky's sympathies lie on the Establishment side of the Left divide.
http://indiainteracts.com/columnist/2007/11/24/The-hypocrisy-of-Chomsky-over-Nandigram/
Monday, May 12, 2008
Speaker's Marxist agenda: Udayan Namboodiri
Speaker's Marxist agenda: Udayan Namboodiri
Lookback: Udayan Namboodiri (May 10, 2008, Pioneer)
EMS Namboodiripad admitted loud and clear that Communists had joined the Indian parliamentary democratic mainstream to destroy it from within. This week, Somnath Chatterjee reminded us of that 51-year-old unfinished agenda
From the Constitutional point of view, this week will be recalled for long as one that witnessed unprecedented undermining of the image of Parliament -- at the hands of its masters. For starters, the Lok Sabha was adjourned sine die a full week ahead of schedule for no reason other than the Speaker's injured sense of himself after failing to "discipline" Opposition members for daring to express the collective frustration of the people with rising prices.
Spare us your chagrin
Subhash Kashyap
Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee's act of adjourning the House sine die this week will live long in infamy
India's parliamentary history touched a new low when Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee adjourned the Lok Sabha sine die on Monday, full seven days ahead of the scheduled end of the two-part Budget session. For some time now, Mr Chatterjee's attitude towards the members, particularly those of the Opposition parties, has been noted as objectionable and his remarks and vindictive acts perceived as crossing the line. But when he terminated the Budget session prematurely this week without ascribing reason, it became necessary to get curious as to the reasons behind his extraordinary hurry.
In Bengal, a Commie first and Speaker later
The other voice: Sobhandeb Chattopadhyaya | MLA, West Bengal
To understand Somnath Chatterjee's authoritarianism better, it is necessary to recognise that Indian Communists are into parliamentary democracy only to destroy it from within -- a line first articulated by Namboodiripad and upheld for nearly 30 years by HA Halim in the West Bengal Assembly
It may be not be prudent on my part to pass judgements on the Lok Sabha Speaker -- howsoever unconstitutional may have been the nature of his recent acts. It is 'Constitutionally sensible' not to raise an issue that is reportedly resolved, particularly after it has raised so much ruckus in the past few days. But, going by reports, I am tempted to draw a parallel with whatever has been going on in the West Bengal Assembly for the past couple of decades. If India at large is today suffering under the yoke of a Communist Speaker, then I leave it to the imagination of all Indians what we have been enduring under a despotic presiding officer who has little respect for rules and less for decorum.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/indexn11.asp?main_variable=oped
Lookback: Udayan Namboodiri (May 10, 2008, Pioneer)
EMS Namboodiripad admitted loud and clear that Communists had joined the Indian parliamentary democratic mainstream to destroy it from within. This week, Somnath Chatterjee reminded us of that 51-year-old unfinished agenda
From the Constitutional point of view, this week will be recalled for long as one that witnessed unprecedented undermining of the image of Parliament -- at the hands of its masters. For starters, the Lok Sabha was adjourned sine die a full week ahead of schedule for no reason other than the Speaker's injured sense of himself after failing to "discipline" Opposition members for daring to express the collective frustration of the people with rising prices.
Spare us your chagrin
Subhash Kashyap
Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee's act of adjourning the House sine die this week will live long in infamy
India's parliamentary history touched a new low when Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee adjourned the Lok Sabha sine die on Monday, full seven days ahead of the scheduled end of the two-part Budget session. For some time now, Mr Chatterjee's attitude towards the members, particularly those of the Opposition parties, has been noted as objectionable and his remarks and vindictive acts perceived as crossing the line. But when he terminated the Budget session prematurely this week without ascribing reason, it became necessary to get curious as to the reasons behind his extraordinary hurry.
In Bengal, a Commie first and Speaker later
The other voice: Sobhandeb Chattopadhyaya | MLA, West Bengal
To understand Somnath Chatterjee's authoritarianism better, it is necessary to recognise that Indian Communists are into parliamentary democracy only to destroy it from within -- a line first articulated by Namboodiripad and upheld for nearly 30 years by HA Halim in the West Bengal Assembly
It may be not be prudent on my part to pass judgements on the Lok Sabha Speaker -- howsoever unconstitutional may have been the nature of his recent acts. It is 'Constitutionally sensible' not to raise an issue that is reportedly resolved, particularly after it has raised so much ruckus in the past few days. But, going by reports, I am tempted to draw a parallel with whatever has been going on in the West Bengal Assembly for the past couple of decades. If India at large is today suffering under the yoke of a Communist Speaker, then I leave it to the imagination of all Indians what we have been enduring under a despotic presiding officer who has little respect for rules and less for decorum.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/indexn11.asp?main_variable=oped
Marxist-Jihadi criminal enterprise: Babu Suseelan
MARXIST-JIHADI CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE
Dr. Babu Suseelan (May 7, 2008)
The prevention of crime and anti-social activities is an important responsibility of the government-one in which all segments of society have a stake. But on that crime fighting ideological front, the Marxist government in Kerala has been notably deficient. (In the view of the Marxists aligned with the Jihadis, peace loving, law abiding Hindus are the real problem of social tension, crime, violence and Jihadi terrorism).
Marxists and Jihadis: Partners in Crime
Under the Marxist government , Kerala has become the crime capital of the world. There is an explosion of crime in every aspect of life in Kerala, from homes, neighborhoods, schools, colleges, workplaces, and places of worship. People live in a world of Marxist violence and Jihadi terrorism directed at any levels of society. There is decline for human rights and law and order. A general disrespect for the rule of law is translated into numerous Marxist-Jihadi criminal activities in Kerala. Most of the victims of Marxist-Jihadi crimes are innocent Hindus. Under the Marxist government, there is no justice for Hindu victims.
Now Kerala is encountering new criminal schemes which attack financial institutions, particularly those crimes being committed by organized Jihadi groups. There has been an increase in bank fraud, fictitious document fraud, counterfeit currency distribution, Hawala transaction, as well as fraudulent identification document created with the use of computer technology.
Counterfeit Currency Distribution: Unparalleled In Our Time
There is a marked increase in the amount of counterfeit currency being circulated through Kerala. For the last several years Pakistan currency printing plants have been churning out high grade counterfeit Indian currency. A recent concern is the increasing evidence that Jihadis from Kerala settled in Dubai have been smuggling counterfeit Indian currency Printed in Pakistan security press. Dubai has become a willing pawn for the Pakistan government engaged in corrupt financial activities against India.
The Pakistan counterfeiters were able to bring counterfeit Indian currency into Kerala because the Marxist government aid and abet Jihadis as a matter of policy. There is no hope that Pakistani criminal activities can be brought to a halt until Marxist government changes its Muslim appeasement policy. A recent concern is the increasing evidence that the Marxist government has not been an innocent bystander in Pakistan traffic in bogus Indian currency.
For India, Pakistan counterfeiting of Indian currency represents a direct attack on a protected national asset. Circulation of bogus Indian Rupee might undermine confidence in Indian Rupee, and depresses its value. It will damage Indian economy. Financial industry sources estimate that losses associated with Pakistan counterfeit currency distribution amounts to crores of rupees. The bogus bills are used to buy real estate, businesses, shops and petrol pumps. It undermines legally established businesses and threatens financial stability. Officials familiar with bogus currency distribution notes its exceptional quality of counterfeit currency printed in Pakistan. The quality is so good that many cashier-level bank employees would likely not be able to detect the forgeries.
