Terror Unbound: 14 years old Hindu youth burnt alive

A truly heart-rending story about a Hindu youth from a West Bengal village whom Muslim miscreants set on fire: Terror Unbound: 14 years old Hindu child burnt alive.

The victim's father fled Bangladesh to escape persecution, only to rediscover it in his adopted village in West Bengal. The family has since relocated to Kolkata (Calcutta).

My mother once asked me where the street dwellers in Kolkata came from. I told her that I assumed that most of them were economic refugees who were fleeing poverty in rural Bihar and West Bengal. Now I wonder if many of them fled terrorism such as that experienced by Samrat Mondal and his family.

Dhimmi Watch: Fitzgerald: Non-Muslims in India and the "wrong signals"

Sen scratching his head: "Now where did that elephant go?"

A good article by Hugh Fitzgerald in Dhimmi Watch, companion to the Jihad Watch website:

Non-Muslims in India and the "wrong signals"

I particularly enjoyed the skewering of Amartya Sen:

For every mordant truth-teller such as [V.S.] Naipaul, or for that matter such apostates as Anwar Shaikh and Ibn Warraq, there are a hundred, such as Amartya Sen, who acquire a reputation in one field, and then proceed, as natives of India, to present themselves as experts on Islam, its tenets, and the history of Islam.

Sen's views seem to be a result of a formative experience he had as a youth, when a Muslim man was attacked outside his family's home and lied dying: for more, see In Conversation with Amartya Sen. This experience, as horrific as it was, and his collaboration with a Pakistani economist, probably inform his anti-Hindutva views.

However, Hindus were victims of communal riots in Bengal. In the interview, Sen stated that there are no longer Hindu-Muslim communal riots in Dhaka. Could it be that few Hindus still reside in Bangladesh? The Hindu population in Bangladesh has gone down precipitously, due to well-documented incidents of discrimination and attacks on Hindus and their places of worship.

Hindu-perpetrated violence is an easy target: unlike Muslim terrorism, which is global in its reach and intimidates all, it is confined within the borders of India. There is no comparable risk in denouncing Hindu-perpetrated violence as there is with denouncing Muslim terrorism. Hindu-on-Muslim violence within India is also an irrestible cause for human rights organizations to prove that they are not anti-Islam or anti-Muslim.

On reporting on Godhra and its aftermath

Found in IBN blogs:

The Curse of Being a Hindu in Modern IndiaIn this article, Saurabh Saksena ponders why the media focused only on Muslim victims of the Gujarat riots and not on the victims of the train fire in Godhra.

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After reading a cover story by Rajiv Chandrasekharan (formerly the  National Editor of The Washington Post),  in The Indian American, I hastily sent a letter to the editor about an article that Chandrasekharan wrote about Godhra, in he essentially blamed the victims of the Godhra train fire for their fate. In my letter, I quoted at length commentary by the lat Varsha Bhosle and Rajesh Srinavasan (with attribution, of course) on Charndrasekaran's article.

Imagine how startled I was to see an edited (mangled) version of my letter published in the next issue of The Indian American. Then imagine how overwhelmed I felt when a rejoinder by Chandrasekharan was published in the following issue, in which he told the editor that letters such as mine should not be published. He alternatively praised and blamed Indian media for the coverage of Godhra and its aftermath. He congratulated himself on interviewing many parties, including perpetrators, observers, and officials after the events. He said that Bhosle's and Srinavasan's commentary was written soon after the event, when passions ran high, when in fact, the commentaries were further removed in time, as they were reactions to his reporting.

I mean, how petty!  Rajiv Chandrasekharan was a reporter with the Washington Post.  The 2010 movie Green Zone starring Matt Damon was based on his 2006 book Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone.

Who was I?  Just someone who wrote a letter to the editor.

Jihad Watch: Islamic jihadists kill five Hindu road workers in Jammu and Kashmir

From the indispensable Jihad Watch web site:

Islamic jihadists kill[ed] five Hindu road workers in Jammu and Kashmir in March 2007.

Rājauri has now been added to our terrorism map.

