Letter to Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning

6:07 PM (1 minute ago)

to megha.majumdar.author@gmail.com, 

cc: TodayStories@nbcuni.com

Dear Ms. Majumdar,

I have finished reading A Burning - thanks to Knopf for making it available through NetGalley.

You have received many accolades, through the New York Times, Time, and the New Yorker.  A Burning was selected as the #ReadWithJenna pick of the month for June 2020 on the Today Show  (I have copied Today on this message).  From the web page Jenna Bush Hager announces June 2020 book club pick, https://www.today.com/shop/jenna-bush-hager-june-2020-book-club-pick-t182874:

I started writing from a place of alarm and anger," Majumdar told TODAY about her inspiration for the book. "India has been changing in frightening ways and growing more intolerant of minority communities, more extremist. I definitely hope that readers will see resonances in the U.S. as well.

Indeed, the only victims in your book were Muslim: Jivan, the girl who was falsely accused of torching the train, and the Muslim family that was slaughtered on the suspicion that they slaughtered a cow.

Your Jana Kalyan Party is plainly modeled after the BJP, yet you know that the BJP has next to no influence in Bengal - never mind that its predecessor Bharatiya Jana Sangh was founded by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, and the BJP honors Mukherjee as its founder! 

It was also strange that the Muslim girl was named Jivan.  Jivan, or Jeevan, is a boy's name and moreover, a Hindu name.

I am convinced that the train burning was inspired by the 2002 burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, in which 59 people, including 27 women and 10 children, were burnt to death, and 48 others were injured, at the rail station in Godhra, Gujarat.  Unlike poor Jivan, none of the perpetrators received a death sentence.

Do BJP rallies necessarily end with slaughter of Muslims?  I don't think so.  A friend told me that in UP, lynchings for cow slaughter might have more to do with cattle rustling, rather than Hindu-on-Muslim violence (really, the reverse doesn't happen?).

In A Burning, you said that textbooks were being rewritten to serve the Jana Kalyan Party's agenda.  Yet IRL textbooks serve other parties' agenda.  I see rewriting textbooks in India similar to rewriting textbooks in the United States to include discussion of atrocities toward blacks and Native Americans.

Lastly, I invite you to use the hashtag #HinduUnitedAgainstTerror to protest the murder of Ajay Pandita in Anantnag, J&K.  You have over 8600 followers on Twitter.  By calling for justice for Ajay Pandita and including the hashtag #HinduUnitedAgainstTerror, you can create a lot of visibility for this cause.

Yours sincerely,

Comments on Sameer Yasir's April 22 article India is Scapegoating Muslims

from: thebahuofbengal@gmail.com

to: jonathan.tepperman@foreignpolicy.com, reply@foreignpolicy.com

cc: yasirshi@gmail.com

date: Apr 22, 2020, 8:09 PM

subject: Comments on Sameer Yasir's April 22 article India is Scapegoating Muslims Re:

Sameer Yasir

mailed-by:gmail.com

I would like to comment on the anti-Hindu bias in Sameer Yasir’s article India Is Scapegoating Muslims for the Spread of the Coronavirus https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/22/india-muslims-coronavirus-scapegoat-modi-hindu-nationalism/. Mr. Yasir is copied on this message.

My comments are in bullet form (and many are italicized) so that I could send them in a timely manner.

Mr. Yasir’s report contained a lot of loaded words:

• "Hindu nationalist"
• "Amit Malviya, who heads the BJP’s information technology cell and serves as its chief propagandist.” It would have been sufficient to say “Amit Malviya, who heads the BJP’s information technology cell.” Let your readers decide if Amit Malviya is a propagandist.
• “India’s television news channels, already notorious for spreading hatred against Muslims, were quick to attack” As far as I know, the only TV reporter to call out the gathering in Delhi’s Nizamuddin Markaz is Arnab Goswami.
• "Some warn the endgame may be even worse, with threats that amount to incitement to genocide."
• Mr. Yasir wrote, “Many Muslims fear that the democratic India embraced by their ancestors in 1947 is on the path to becoming a majoritarian Hindu nation.”

I support making Jammu and Kashmir Union Territories. Moreover, the Government of India spun off Ladakh from Jammu & Kashmir, as Ladakh has a culture of its own. Revoking J&K’s semi-autonomous status might allow the Hindus whom Muslims ethnically cleansed 30 years to return to their homes.