The amount of money allegedly bring to the coffers of Pakistan ISI and Jihadi terrorist groups is beyond imagination. The earnings from counterfeit Indian currency distribution also could be significant to Jihadi terrorists and subversive Islamic groups like NDF and SIMI. Money may be used to purchase weapons, fund subversive activities, and for slush funds for bribery and corrupting police and politicians.
Jihadi groups in Kerala have long relied on criminal proceeds to fund and expand operations, and were pioneers in using business structure to commingle funds to disguise their origin. Jihadi terrorist groups have used and continue to use established mechanisms to move their funds. One common method is smuggling cash, gold, electronic and computer parts through the Muslim couriers working in the middle east. Jihadi traffickers have become adept at exploiting the weakness and lack of supervision of custom officials, banking institutions and the police to move counterfeit currency.
The Marxist government denies allegations of party involvement in any counterfeit currency distribution by Jihadis. It is the consistent policy of the Marxist party not to oppose all sorts of criminal activities of Jihadi groups like NDF and SIMI for political reasons. Since Marxist party has engaged in a broad range of other crime for profit activity, inhibitions against Jihadi money laundering may not be strong. The political parties in Kerala have made no attempt to stop Jihadi counterfeit currency distribution or Hawala transactions. Allegations of Jihadi crime for profit activity have become the focus of public attention.
The Marxist government has no plans or coordinated criminal investigation strategies involving financial crime, bank fraud, computer fraud, direct deposit fraud, investigation of forgery, false presentation, documentation fraud, electronic fund transfers, fraud within Treasury payment systems, insurance fraud and organized crime by Jihadi groups.
Lack of Public Outrage
Pakistan printed counterfeit currency distribution, mafia land grab, Jihadi terrorism and Marxist crimes are increasing since there is lack of strong public outrage against these crimes. The Marxists and Jihadis are partners in crime and they have built a sophisticated defensive wall by tricks, diversion and sophistry. The Marxist-Jihadi assault on our culture and social system need to breached. The Marxist-Jihadi criminal gang has exploited our tolerance and made a mockery of the rule of law. Our national destiny depends on our ability to challenge the enemies of our civilization. It is time for the majority Hindus to confront the danger in order to preserve our ideals, culture and values.
Dr. Babu Suseelan (May 7, 2008)
The prevention of crime and anti-social activities is an important responsibility of the government-one in which all segments of society have a stake. But on that crime fighting ideological front, the Marxist government in Kerala has been notably deficient. (In the view of the Marxists aligned with the Jihadis, peace loving, law abiding Hindus are the real problem of social tension, crime, violence and Jihadi terrorism).
Marxists and Jihadis: Partners in Crime
Under the Marxist government , Kerala has become the crime capital of the world. There is an explosion of crime in every aspect of life in Kerala, from homes, neighborhoods, schools, colleges, workplaces, and places of worship. People live in a world of Marxist violence and Jihadi terrorism directed at any levels of society. There is decline for human rights and law and order. A general disrespect for the rule of law is translated into numerous Marxist-Jihadi criminal activities in Kerala. Most of the victims of Marxist-Jihadi crimes are innocent Hindus. Under the Marxist government, there is no justice for Hindu victims.
Now Kerala is encountering new criminal schemes which attack financial institutions, particularly those crimes being committed by organized Jihadi groups. There has been an increase in bank fraud, fictitious document fraud, counterfeit currency distribution, Hawala transaction, as well as fraudulent identification document created with the use of computer technology.
Counterfeit Currency Distribution: Unparalleled In Our Time
There is a marked increase in the amount of counterfeit currency being circulated through Kerala. For the last several years Pakistan currency printing plants have been churning out high grade counterfeit Indian currency. A recent concern is the increasing evidence that Jihadis from Kerala settled in Dubai have been smuggling counterfeit Indian currency Printed in Pakistan security press. Dubai has become a willing pawn for the Pakistan government engaged in corrupt financial activities against India.
The Pakistan counterfeiters were able to bring counterfeit Indian currency into Kerala because the Marxist government aid and abet Jihadis as a matter of policy. There is no hope that Pakistani criminal activities can be brought to a halt until Marxist government changes its Muslim appeasement policy. A recent concern is the increasing evidence that the Marxist government has not been an innocent bystander in Pakistan traffic in bogus Indian currency.
For India, Pakistan counterfeiting of Indian currency represents a direct attack on a protected national asset. Circulation of bogus Indian Rupee might undermine confidence in Indian Rupee, and depresses its value. It will damage Indian economy. Financial industry sources estimate that losses associated with Pakistan counterfeit currency distribution amounts to crores of rupees. The bogus bills are used to buy real estate, businesses, shops and petrol pumps. It undermines legally established businesses and threatens financial stability. Officials familiar with bogus currency distribution notes its exceptional quality of counterfeit currency printed in Pakistan. The quality is so good that many cashier-level bank employees would likely not be able to detect the forgeries.
The amount of money allegedly bring to the coffers of Pakistan ISI and Jihadi terrorist groups is beyond imagination. The earnings from counterfeit Indian currency distribution also could be significant to Jihadi terrorists and subversive Islamic groups like NDF and SIMI. Money may be used to purchase weapons, fund subversive activities, and for slush funds for bribery and corrupting police and politicians.
Jihadi groups in Kerala have long relied on criminal proceeds to fund and expand operations, and were pioneers in using business structure to commingle funds to disguise their origin. Jihadi terrorist groups have used and continue to use established mechanisms to move their funds. One common method is smuggling cash, gold, electronic and computer parts through the Muslim couriers working in the middle east. Jihadi traffickers have become adept at exploiting the weakness and lack of supervision of custom officials, banking institutions and the police to move counterfeit currency.
The Marxist government denies allegations of party involvement in any counterfeit currency distribution by Jihadis. It is the consistent policy of the Marxist party not to oppose all sorts of criminal activities of Jihadi groups like NDF and SIMI for political reasons. Since Marxist party has engaged in a broad range of other crime for profit activity, inhibitions against Jihadi money laundering may not be strong. The political parties in Kerala have made no attempt to stop Jihadi counterfeit currency distribution or Hawala transactions. Allegations of Jihadi crime for profit activity have become the focus of public attention.
The Marxist government has no plans or coordinated criminal investigation strategies involving financial crime, bank fraud, computer fraud, direct deposit fraud, investigation of forgery, false presentation, documentation fraud, electronic fund transfers, fraud within Treasury payment systems, insurance fraud and organized crime by Jihadi groups.
Lack of Public Outrage
Pakistan printed counterfeit currency distribution, mafia land grab, Jihadi terrorism and Marxist crimes are increasing since there is lack of strong public outrage against these crimes. The Marxists and Jihadis are partners in crime and they have built a sophisticated defensive wall by tricks, diversion and sophistry. The Marxist-Jihadi assault on our culture and social system need to breached. The Marxist-Jihadi criminal gang has exploited our tolerance and made a mockery of the rule of law. Our national destiny depends on our ability to challenge the enemies of our civilization. It is time for the majority Hindus to confront the danger in order to preserve our ideals, culture and values.
Friday, May 2, 2008
China builds n-submarine base: CPM China patriots to note and denounce.