The Constitution of India and the secular state

As I have stated before, India is (or rather, should be) a secular state (राज्य, rajya), but a Hindu nation (राष्त्र, rashtra). However, several articles in the Constitution of India obstruct the realization of India as a secular state.

Here is an excellent letter to the Hindustan Times by Sanjeev Nayyar, founder of the eSamskriti web site, about minority rights in the Constitution of India and the implications:

esamskriti- Marking lives less ordinary
The term minority is not defined in the Constitution. Nowhere in the world, except in India, is a minority defined by religion or caste. Is anyone listening?

The subject articles, Articles 25-30, may be located in http://lawmin.nic.in/legislative/Art1-242%20(1-88).doc. To quickly locate these articles in Microsoft Word (I use Word 2002), select View > Document Map. Articles 25-28 may be found under the heading Right to Freedom of Religion; Articles 29-30 may be found under the heading Cultural and Educational Rights.

PS eSamskriti is a treasure trove of essays on Indian culture, history, and philosophy and photographs. Check it out!

Seva for orphans

It often seems that Indians don't take care of their own, and that only foreign organizations undertake humanitarian efforts in India. Here, however, are two indigenous efforts to provide homes for orphans, found through Hindu Press International:

• Mayor Of Delhi Visits Home for Kids Orphaned And Displaced By Kashmir Terrorism - Twenty-three children orphaned by terrorism in Kashmir are receiving instruction in Hinduism, in addition to food, clothing, shelter, and education in other studies. According to Shri Rakesh Gupta, if these children were not adopted and looked after by the society, they might fall into wrong hands, "resulting into a disastrous situation for the Hindu society and the nation itself."

• Project Hope and India Heritage Research Foundation Open Orphanage for Tsunami Orphans - "An orphanage for the tsunami orphans has been constructed in Cuddalore by Project Hope, the organization founded by H.H. Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji, Spiritual Head of Parmarth Niketan Ashram, Rishikesh and Bollywood star Vivek Oberoi, operating under the auspices of India Heritage Research Foundation, Rishikesh." This project will pair orphans with widowed or abandoned women, thereby providing love and comfort for all (take that, Deepa Mehta!)
  

In a subsequent post, I will highlight the efforts by Indians, in conjunction with non-profit organizations, to wipe out two major scourges: leprosy and kala-azar (black fever), more formally known as Visceral leishmaniasis (VL).

Tagore in Hindi

UPDATE 2007-06-04: This article was replicated on Blogs - Gadar - Film Information without attribution.


Rabindranath Tagore

Outside of his native Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore is probably best known for Jana Gana Mana, India's national anthem. Now there are two efforts in making his work better known outside of Bengal.

DD One began a weekly series of Tagore's songs on May 13. The series is broadcast at 10:30 PM IST and will run for a year. According to Indiantelevision.com,

... A unique aspect is that Gurudev's compositions have been translated into Hindi while retaining the originality of the musical and lyrical flavour of Tagore.

The songs have been rendered by some of the best known voices - both classical and popular. Some of the singers include Anup Jalota, Anuradha Paudwal, Bhupinder Singh, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Vinod Rathore, Suresh Wadekar and Mitali Singh.

Somnath Chatterjee (CPI-M), Speaker of the Lok Shaba, who represents Tagore's Shantiniketan and surrounding areas, also released a DVD (the first of a series) of songs of Tagore. No word on how or even if these DVDs will be made available to the public.

The second effort is a CD called "Mere Mann Main Dhadkan Main" to be released by T-Series. Hindi versions of Tagore's songs are sung by Indrajit Dasgupta, a government tax official, and narration preceding the songs is provided by Amitabh Bachchan. Bollywood actors Ashmit Patel and Rituparna Sengupta (who is also a veteran of Tollywood, that is, the Bengali film industry) will be featured in a video.

Mere Mann Main Dhadkan Main was announced with great fanfare this past January. At that time, it was said that the recording would be released in February. Nothing happened. Now, with renewed buzz, it seems that the release might be imminent. I couldn't find anything on the T-Series web site.