Mr. Yasir wrote, “In India’s troubled northeastern region of Assam, Modi last year introduced a controversial National Register of Citizens to identify Indian nationals among so-called foreigners from neighboring Bangladesh. The register has put some 1.9 million citizens—the majority of them Muslims who have lived there for generations but lack documentation—at the risk of becoming stateless.”

One of the successes of the BJP government was to conclude a peace treaty with Bodo guerillas in Assam.

Rather, the point of the NRC is to identify Bangladeshi infiltrators – a recent phenomenon. It is wrong to say that the majority of Muslims have lived in Assam for generations.

Mr. Yasir made a comment about “deadly anti-Muslim violence in Delhi”.

PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have disillusioned many of their supporters by not taking decisive action at Shaheen Bagh, Jamia Millia Islamia, and the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in Nizamuddin Markaz. I will not be surprised if the home countries to which the Tablighi Jamaat missionaries return are harsher on them than India.

Mr. Yasir wrote, “Many Muslims see the latest scapegoating as part of a larger ploy by Hindu nationalists to demonize them and ultimately deny them even the basic rights guaranteed to all citizens of India under the constitution, regardless of religion.”

While the Constitution of India explicitly protects minority institutions from government seizure, it does not extend that protection to Hindu institutions. Therefore, it is wrong to say that the Constitution of India guarantees basic rights, regardless of religion.

Mr. Yasir wrote, “The Star of Mysore ran an editorial (since removed) referring to Muslims with the following advice: “An ideal solution to the problem created by bad apples is to get rid of them.”

I would like to read The Star of Mysore’s editorial for context so that I can decide. Maybe the writer was not intimating genocide.

All in all, Mr. Yasir’s article was emotional and not the dispassionate reporting that I would expect from a prestigious journal like Foreign Policy.

Yours sincerely,

Comments on New York Times article Gandhi’s Killer Evokes Admiration as Never Before

And here is yet another letter of complaint that I wrote concerning an article in the New York Times, as written by Sameer Yasir:

from: thebahuofbengal@gmail.com  
to: yasirshi@gmail.com 
date: Feb 5, 2020, 5:21 PM 
subject: Comments on Gandhi’s Killer Evokes Admiration as Never Before

Dear Mr. Yasir,

This message concerns your article Gandhi’s Killer Evokes Admiration as Never Before, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/world/asia/india-gandhi-nathuram-godse.html.  I have also posted my comments on Twitter and Facebook.

A statue for Nathuram Vinayak Godse, who assassinated Mohandas K. Gandhi death.Credit: Smita Sharma for The New York Times

Comments:

• I don't condone Godse's action, but Gandhi was a disaster for India
• Thanks to Gandhi, people think that India should be passive and not fight back.
• Sometimes it's necessary to take up arms against the forces of adharma: that's what the Mahabharata taught us.
• Gandhi recommended collective suicide to Jews, Brits, and Hindus in the face of evil.  Read Repudiating Gandhian pacifism in the face of mass murder, https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Repudiating-Gandhian-pacifism-in-the-face-of-mass-murder-449885.
• You missed that Gandhi was on a fast to the death concerning giving Pakistan 55 crores. He was working on the behalf on the British
• You wrote "Gandhi walked slowly across a stately lawn in New Delhi, India’s capital, leaning on the shoulders of two young women." Those young women were his grandnieces.
• Gandhi slept naked with these grandnieces to test his sexual abstinence.

Your sincerely,
[The Bahu of Bengal]
xxx-xxx-xxxx

HT Anantanand Rambachan

Comments on Anubhav Gupta’s article Will the World Accept India’s Hindu Nationalist Turn Under Modi?

While going through my email, I found this:

from: thebahuofbengal@gmail.com

to: comments@worldpoliticsreview.com, PolicyInstitute@asiasociety.org

date: Sep 23, 2019, 12:50 AM

subject: Comments on Anubhav Gupta’s article Will the World Accept India’s Hindu Nationalist Turn Under Modi?

Anubhav Gupta

Hello, I would like to comment on Anubhav Gupta’s article Will the World Accept India’s Hindu Nationalist Turn Under Modi? An excerpt was published on the Asia Society website. 

Comments:

• Abrogation of Article 370, which granted special status to Jammu & Kashmir, is long overdue. Residents of Jammu and Kashmir were subject to separate laws that gave them fewer rights and protections than other Indian citizens, without the protection of the Indian Constitution. 