China builds n-submarine base: CPM China patriots to note and denounce
China’s new missile submarine seen by satellite
WASHINGTON (Reuters) 2 May 2008 - China’s newest ballistic missile submarine, the Jin-class vessel, has been spotted for the first time by a commercial satellite, a nuclear expert at the Federation of American Scientists said on Thursday.
The submarine was photographed in late 2006 south of the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian, said Hans Kristensen, director of the FAS’s Nuclear Information Project.
It appeared to be based on Russia’s Victor-3 model and, although photographs are unclear, resembles China’s early-1980s Xia-class submarines, said Kristensen, who spotted the long-anticipated vessel.
http://wtimg.sv.publicus.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=WT&Date=20070706&Category=NATION04&ArtNo=107060076&Ref=AR&Profile=1008&MaxW=580
Google Earth captured an image of the new Chinese ballistic-missile submarine, docked at the Xiaopingdao base south of Dalian. U.S. officials say the new submarines may increase Beijing´s strategic arsenal.
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The 133-metre (436-foot) Jin-class submarine probably will carry Julang-2 sea-launched ballistic missiles in its estimated 12 launch tubes. It was spotted moored at Xiaopingdao Submarine Base, which it has used for testing in the past, he said.
“Chinese nuclear submarines are normally not based there. They’re located to the south, near Qingdao,” Kristensen said by telephone.
In a defense strategy paper published on Thursday, Australia echoed previous documents by the United States and Japan in voicing concern about a rapid Chinese military expansion and lack of transparency about strategy and policy.
The U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence estimated in December that China might build five Jin-class submarines, but that estimate was not included in the Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military power, published in May, Kristensen noted.
“The Chinese naval nuclear programs so far have been very, very slow,” he said. “They’ve managed to get this submarine out, but it’s been under construction for many years.”
Images of the submarine are published and analyzed on the FAS web site http://www.fas.org and visible on Google Earth http://earth.google.com.
Normally secretive China likely sees a deterrent effect in allowing the submarine to be seen from the sky by outsiders, Kristensen said.
“The fact that they have it and the fact that it moves around, I’m sure they want the world to know about it,” he said.
China builds N-submarine base
Friday May 2 2008 01:38 IST
The Daily Telegraph
LONDON: China has secretly built a major underground nuclear submarine base that could threaten Asian countries and challenge American power in the region.
Satellite imagery, passed to The Daily Telegraph, shows that a harbour has been built which could house a score of nuclear ballistic missile submarines and a host of aircraft carriers.
In what will be a significant challenge to US Navy dominance and to countries ringing the South China Sea, one photograph shows China’s latest 094 nuclear submarine at the base just a few hundred miles from its neighbours.
Other images show numerous warships moored to long jettys and a network of underground tunnels at the Sanya base on the southern tip of Hainan island.
Of greater concern to the Pentagon are tunnel entrances, about 60ft high, built into hillsides around the base. Sources fear they could lead to caverns capable of hiding up to 20 nuclear submarines from spy satellites.
The US Department of Defence has estimated that China will have five 094 nuclear submarines operational by 2010 with each capable of carrying 12 JL-2 nuclear missiles.
The images were obtained by Janes Intelligence Review after it was given access to imagery from the satellite company DigitalGlobe.
Analysts for the military magazine say the base could be used for “expeditionary as well as defensive operations” and would allow the submarines to “break out to launch locations closer to the US”. It would now be “difficult to ignore” that China was building a major naval base where it could house its nuclear forces and increase its “strategic capability considerably further afield”.
Analysts believe China’s build up of its forces is gaining pace but has remained hidden from the world in the build up to the Olympics. The location of the base will also give the submarines access to very deep water exceeding 5,000 metres within a few miles, making them even harder to detect.
Two 950 m piers and three smaller ones would be enough to accommodate two carrier strike groups or amphibious assault ships.
Editor for Jane’s Intelligence Review said the complex underlined Beijing’s plan “to assert tighter control over this region”. So far China has offered no public explanation for its building at Sanya.
http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEH20080501151646&Page=H&Title=Top+Stories&Topic=0&
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Contempt for India and falsification as Marxist theology
Another bit of whitewashing, a part that concerns the Communists themselves, consists of laundering the deeds of the Communists during the freedom Struggle, especially during the '42 movement. During this period the Communists openly sided with the British, turned themselves into total toadies, and did things in their sycophancy of the British and the allies that will put them to great shame today. Their printing of cartoons and derogatory literature lampooning Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose deserves special mention. Because the Communists were always strong in Bengal, a lot of evidence of this is in Bengali. (Note from Shri Thathagata Roy, Kolkata, 2 May 2008).
http://hindutva97.blogspot.com/2008/05/whitewashing-of-indian-history-3-washes.html
Whitewashing of Indian History – 3 washes: Nithin Sridhar (May 1, 2008)
The history of India has been whitewashed and distorted, first by European rulers, and after independence by eminent historians of India and their supporters the Leftists, Seculars and self-claimed Progressives of India to meet their own ends. They have painted the pre-Islamic invasion period as a Dark Age and have glorified the Islamic period to be very peaceful and prosperous.
Ram Swarup says, “Marxists have taken to rewriting Indian history on a large scale and it has meant its systematic falsification. They have a dogmatic view of history and for them the use of any history is to prove their dogma. Their very approach is hurtful to truth…. The Marxists’ contempt for India, particularly the India of religion, culture and philosophy, is deep and theoretically fortified. It exceeds the contempt ever shown by the most die-hard imperialists.”1 Some of the common claims of these eminent historians are:
1] The Aryan Invasion Theory is true2
2] Large scale destruction of Buddhists and Jain temples was done by Hindus in pre-Islamic India.3
3] The Muslim rulers were religiously tolerant and Islamic rule was prosperous. The eminent historians deny the destruction of Hindu temples or the killing of Hindus at the hands of Muslim rulers. They also deny the religious motive behind the killing of Hindus at the hands of Muslim rulers.4
Let us examine the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT).
The AIT was introduced to justify the presence of the British among their Aryan cousins in India as being merely the second wave of Aryan settlement there. It supported the British view of India as merely a geographical region without historical unity, a legitimate prey for any invader capable of imposing himself. It provided the master illustration to the rising racialist worldview: “The dynamic whites entered the land of the indolent dark natives and established their dominance and imparted their language to the natives; they established the caste system to preserve their racial separateness; some miscegenation with the natives took place anyway, making the Indian Aryans darker than their European cousins and correspondingly less intelligent; hence, for their own benefit they were susceptible to an uplifting intervention by a new wave of purer Aryan colonizers.”5
Dr. Koenraad Elst, in “The Vedic Evidence,”6 after examining the Vedic corpus for any evidence of Aryan invasion theory proposed by the Marxist school, concludes, “The status question is still, more than ever, that the Vedic corpus provides no reference to an immigration of the so-called Vedic Aryans from Central Asia….” He further provides astronomical and literary evidence against the AIT in his other essays.
Jim Shaffer in “The Indo-Aryan Invasions: Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality,” wrote, “Current archaeological data do not support the existence of an Indo-Aryan or European invasion into South Asia any time in the pre- or protohistoric periods. Instead, it is possible to document archaeologically a series of cultural changes reflecting indigenous cultural developments from prehistoric to historic periods…”7 Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, a U.S. expert who has extensively studied such skeletal remains, observes, “Biological anthropologists remain unable to lend support to any of the theories concerning an Aryan biological or demographic entity.”8
David Frawley, while commenting on the political and social ramifications, asserts, “First it served to divide India into a northern Aryan and southern Dravidian culture which were made hostile to each other… Second, it gave the British an excuse for their conquest of India. They could claim to be doing only what the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus had previously done millennia ago. This same justification could be used by the Muslims or any other invaders of India. Third, it served to make Vedic culture later than and possibly derived from the Middle Eastern… Fourth, it allowed the sciences of India to be given a Greek basis… Fifth, it gave the Marxists a good basis for projecting their class struggle model of society on to India, with the invading Brahmins oppressing the indigenous Shudras (lower castes).” He further concludes, “In short, the compelling reasons for the Aryan invasion theory were neither literary nor archeological but political and religious, that is to say, not scholarship but prejudice.”9
Archaeological evidence in no way contradicts Indian tradition, rather it broadly agrees with it (except for its chronology). Whether from North or South India, tradition never mentioned anything remotely resembling an Aryan invasion into India. Sanskrit scriptures make it clear that they regard the Vedic homeland to be the Saptasindhu, which is precisely the core of the Harappan territory. As for the Sangam tradition, it is equally silent about any northern origin of the Tamil people. These show that AIT which Marxists have been propagating is based on assumptions and pre-conceived notion, rather than hard evidences.
About the alleged destruction of Buddhist and Jain temples by Hindus, Sita Ram Goel observes,10 “It is intriguing indeed that whenever archaeological evidence points towards a mosque as standing on the site of a Hindu temple, our Marxist professors start seeing a Buddhist monastery buried underneath. They also invent some Saiva king as destroying Buddhist and Jain shrines whenever the large-scale destruction of Hindu temples by Islamic invaders is mentioned. They never mention the destruction of big Buddhist and Jain complexes which dotted the length and breadth of India, Khurasan, and Sinkiang on the eve of the Islamic invasion, as testified by Hüen Tsang.” He asks the historians to produce epigraphic and literary evidences to suggest the destruction of Buddhists and Jain places by Hindus, the names and places of Hindu monuments which stand on the sites occupied earlier by Buddhist or Jain monuments. Yet, till today no concrete evidence has been given by historians to substantiate their claim.
But, there is enough evidence to show that Buddhist and Jain temples and monasteries at Bukhara, Samarqand, Khotan, Balkh, Bamian, Kabul, Ghazni, Qandhar, Begram, Jalalabad, Peshawar, Charsadda, Ohind, Taxila, Multan, Mirpurkhas, Nagar-Parkar, Sialkot, Srinagar, Jalandhar, Jagadhari, Sugh, Tobra, Agroha, Delhi, Mathura, Hastinapur, Kanauj, Sravasti, Ayodhya, Varanasi, Sarnath, Nalanda, Vikramasila, Vaishali, Rajgir, Odantapuri, Bharhut, Champa, Paharpur, Jagaddal, Jajnagar, Nagarjunikonda, Amravati, Kanchi, Dwarasamudra, Devagiri, Bharuch, Valabhi, Girnar, Khambhat Patan, Jalor, Chandravati, Bhinmal, Didwana, Nagaur, Osian, Ajmer, Bairat, Gwalior, Chanderi, Mandu, Dhar etc were destroyed by the sword of Islam.11
It should be noted that though Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jain sects and sub-sects had heated discussions among themselves, and used even strong language for their adversaries, the occasions when they exchanged physical blows were few and far between. The recent spurt of accusations that Hindus were bigots and vandals like Christians and Muslims seems to be an after-thought. Apologists, who find it impossible to whitewash Christianity and Islam, are out to redress the balance by blackening Hinduism.
The Islamic conquest has been described as the “Bloodiest,”12 “monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions,”13 as well as “bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese.”14
Irfan Husain in his article “Demons from the Past” observes, “While historical events should be judged in the context of their times, it cannot be denied that even in that bloody period of history, no mercy was shown to the Hindus unfortunate enough to be in the path of either the Arab conquerors of Sindh and south Punjab, or the Central Asians who swept in from Afghanistan…The Muslim heroes who figure larger than life in our history books committed some dreadful crimes. Mahmud of Ghazni, Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, Balban, Mohammed bin Qasim, and Sultan Mohammad Tughlak, all have blood-stained hands that the passage of years has not cleansed..Seen through Hindu eyes, the Muslim invasion of their homeland was an unmitigated disaster. Their temples were razed, their idols smashed, their women raped, their men killed or taken slaves. When Mahmud of Ghazni entered Somnath on one of his annual raids, he slaughtered all 50,000 inhabitants. Aibak killed and enslaved hundreds of thousands. The list of horrors is long and painful. These conquerors justified their deeds by claiming it was their religious duty to smite non-believers. Cloaking themselves in the banner of Islam, they claimed they were fighting for their faith when, in reality, they were indulging in straightforward slaughter and pillage…”
Dr. Koenraad Elst, while summarizing the Hindu losses at the hands of Muslim invaders, concludes,15 “There is no official estimate of the total death toll of Hindus at the hands of Islam. A first glance at important testimonies by Muslim chroniclers suggests that over 13 centuries and a territory as vast as the Subcontinent, Muslim Holy Warriors easily killed more Hindus than the 6 million of the Holocaust. Ferishtha lists several occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India (1347-1528) killed a hundred thousand Hindus, which they set as a minimum goal whenever they felt like “punishing” the Hindus; and they were only a third-rank provincial dynasty. The biggest slaughters took place during the raids of Mahmud Ghaznavi (ca. 1000 CE); during the actual conquest of North India by Mohammed Ghori and his lieutenants (1192 ff.); and under the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). The Moghuls (1526-1857), even Babar and Aurangzeb, were fairly restrained tyrants by comparison. Prof. K.S. Lal once estimated that the Indian population declined by 50 million under the Sultanate, but that would be hard to substantiate; research into the magnitude of the damage Islam did to India is yet to start in right earnest.”
From Mohamud Quasim to Tipu Sultan, every Mohammedan invader killed, converted, took as slave or put Jiziya on Hindus. Entire cities were burnt down and the populations massacred, with hundreds of thousands killed in every campaign, and similar numbers deported as slaves. While describing the conquest of Kanauj, Utbi, the secretary and chronicler of Mahmud Gahzni, sums up the situation thus: “The Sultan[Ghazni] levelled to the ground every fort, and the inhabitants of them either accepted Islam, or took up arms against him. In short, those who submitted were also converted to Islam. In Baran (Bulandshahr) alone 10,000 persons were converted including the Raja”. The conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000 was followed by the annihilation of the Hindu population; the region is still called the Hindu Kush, i.e. Hindu slaughter. The Bahmani sultans (1347-1480) in central India made it a rule to kill 100,000 captives in a single day, and many more on other occasions. The conquest of the Vijayanagar empire in 1564 left the capital plus large areas of Karnataka depopulated.