• Residents of Ladakh have wanted Ladakh to become a Union Territory for years. They have complained of being socially, economically, and politically marginalized by state policies that favored the Kashmir Valley. 

• Between 1989 and 1991, over 350,000 Kashmiri Pandits (more than 95% of the Valley’s indigenous Hindu population) were driven from the Valley due to a Pakistan-sponsored insurgency and campaign of targeted killings, rape, threats, and destruction of properties and religious sites. They are displaced persons, often living in squalid conditions in the rest of India. 

• As far as National Register of Citizens (NRC) for the state of Assam is concerned, PTI News reported that the final NRC list left out over 19.6 lakh people, of which around 12 lakh (over 60%) are Hindus and Bengali Hindus. 

• Religious minorities suffer discrimination and even persecution in the Muslim majority states of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. It is fitting that India would give religious minorities from these countries expedited rights to become naturalized citizens under the Citizenship Amendment Bill. 

Mr. Gupta’s article vilified Hindu nationalism, Narendra Modi and the BJP. Sadly, Asia Society, ASPI and media in the U.S. and India promulgate this view. It pains me that someone with a Hindu name like Anubhav Gupta doesn’t stand up for Hindus.

Yours sincerely,
xxxxxxxx
Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx

Sources:

• Gupta, A. (2019, September 19). Will the World Accept India's Hindu Nationalist Turn Under Modi? Retrieved from https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/28202/will-the-world-accept-india-s-hindu-nationalist-turn-under-modi 

• Gupta, A. (2019, September 19). Will the World Accept India's Hindu Nationalist Turn Under Modi? Retrieved from https://asiasociety.org/policy-institute/will-world-accept-indias-hindu-nationalist-turn-under-modi 

• Tapadar, P. (2019, September 22). Exclusion of Hindu Bengalis from Assam NRC changing political. Retrieved from http://ptinews.com/news/10867311_Exclusion-of-Hindu-Bengalis-from-Assam-NRC-changing-political.html 

• What You May Not Know About Kashmir and Articles 370/35A. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.hafsite.org/media/pr/what-you-may-not-know-about-kashmir-and-articles-37035a

Comments on Friday December 27, 2019 PBS NewsHour broadcast

To: viewermail@newshour.org
Cc: alyssa@alyssaayres.com
Bcc: thebahuofbengal@gmail.com, presswingeoi@gmail.com, info@hafsite.org

Dear PBS NewsHour, I am writing with respect to the segment on What ongoing Indian protests say about the country’s secular identity, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-ongoing-indian-protests-say-about-the-countrys-secular-identity, on your Friday, September 27, 2019 broadcast. I have copied Alyssa Ayres, whom Lisa Desjardins interviewed for this segment, on this email.

Alyssa Ayres

My comments:

• I'm embittered that the media pays so much attention to the status of Muslims in India but cares not one whit about the plight of religious minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Tell your listeners about discrimination and abuse that religious minorities face in the Islamic countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Religious minorities from Pakistan and Bangladesh are not migrants, but refugees. Tell your listeners about the precipitous drop in the number/percentage of non-Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh. These are the reasons that the Citizenship Amendment Act is needed. 

• While Ms. Ayres focused on anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests, which she called “inspiring,” she said nothing about large PRO-Citizenship Amendment Act rallies in major cities of India. Nor did she say anything about wide support for the CAA among the Indian public. 

• Concerning the “secular identity” of India, please note that "secular" was not in the preamble of the original Constitution of India. According to Wikipedia, “secularity” is the state of being separate from religion, or of not being exclusively allied with or against any particular religion: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularity. Many Hindus chafe at the clauses in the Constitution of India that omit protection of Hindu institutions from state seizure. This is not secularism. 

• A video of two hijab-clad university students who were protecting a man from police went viral. Here's Ladeeda Sakhaloon, one of the two so-called "sheroes," said about secularism: 

Clearly, Ms. Sakhaloon is a protester who is not agitating for so-called secularism.

Do better. Report news that supports the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Yours sincerely, xxxx
Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Bouma-of-Bengal-161615384026398/ 
Twitter: @TheBahuOfBengal

---

To learn more, consult:

Charter of Hindu Demands – Introduction, https://hinducharter.org/introduction/, which discusses inequities in the Constitution of India

Human Rights Report | Hindu American Foundation (HAF), https://www.hafsite.org/resources/human-rights-report, which covers human rights conditions for Hindus around the world, including Pakistan and Bangladesh. HAF has been publishing these reports since 2005.