About the conversion of Hindus to Islam, K.S.Lal observes, “The process of their conversion was hurried. All of a sudden the invader appeared in a city or a region, and in the midst of loot and murder, a dazed, shocked and enslaved people were given the choice between Islam and death. Those who were converted were deprived of their scalp-lock or choti and, if they happened to be caste people, also their sacred thread. Some were also circumcised. Their names were changed, although some might have retained their old names with new affixes. They were taught to recite the kalima and learnt to say the prescribed prayers”.16
When Mahmud Ghaznavi attacked Waihind in 1001-02, he took 500,000 persons of both sexes as captive [This figure is given by Abu Nasr Muhammad Utbi, the secretary and chronicler of Mahmud Gahzni]. Next year from Thanesar, according to Farishtah, the Muhammadan army brought to Ghaznin 200,000 captives [Tarikh-i-Farishtah, I, 28]. When Mahmud returned to Ghazni in 1019, the booty was found to consist of (besides huge wealth) 53,000 captives. The Tarikh-i-Alfi adds that the fifth share due to the Saiyyads was 150,000 slaves, therefore the total number of captives comes to 750,000. In 1195, when Raja Bhim was attacked by Aibak, 20,000 slaves were captured, and 50,000 at Kalinjar in 1202. Sultan Alauddin Khalji had 50,000 slave boys in his personal service and 70,000 slaves who worked continuously on his buildings. In the words of Wassaf, the Muslim army in the sack of Somnath took captive a great number of handsome and elegant maidens, amounting to 20,000, and children of both sexes. Iltutmish, Muhammad Tughlaq and Firoz Tughlaq sent gifts of slaves to Khalifas outside India. To the Chinese emperor Muhammad Tughlaq sent, besides other presents, 100 Hindu slaves, 100 slave girls, accomplished in song and dance and another 15 young slaves. Firoz Tughlaq collected 180,000 slaves.17
About the destruction of Hindu Temples, Sita Ram Goel writes -“Mahmûd of Ghazni robbed and burnt down 1,000 temples at Mathura, and 10,000 in and around Kanauj. One of his successors, Ibrãhîm, demolished 1,000 temples each in Ganga-Yamuna Doab and Malwa. Muhammad Ghûrî destroyed another 1,000 at Varanasi. Qutbu’d-Dîn Aibak employed elephants for pulling down 1,000 temples in Delhi. “Alî I ‘Ãdil Shãh of Bijapur destroyed 200 to 300 temples in Karnataka. A sufi, Qãyim Shãh, destroyed 12 temples at Tiruchirapalli. Such exact or approximate counts, however, are available only in a few cases. Most of the time we are informed that “many strong temples which would have remained unshaken even by the trumpets blown on the Day of Judgment, were levelled with the ground when swept by the wind of Islãm”.18
Some of the Temples converted into Mosques are:19
Epigraphic evidences:
1. Quwwat al-Islam Masjid, Qutb Minar, Delhi by Qutbud-Din Aibak in 1192 A.D.
2. Masjid at Manvi in the Raichur District of Karnataka, Firuz Shah Bahmani, 1406-07 A.D
3. Jami Masjid at Malan, Palanpur Taluka, Banaskantha District of Gujarat: ?The Jami Masjid was built? by Khan-I-Azam Ulugh Khan, The date of construction is mentioned as 1462 A.D. in the reign of Mahmud Shah I (Begada) of Gujarat.
4. Hammam Darwaza Masjid at Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh, Its chronogram yields the year 1567 A.D. in the reign of Akbar, the Great Mughal
5. Jami Masjid at Ghoda in the Poona District of Maharashtra, The inscription is dated 1586 A.D. when the Poona region was ruled by the Nizam Shahi sultans of Ahmadnagar
6. Gachinala Masjid at Cumbum in the Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh, The date of construction is mentioned as 1729-30 A.D. in the reign of the Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah.
Literary evidences:
7. Jhain[name of the place], Jalalud-Din Firuz Khalji went to the place and ordered destruction of temples, mentioned in Miftah-ul-Futuh.
8. Devagiri, Alaud-Din Khalji destroyed the temples of the idolaters, mentioned in Miftah-ul-Futuh.
9. Somanath, Ulugh Khan, mentioned in Tarikh-i-Alai
10. Delhi, , Alaud-Din Khalji , Tarikh-i-Alai
11. Ranthambhor, mentioned in Tarikh-i-Alai
12. Brahmastpuri (Chidambaram), Malik Kafur, Tarikh-i-Alai
13. Madura, mentioned in Tarikh-i-Alai
14. Fatan: (Pattan), mentioned in Ashiqa
15. Malabar: (Parts of South India), Tarikh-i-Alai
16 The Mosque at Jaunpur. This was built by Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi
17 The Mosque at Qanauj it was built by Ibrahim Sharqi
18 Jami (Masjid) at Etawah. it is one of the monuments of the Sharqi Sultans
19 Babri Masjid at Ayodhya . This mosque was constructed by Babar at Ayodhya
20 Mosques of Alamgir (Aurangzeb)
According to the reports of Archeological survey of India:
21 Tordi (Rajasthan)- early or middle part of the 15th century
22 Naraina (Rajasthan)- The mosque appears to have been built when Mujahid Khan, son of Shams Khan, took possession of Naraina in 1436 A.D
23 Chatsu (Rajasthan)- At Chatsu there is a Muhammadan tomb erected on the eastern embankment of the Golerava tank. The tomb which is known as Gurg Ali Shah’s chhatri is built out of the spoils of Hindu buildings. The inscription mention saint Gurg Ali (wolf of Ali) died a martyr on the first of Ramzan in 979 A.H. corresponding to Thursday, the 17th January, 1572 A.D.
24 SaheTh-MaheTh (Uttar Pradesh)
25 Sarnath (Uttar Pradesh)- the inscriptions found there extending to the twelfth century A.D
26 Vaishali (Bihar)
27 Gaur and Pandua (Bengal)- The oldest and the best known building at Gaur and Pandua is the Ãdîna Masjid at Pandua built by Sikandar Shãh, the son of Ilyãs Shãh. The date of its inscription may be read as either 776 or 770, which corresponds with 1374 or 1369 A.D? The materials employed consisted largely of the spoils of Hindu temples and many of the carvings from the temples have been used as facings of doors, arches and pillars
28 Devikot (Bengal)- The Dargah of Sultan Pir, The Dargah of Shah Ata are the Muhammadan shrines built on the site of an old Hindu temple
29 Tribeni (Bengal)
This whitewashing of history, the policy of “Suppresio Veri, Suggestio Falsi” followed by ‘eminent historians’ of India is not only dangerous to national integration but also the future of the entire nation. It is time that the self interests are kept aside and the facts of history is made known to the masses.
Footnotes:
1 Indian Express, January 15, 1989, quoted in book “Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 1” by Sita Ram Goel
2 For example, JNU historian Romilla Thapar.[Article titled “Romila Thapar Defends the Aryan Invasion Theory!” by Vishal Agarwal published here- http://www.india-forum.com/articles/60/1 ]
3 In letter published in The Times of India dated October 2, 1986, Romilla Thapar had stated that handing over of Sri Rama’s and Sri Krishna’s birthplaces to the Hindus, and of disused mosques to the Muslims raises the question of the limits to the logic of restoration of religious sites. How far back do we go? Can we push this to the restoration of Buddhist and Jain monuments destroyed by Hindus? Or of the pre-Hindu animist shrines? [ Quoted in book- Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2 The Islamic Evidence by Sita Ram Goel]
4 In his book Medival India [NCERT 2000], Satish Chandra writes- “The raid into India (by Timur) was a plundering raid, and its motive was to seize the wealth accumulated by the sultans of Delhi over the last 200 years… Timur then entered Delhi and sacked it without mercy, large number of people, both Hindu and Muslim, as well as women and children losing their lives.”, but Timur repeatedly states in his memoirs, the Tuzuk-i-Timuri, that he had a two-fold objective in invading Hindustan. “The first was to war with the infidels,” and thereby acquire, “some claim to reward in the life to come.” The second motive was “that the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth and valuables of the infidels.” He further says “Excepting the quarter of the saiyids, the ulema and other Musulmans, the whole city was sacked.”
5 Koenraad Elst, in “The Politics of the Aryan Invasion Debate”
6 “The Vedic Evidence - The Vedic Corpus Provides no Evidence for the so-called Aryan Invasion of India” by Koenraad Elst
7 Jim G. Shaffer, “The Indo-Aryan Invasions : Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality,” in Michel Danino “The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Question”
8 Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from
South Asia ?” in Michel Danino “The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Question”
9 David Frawley, in “Myth of Aryan Invasion Theory of India”
10 Sita ram Goel, Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2-the Islamic Evidence
11 Sita ram Goel, Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2 -the Islamic Evidence
12 Will Durant in “Story of Civilization” observes- “The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.”
13 “Histoire de l’ Inde” - By Alain Danielou; he notes- “”From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of ‘a holy war’ of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races.” Mahmoud Ghazni, continues Danielou, “was an early example of Muslim ruthlessness, burning in 1018 of the temples of Mathura, razing Kanauj to the ground and destroying the famous temple of Somnath, sacred to all Hindus. His successors were as ruthless as Ghazni: 103 temples in the holy city of Benaras were razed to the ground, its marvelous temples destroyed, its magnificent palaces wrecked.” Indeed, the Muslim policy vis a vis India, concludes Danielou, seems to have been a conscious systematic destruction of everything that was beautiful, holy, refined.”
14 Francois Gautier
15 Dr. Koenraad Elst in “Was There an Islamic “Genocide” of Hindus?”
16 K.S. Lal in “Indian Muslims Who Are They”
17 K.S. Lal in “Muslim Slave System in Medieval India”
18 Sita Ram Goel, in “Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2 The Islamic Evidence”
19 It is taken from the large list of places documented by Sita Ram Goel in his magnum Opus “Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 1- The Preliminary Survey”
The author of this article, Nithin Sridhar, is studying civil engineering in Mysore, India. You can contact him at nkgrock@yahoo.co.in.
http://www.hinduyuva.org/tattva-blog/2008/05/the-whitewashing-of-history-by-nithin-sridhar/
http://hindutva97.blogspot.com/2008/05/whitewashing-of-indian-history-3-washes.html
Whitewashing of Indian History – 3 washes: Nithin Sridhar (May 1, 2008)
The history of India has been whitewashed and distorted, first by European rulers, and after independence by eminent historians of India and their supporters the Leftists, Seculars and self-claimed Progressives of India to meet their own ends. They have painted the pre-Islamic invasion period as a Dark Age and have glorified the Islamic period to be very peaceful and prosperous.
Ram Swarup says, “Marxists have taken to rewriting Indian history on a large scale and it has meant its systematic falsification. They have a dogmatic view of history and for them the use of any history is to prove their dogma. Their very approach is hurtful to truth…. The Marxists’ contempt for India, particularly the India of religion, culture and philosophy, is deep and theoretically fortified. It exceeds the contempt ever shown by the most die-hard imperialists.”1 Some of the common claims of these eminent historians are:
1] The Aryan Invasion Theory is true2
2] Large scale destruction of Buddhists and Jain temples was done by Hindus in pre-Islamic India.3
3] The Muslim rulers were religiously tolerant and Islamic rule was prosperous. The eminent historians deny the destruction of Hindu temples or the killing of Hindus at the hands of Muslim rulers. They also deny the religious motive behind the killing of Hindus at the hands of Muslim rulers.4
Let us examine the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT).
The AIT was introduced to justify the presence of the British among their Aryan cousins in India as being merely the second wave of Aryan settlement there. It supported the British view of India as merely a geographical region without historical unity, a legitimate prey for any invader capable of imposing himself. It provided the master illustration to the rising racialist worldview: “The dynamic whites entered the land of the indolent dark natives and established their dominance and imparted their language to the natives; they established the caste system to preserve their racial separateness; some miscegenation with the natives took place anyway, making the Indian Aryans darker than their European cousins and correspondingly less intelligent; hence, for their own benefit they were susceptible to an uplifting intervention by a new wave of purer Aryan colonizers.”5
Dr. Koenraad Elst, in “The Vedic Evidence,”6 after examining the Vedic corpus for any evidence of Aryan invasion theory proposed by the Marxist school, concludes, “The status question is still, more than ever, that the Vedic corpus provides no reference to an immigration of the so-called Vedic Aryans from Central Asia….” He further provides astronomical and literary evidence against the AIT in his other essays.
Jim Shaffer in “The Indo-Aryan Invasions: Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality,” wrote, “Current archaeological data do not support the existence of an Indo-Aryan or European invasion into South Asia any time in the pre- or protohistoric periods. Instead, it is possible to document archaeologically a series of cultural changes reflecting indigenous cultural developments from prehistoric to historic periods…”7 Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, a U.S. expert who has extensively studied such skeletal remains, observes, “Biological anthropologists remain unable to lend support to any of the theories concerning an Aryan biological or demographic entity.”8
David Frawley, while commenting on the political and social ramifications, asserts, “First it served to divide India into a northern Aryan and southern Dravidian culture which were made hostile to each other… Second, it gave the British an excuse for their conquest of India. They could claim to be doing only what the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus had previously done millennia ago. This same justification could be used by the Muslims or any other invaders of India. Third, it served to make Vedic culture later than and possibly derived from the Middle Eastern… Fourth, it allowed the sciences of India to be given a Greek basis… Fifth, it gave the Marxists a good basis for projecting their class struggle model of society on to India, with the invading Brahmins oppressing the indigenous Shudras (lower castes).” He further concludes, “In short, the compelling reasons for the Aryan invasion theory were neither literary nor archeological but political and religious, that is to say, not scholarship but prejudice.”9
Archaeological evidence in no way contradicts Indian tradition, rather it broadly agrees with it (except for its chronology). Whether from North or South India, tradition never mentioned anything remotely resembling an Aryan invasion into India. Sanskrit scriptures make it clear that they regard the Vedic homeland to be the Saptasindhu, which is precisely the core of the Harappan territory. As for the Sangam tradition, it is equally silent about any northern origin of the Tamil people. These show that AIT which Marxists have been propagating is based on assumptions and pre-conceived notion, rather than hard evidences.
About the alleged destruction of Buddhist and Jain temples by Hindus, Sita Ram Goel observes,10 “It is intriguing indeed that whenever archaeological evidence points towards a mosque as standing on the site of a Hindu temple, our Marxist professors start seeing a Buddhist monastery buried underneath. They also invent some Saiva king as destroying Buddhist and Jain shrines whenever the large-scale destruction of Hindu temples by Islamic invaders is mentioned. They never mention the destruction of big Buddhist and Jain complexes which dotted the length and breadth of India, Khurasan, and Sinkiang on the eve of the Islamic invasion, as testified by Hüen Tsang.” He asks the historians to produce epigraphic and literary evidences to suggest the destruction of Buddhists and Jain places by Hindus, the names and places of Hindu monuments which stand on the sites occupied earlier by Buddhist or Jain monuments. Yet, till today no concrete evidence has been given by historians to substantiate their claim.
But, there is enough evidence to show that Buddhist and Jain temples and monasteries at Bukhara, Samarqand, Khotan, Balkh, Bamian, Kabul, Ghazni, Qandhar, Begram, Jalalabad, Peshawar, Charsadda, Ohind, Taxila, Multan, Mirpurkhas, Nagar-Parkar, Sialkot, Srinagar, Jalandhar, Jagadhari, Sugh, Tobra, Agroha, Delhi, Mathura, Hastinapur, Kanauj, Sravasti, Ayodhya, Varanasi, Sarnath, Nalanda, Vikramasila, Vaishali, Rajgir, Odantapuri, Bharhut, Champa, Paharpur, Jagaddal, Jajnagar, Nagarjunikonda, Amravati, Kanchi, Dwarasamudra, Devagiri, Bharuch, Valabhi, Girnar, Khambhat Patan, Jalor, Chandravati, Bhinmal, Didwana, Nagaur, Osian, Ajmer, Bairat, Gwalior, Chanderi, Mandu, Dhar etc were destroyed by the sword of Islam.11
It should be noted that though Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jain sects and sub-sects had heated discussions among themselves, and used even strong language for their adversaries, the occasions when they exchanged physical blows were few and far between. The recent spurt of accusations that Hindus were bigots and vandals like Christians and Muslims seems to be an after-thought. Apologists, who find it impossible to whitewash Christianity and Islam, are out to redress the balance by blackening Hinduism.
The Islamic conquest has been described as the “Bloodiest,”12 “monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions,”13 as well as “bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese.”14
Irfan Husain in his article “Demons from the Past” observes, “While historical events should be judged in the context of their times, it cannot be denied that even in that bloody period of history, no mercy was shown to the Hindus unfortunate enough to be in the path of either the Arab conquerors of Sindh and south Punjab, or the Central Asians who swept in from Afghanistan…The Muslim heroes who figure larger than life in our history books committed some dreadful crimes. Mahmud of Ghazni, Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, Balban, Mohammed bin Qasim, and Sultan Mohammad Tughlak, all have blood-stained hands that the passage of years has not cleansed..Seen through Hindu eyes, the Muslim invasion of their homeland was an unmitigated disaster. Their temples were razed, their idols smashed, their women raped, their men killed or taken slaves. When Mahmud of Ghazni entered Somnath on one of his annual raids, he slaughtered all 50,000 inhabitants. Aibak killed and enslaved hundreds of thousands. The list of horrors is long and painful. These conquerors justified their deeds by claiming it was their religious duty to smite non-believers. Cloaking themselves in the banner of Islam, they claimed they were fighting for their faith when, in reality, they were indulging in straightforward slaughter and pillage…”
Dr. Koenraad Elst, while summarizing the Hindu losses at the hands of Muslim invaders, concludes,15 “There is no official estimate of the total death toll of Hindus at the hands of Islam. A first glance at important testimonies by Muslim chroniclers suggests that over 13 centuries and a territory as vast as the Subcontinent, Muslim Holy Warriors easily killed more Hindus than the 6 million of the Holocaust. Ferishtha lists several occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India (1347-1528) killed a hundred thousand Hindus, which they set as a minimum goal whenever they felt like “punishing” the Hindus; and they were only a third-rank provincial dynasty. The biggest slaughters took place during the raids of Mahmud Ghaznavi (ca. 1000 CE); during the actual conquest of North India by Mohammed Ghori and his lieutenants (1192 ff.); and under the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). The Moghuls (1526-1857), even Babar and Aurangzeb, were fairly restrained tyrants by comparison. Prof. K.S. Lal once estimated that the Indian population declined by 50 million under the Sultanate, but that would be hard to substantiate; research into the magnitude of the damage Islam did to India is yet to start in right earnest.”
From Mohamud Quasim to Tipu Sultan, every Mohammedan invader killed, converted, took as slave or put Jiziya on Hindus. Entire cities were burnt down and the populations massacred, with hundreds of thousands killed in every campaign, and similar numbers deported as slaves. While describing the conquest of Kanauj, Utbi, the secretary and chronicler of Mahmud Gahzni, sums up the situation thus: “The Sultan[Ghazni] levelled to the ground every fort, and the inhabitants of them either accepted Islam, or took up arms against him. In short, those who submitted were also converted to Islam. In Baran (Bulandshahr) alone 10,000 persons were converted including the Raja”. The conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000 was followed by the annihilation of the Hindu population; the region is still called the Hindu Kush, i.e. Hindu slaughter. The Bahmani sultans (1347-1480) in central India made it a rule to kill 100,000 captives in a single day, and many more on other occasions. The conquest of the Vijayanagar empire in 1564 left the capital plus large areas of Karnataka depopulated.
About the conversion of Hindus to Islam, K.S.Lal observes, “The process of their conversion was hurried. All of a sudden the invader appeared in a city or a region, and in the midst of loot and murder, a dazed, shocked and enslaved people were given the choice between Islam and death. Those who were converted were deprived of their scalp-lock or choti and, if they happened to be caste people, also their sacred thread. Some were also circumcised. Their names were changed, although some might have retained their old names with new affixes. They were taught to recite the kalima and learnt to say the prescribed prayers”.16
When Mahmud Ghaznavi attacked Waihind in 1001-02, he took 500,000 persons of both sexes as captive [This figure is given by Abu Nasr Muhammad Utbi, the secretary and chronicler of Mahmud Gahzni]. Next year from Thanesar, according to Farishtah, the Muhammadan army brought to Ghaznin 200,000 captives [Tarikh-i-Farishtah, I, 28]. When Mahmud returned to Ghazni in 1019, the booty was found to consist of (besides huge wealth) 53,000 captives. The Tarikh-i-Alfi adds that the fifth share due to the Saiyyads was 150,000 slaves, therefore the total number of captives comes to 750,000. In 1195, when Raja Bhim was attacked by Aibak, 20,000 slaves were captured, and 50,000 at Kalinjar in 1202. Sultan Alauddin Khalji had 50,000 slave boys in his personal service and 70,000 slaves who worked continuously on his buildings. In the words of Wassaf, the Muslim army in the sack of Somnath took captive a great number of handsome and elegant maidens, amounting to 20,000, and children of both sexes. Iltutmish, Muhammad Tughlaq and Firoz Tughlaq sent gifts of slaves to Khalifas outside India. To the Chinese emperor Muhammad Tughlaq sent, besides other presents, 100 Hindu slaves, 100 slave girls, accomplished in song and dance and another 15 young slaves. Firoz Tughlaq collected 180,000 slaves.17
About the destruction of Hindu Temples, Sita Ram Goel writes -“Mahmûd of Ghazni robbed and burnt down 1,000 temples at Mathura, and 10,000 in and around Kanauj. One of his successors, Ibrãhîm, demolished 1,000 temples each in Ganga-Yamuna Doab and Malwa. Muhammad Ghûrî destroyed another 1,000 at Varanasi. Qutbu’d-Dîn Aibak employed elephants for pulling down 1,000 temples in Delhi. “Alî I ‘Ãdil Shãh of Bijapur destroyed 200 to 300 temples in Karnataka. A sufi, Qãyim Shãh, destroyed 12 temples at Tiruchirapalli. Such exact or approximate counts, however, are available only in a few cases. Most of the time we are informed that “many strong temples which would have remained unshaken even by the trumpets blown on the Day of Judgment, were levelled with the ground when swept by the wind of Islãm”.18
Some of the Temples converted into Mosques are:19
Epigraphic evidences:
1. Quwwat al-Islam Masjid, Qutb Minar, Delhi by Qutbud-Din Aibak in 1192 A.D.
2. Masjid at Manvi in the Raichur District of Karnataka, Firuz Shah Bahmani, 1406-07 A.D
3. Jami Masjid at Malan, Palanpur Taluka, Banaskantha District of Gujarat: ?The Jami Masjid was built? by Khan-I-Azam Ulugh Khan, The date of construction is mentioned as 1462 A.D. in the reign of Mahmud Shah I (Begada) of Gujarat.
4. Hammam Darwaza Masjid at Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh, Its chronogram yields the year 1567 A.D. in the reign of Akbar, the Great Mughal
5. Jami Masjid at Ghoda in the Poona District of Maharashtra, The inscription is dated 1586 A.D. when the Poona region was ruled by the Nizam Shahi sultans of Ahmadnagar
6. Gachinala Masjid at Cumbum in the Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh, The date of construction is mentioned as 1729-30 A.D. in the reign of the Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah.
Literary evidences:
7. Jhain[name of the place], Jalalud-Din Firuz Khalji went to the place and ordered destruction of temples, mentioned in Miftah-ul-Futuh.
8. Devagiri, Alaud-Din Khalji destroyed the temples of the idolaters, mentioned in Miftah-ul-Futuh.
9. Somanath, Ulugh Khan, mentioned in Tarikh-i-Alai
10. Delhi, , Alaud-Din Khalji , Tarikh-i-Alai
11. Ranthambhor, mentioned in Tarikh-i-Alai
12. Brahmastpuri (Chidambaram), Malik Kafur, Tarikh-i-Alai
13. Madura, mentioned in Tarikh-i-Alai
14. Fatan: (Pattan), mentioned in Ashiqa
15. Malabar: (Parts of South India), Tarikh-i-Alai
16 The Mosque at Jaunpur. This was built by Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi
17 The Mosque at Qanauj it was built by Ibrahim Sharqi
18 Jami (Masjid) at Etawah. it is one of the monuments of the Sharqi Sultans
19 Babri Masjid at Ayodhya . This mosque was constructed by Babar at Ayodhya
20 Mosques of Alamgir (Aurangzeb)
According to the reports of Archeological survey of India:
21 Tordi (Rajasthan)- early or middle part of the 15th century
22 Naraina (Rajasthan)- The mosque appears to have been built when Mujahid Khan, son of Shams Khan, took possession of Naraina in 1436 A.D
23 Chatsu (Rajasthan)- At Chatsu there is a Muhammadan tomb erected on the eastern embankment of the Golerava tank. The tomb which is known as Gurg Ali Shah’s chhatri is built out of the spoils of Hindu buildings. The inscription mention saint Gurg Ali (wolf of Ali) died a martyr on the first of Ramzan in 979 A.H. corresponding to Thursday, the 17th January, 1572 A.D.
24 SaheTh-MaheTh (Uttar Pradesh)
25 Sarnath (Uttar Pradesh)- the inscriptions found there extending to the twelfth century A.D
26 Vaishali (Bihar)
27 Gaur and Pandua (Bengal)- The oldest and the best known building at Gaur and Pandua is the Ãdîna Masjid at Pandua built by Sikandar Shãh, the son of Ilyãs Shãh. The date of its inscription may be read as either 776 or 770, which corresponds with 1374 or 1369 A.D? The materials employed consisted largely of the spoils of Hindu temples and many of the carvings from the temples have been used as facings of doors, arches and pillars
28 Devikot (Bengal)- The Dargah of Sultan Pir, The Dargah of Shah Ata are the Muhammadan shrines built on the site of an old Hindu temple
29 Tribeni (Bengal)
This whitewashing of history, the policy of “Suppresio Veri, Suggestio Falsi” followed by ‘eminent historians’ of India is not only dangerous to national integration but also the future of the entire nation. It is time that the self interests are kept aside and the facts of history is made known to the masses.
Footnotes:
1 Indian Express, January 15, 1989, quoted in book “Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 1” by Sita Ram Goel
2 For example, JNU historian Romilla Thapar.[Article titled “Romila Thapar Defends the Aryan Invasion Theory!” by Vishal Agarwal published here- http://www.india-forum.com/articles/60/1 ]
3 In letter published in The Times of India dated October 2, 1986, Romilla Thapar had stated that handing over of Sri Rama’s and Sri Krishna’s birthplaces to the Hindus, and of disused mosques to the Muslims raises the question of the limits to the logic of restoration of religious sites. How far back do we go? Can we push this to the restoration of Buddhist and Jain monuments destroyed by Hindus? Or of the pre-Hindu animist shrines? [ Quoted in book- Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2 The Islamic Evidence by Sita Ram Goel]
4 In his book Medival India [NCERT 2000], Satish Chandra writes- “The raid into India (by Timur) was a plundering raid, and its motive was to seize the wealth accumulated by the sultans of Delhi over the last 200 years… Timur then entered Delhi and sacked it without mercy, large number of people, both Hindu and Muslim, as well as women and children losing their lives.”, but Timur repeatedly states in his memoirs, the Tuzuk-i-Timuri, that he had a two-fold objective in invading Hindustan. “The first was to war with the infidels,” and thereby acquire, “some claim to reward in the life to come.” The second motive was “that the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth and valuables of the infidels.” He further says “Excepting the quarter of the saiyids, the ulema and other Musulmans, the whole city was sacked.”
5 Koenraad Elst, in “The Politics of the Aryan Invasion Debate”
6 “The Vedic Evidence - The Vedic Corpus Provides no Evidence for the so-called Aryan Invasion of India” by Koenraad Elst
7 Jim G. Shaffer, “The Indo-Aryan Invasions : Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality,” in Michel Danino “The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Question”
8 Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from
South Asia ?” in Michel Danino “The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Question”
9 David Frawley, in “Myth of Aryan Invasion Theory of India”
10 Sita ram Goel, Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2-the Islamic Evidence
11 Sita ram Goel, Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2 -the Islamic Evidence
12 Will Durant in “Story of Civilization” observes- “The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.”
13 “Histoire de l’ Inde” - By Alain Danielou; he notes- “”From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of ‘a holy war’ of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races.” Mahmoud Ghazni, continues Danielou, “was an early example of Muslim ruthlessness, burning in 1018 of the temples of Mathura, razing Kanauj to the ground and destroying the famous temple of Somnath, sacred to all Hindus. His successors were as ruthless as Ghazni: 103 temples in the holy city of Benaras were razed to the ground, its marvelous temples destroyed, its magnificent palaces wrecked.” Indeed, the Muslim policy vis a vis India, concludes Danielou, seems to have been a conscious systematic destruction of everything that was beautiful, holy, refined.”
14 Francois Gautier
15 Dr. Koenraad Elst in “Was There an Islamic “Genocide” of Hindus?”
16 K.S. Lal in “Indian Muslims Who Are They”
17 K.S. Lal in “Muslim Slave System in Medieval India”
18 Sita Ram Goel, in “Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2 The Islamic Evidence”
19 It is taken from the large list of places documented by Sita Ram Goel in his magnum Opus “Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 1- The Preliminary Survey”
The author of this article, Nithin Sridhar, is studying civil engineering in Mysore, India. You can contact him at nkgrock@yahoo.co.in.
http://www.hinduyuva.org/tattva-blog/2008/05/the-whitewashing-of-history-by-nithin-sridhar/
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